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Update 6/21/2013: Well, it seems the small success that hemp advocates saw yesterday was short lived. The House rejected the farm bill with the hemp amendment that would have allowed for universities to grow and study the plant.
Not only that, but it seems it was purely symbolic, considering Colorado Rep. Jared Polis – who sponsored the amendment – ended up voting against the farm bill as a whole. Don’t you just love the American government system sometimes?
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| Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon. |
After his federal industrial hemp bill failed to move forward late last week, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden wagged his finger in shame not at the closed-minded Senate that wouldn’t work with Wyden, but at marijuana users.
See, Wyden thinks that because marijuana users are prone to being pro-hemp that the two issues are seen as one in the same. And it’s clearly the pot smoker’s fault according to Wyden, not the ignorant elected officials.
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| Lloyd Casey. |
When Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper signs a hemp-farming registry bill later this morning, no one will be happier than Lloyd Casey. The 86-year-old former state senator, who now lives in Ohio, first introduced a hemp-legalization bill in the mid-1990s, but was rebuffed not once but twice by powerful interests, including a DEA agent who still rankles him nearly twenty years later.
“I said, ‘Goddamn it, I’m going to live long enough to make this happen, and I’d love to rub your face in it,'” he recalls — and he’s scheduled to be on hand to witness today’s signing. Denver Westword has his story.
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| Sen. Ron Wyden. |
An Oregon Senator on Monday proposed amending the federal farm bill to include industrial hemp.
The Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2013, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden, would remove hemp from federal drug laws and allow it to be grown and regulated by the states. Read the entire bill below the jump.
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Is it legal to grow hemp in Colorado? Like, right now?
That’s a complicated question — and one that the Colorado Department of Agriculture is trying to clear up in a statement issued this week: “Amendment 64 did not authorize the immediate cultivation of hemp. It instead directed the General Assembly to enact legislation governing the cultivation, processing and sale of industrial hemp. This they have now done.”
So can farmers start planting? Not yet. Melanie Asmar with the Denver Westword has more.
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Nearly 80 percent of Kentuckians approve of legalizing medical marijuana and roughly a quarter of the state would be open to outright legalization, according to a poll released last week.
How to go about that, though, seems to be up in the air.
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| Wikipedia commons. |
Vermont farmers will likely have one more option of what to cultivate this summer after the state legislature Monday gave final approval to Senate Bill 157 which lifts a state ban on hemp farming.
The bill still has to be signed by the governor, but so far he hasn’t made any indications that he will veto it.
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Although hemp (and of course, its THC-friendly sibling, marijuana) are still illegal at the federal level, Colorado’s Amendment 64 has paved the way for new legislation allowing farmers to register to grow hemp on a large scale. And earlier this month, that bill passed. After paying a fee and verifying that their future crops will have a THC concentration of no more than three-tenths of one percent, Colorado hemp farmers will soon be on their way toward reaping what bill SB 241 sows.
For more on the new law, read Westword‘s full story.
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Often lost in the debate over marijuana legalization is the role that industrial, commercialized hemp production could potentially play in mainstream American society, as well as in our economy. But because all cannabis varieties, including hemp, fall under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the many industrial and even medical uses for hemp-based products here in America depend almost solely on foreign imports – mostly from China.
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Good news on the industrial hemp front this week. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear reluctantly allowed a bill allowing for industrial hemp in that state to become law over the weekend.
Interestingly, he didn’t sign the bill – but that wasn’t required for it to become law.