Let it be said that the battle is about to be joined. The law is
bone stupid with zero scientific rational. Now the Fed will be
likely forced to defend its nonsense.
The real reason that it has been illegal is a little simpler. Any
rogue farmer can place a small handful of the active plants among his
hemp plants and make it nigh impossible for it to be detected. It
will be back to the glory days of the moonshiners.
Yet the momentum for changing all these laws is nicely building, so
sooner or later the war on drugs will be reformulated and this
nonsense will end.
By the by, I have zero interest in using these drugs myself and have
never been even slightly tempted. I think that use and abuse is
insane if it must be tightly managed and restricted to specifics such
as beer (two pints only), wine (one glass with a meal) and the like.
However I do object to a regulatory protocol that underwrites any
form of criminality that is rewarded to enslave victims. End that
and ninety eight percent of the whole problem will evaporate into
thin air like a bad odor.
Heady Colo. farmers
plowing ahead with hemp farming
By Susie Cagle
What do you do when
the federal government won’t let you plant a sustainable,
super-useful crop on your own land? Well, if you’re Ryan Loflin,
you do it anyway.
As of this week,
Loflin has planted America’s first real crop of industrial hemp in
more than a half-century.
The 40-year-old farmer
from Springfield, Colo., has been scheming for months. “I believe
this is really going to revitalize and strengthen farm communities,”
Loflin told the Denver Post in April. Now he’s leased 60 acres of
his father’s alfalfa farm to plant and tend the hundreds of hemp
starters he’s already been grooming.
Hemp, for those who
aren’t familiar, is a variety of cannabis that — sorry kids! —
won’t get you high. Strong, nutritious, and super sustainable to
grow, hemp is used for everything from rope to cereal. It requires
few herbicides, and has even been called carbon negative by some
boosters. And while it’s illegal to grow it in the U.S., it’s not
illegal to sell. Right now imported hemp — the only legal kind —
accounts for about $500 million in annual U.S. sales, according to
the Hemp Industries Association.
So what if it were
homegrown, Loflin-style?
Loflin’s not
completely on his own here. Colorado legalized hemp, along with
recreational marijuana, last November. Last week, Colorado passed a
bill that would register hemp farmers with the stateand create a
committee that would work with farmers and the Department of
Agriculture to (hopefully) keep plants in the fields and farmers out
of jail.
“This is monumental
for our industry,” Bruce Perlowin, chief executive of Hemp Inc.,
told the Denver Post. “It will unlock a clean industrial revolution
that will be good for the economy, good for jobs, and good for the
environment.”
In April, Kentucky
passed a measure to legalize industrial hemp production, over the
objections of local law enforcement who said it would turn the
state’s residents into a bunch of stoners. Kentucky farmers are a
bit more cagey about plowing ahead Loflin-style, though, and are
instead lobbying the feds to just make this stuff legal already.
So far, though, the
feds aren’t buying it. The Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2013,
first introduced in Congress in February, is currentlychilling on a
couch in committee, with no vote in sight.
Because that dank shit
sustainable fiber is still straight-up Schedule I illegal, hemp
farmers don’t qualify for federal crop insurance and other
government benefits afforded to farmers of legal crops. And fear of
reprisal is keeping many farmers and researchers away, even in states
that say it’s OK.
“The law is clear on
this matter,” a board member at Colorado State University, a top
farming research school, wrote in a letter to U.S. Rep. Jared Polis
(D-Colo.), “and we do not want to do anything that would
unintentionally result in personal criminal liability for CSU
employees or that would disqualify the institution from obtaining
future government funding.”
Without movement in
Washington, this fibrous future rests with folks like Loflin, who are
willing to risk jail time for this plant. But even if Loflin lands
behind bars, he’ll always be able to say he was the first. Ashe
told Denver’s Westword, “It’s my crazy competitive nature.”
1 comment:
I don't know but I've been told. When hemp and cannabis are near each other they cross pollinate and ruin the quality of the drug. If you want to stop the growing of cannabis all you need to do is allow hemp.
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