Bipartisan bill would free hemp for agriculture
Legislation currently making it’s way through the Senate would bring a long overdue end to the federal government’s treatment of hemp as a controlled substance.
The 2018 Hemp Farming Act would allow hemp to be sold nationwide as an agricultural commodity, leaving regulatory matters related to the cultivation of the non-psychoactive marijuana relative to state governments.
“Hemp has played a foundational role in Kentucky’s agricultural heritage, and I believe that it can be an important part of our future,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a statement.
Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) are cosponsoring the legislation.
Many states states have already taken steps to investigate commercial hemp production– but because the plant remains illegal under federal law, cultivation has largely been relegated to pilot programs under government supervision. Students at the University of Kentucky began growing and investigation the commercial viability to hemp under one such program back in 2016.
If the federal law changes, advocates say hemp would quickly reclaim its historical status as an American cash crop. Industrial hemp can be used to produce clothes, cars, plastics, building materials, rope, paper, linens, food and medicine, among other things.
Hemp prohibition in 1937 as a result of government propaganda about the dangers of its psychoactive relative marijuana and cronyism by American business magnates who saw the plant as a threat to fortunes built around the production of synthetic plastic and textile products that could be manufactured more cheaply with hemp.
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