Pres. Obama signed Farm bill which legalizes hemp growing.

[dixiegrrrrl]

Finally! Henp has not been grown legally since 1957.

on February 7, 2014, President Obama signed the Agriculture Act of 2014, the Farm Bill, into law. Section 7606 of the act, Legitimacy of Industrial Hemp Research, defines industrial hemp as distinct and authorizes institutions of higher education or state departments of agriculture in states where hemp is legal to grow hemp for research or agricultural pilot programs. Since hemp has not been grown in the United States since 1957, there is a strong need for research to develop new varieties of hemp that grow well in various states and meet the current market demands.

http://www.votehemp.com/

this has all sorts of wonderful implications for growing a multi use, productive, plant that can boost farmer incomes, be used for fuel, for cooking oil, for material ( GM uses hemp in car production) and uses very little water to grow.

Bookmark above site for updated info.

[RainDog]

1. The Hemp Bill will also require Congress to address cannabis drug scheduling

Currently, hemp is considered a schedule I substance, even tho it has no psychotropic value. But because it could potentially be bred to contain higher levels of THC, it is considered a substance with no use other than as an illegal drug.

Our insane laws regarding this issue must be addressed.

The DEA stopped the importation of hemp seeds for KY's ag. project with hemp - because that's the law. Ten other states are part of this.

The law needs to change.

Congress - you need to change outdated laws.

[2pooped2pop]

2. but if it was signed in Feb

why hasn't the classification changed yet, u think?

[Comrade Grumpy]

3. The amendment to the farm bill only allows research grows.

It did not move hemp from Schedule I, where the DEA idiotically thinks it belongs.

We apparently need to actually pass the pending hemp bill.

[RainDog]

5. Because Congress is too busy passing laws to sue the Obama administration?

Dunno.

I do know the Republicans had enough time to craft an act that would allow them to sue Obama for the AG's office decision - prosecutorial discretion - to allow the Colorado and Washington state legalization laws to go forward. Nothing illegal about Holder's statement to "let the experiment go forward" within boundaries set by the state.

Maybe that's the only sort of legislation they're interested in.

But, honestly, I don't know why the hemp amendment in the Ag. bill didn't include removing hemp as a schedule I substance.

I also don't know why Congress can't simply OK the Washington D.C. vote to decriminalize marijuana in the capital. It took them 12 years to get around to making it possible to implement the medical marijuana law the citizens there voted for. (D.C. has to go through a review process with their laws before the Federal Congress since D.C. is not part of any state). Anyway, this latest one - there was a hearing on May 7, which gave Republicans a chance to grandstand a little bit for their barcalounger brigade voter - if they take no more action, the law will go into effect in July.

Too much of Congress is stuck in another era.

They think cannabis is just about Cheech and Chong. Sure, that's one aspect of it for some people, but not for all or most of the 3 million people in the U.S. who are, according to govt. stats, cannabis partakers.

They think cannabis is about Nixon's enemies list.

They think about the subject like their most loyal voting base - white, male, retirees. Soon this group will be gone and with them, most of the reefer madness in American politics. Not all of it, of course. Patrick Kennedy opposes the CA and WA laws - even tho no increase in crime has been reported, no hell has broken loose... because the reality is that people have been partaking anyway.

They might as well regulate and tax it. That's what people are asking for.. to be taxed so that the govt. will stop pretending that the reason for marijuana prohibition was anything other than a racist backlash against Mexican immigrants and African Americans.

...because that's what it was.

That's what it continues to be, in many ways, regarding arrests and attitudes.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

8. Your last two sentences sums it up clearly.

That's why I haven't obeyed those laws for over fifty years now.

[Ikonoklast]

11. Whole industries *need* pot to remain illegal.

The DEA, local police and sheriffs, prisons, all need the non-violent drug busts to keep their little gravy train going instead of doing the real work of dealing with real criminals.


Asset forfeiture, local cops having all the latest military toys, the clueless DEA letting tons of cocaine and heroin in but bust small growers instead...so much safer than pissing off actual criminals.

[gejohnston]

13. and don't forget

Booze industry and the growers themselves, not wanting to pay taxes.

[Ikonoklast]

15. I know a guy that knows a guy who lives in NoCal.

He is not happy with legalization looming. He sees it as now being inevitable.

His take is prices will drop, government oversight will be stifling, profits get thinner as other, larger players move into the field (haha) and force the little guys out.

[dixiegrrrrl]

14. You hit the target more than you may know.

Just last week, Britain, in an attempt to make its GDP figures look better than they are, decided to include in those figures...
drugs and prostitution!
Drugs and hookers are viable part of the economy....true story.

Britain said on Thursday it would include prostitution and illegal drugs in its official national accounts for the first time. The move is one of the changes planned for September that will add up to 5 per cent to the UK’s gross domestic product.

Last week, Italy’s statistical office said it would start to include, among other activities, the sale of cocaine and prostitution.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/65704ba0-e730-11e3-88be-00144feabdc0.html

[Ikonoklast]

16. "Mr. Secretary, do you have the latest figures on 'Hookers and Blow' segment for this past quarter?"

"Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, we are at a 4.5% increase in economic activity over the same time last year."

"I'm not sure if that is supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing, Mr. Secretary."

[IronLionZion]

27. How would they get accurate numbers?

and that would expose how much tax revenue they are missing out on as well. That might boost legalization efforts.

[dixiegrrrrl]

28. desperate times call for desperate means.

Why didn't I see this?
Counting those activities would be smart, and quite possibly a prelude to legalization to garner the cash.

[RainDog]

18. well, those industries need to find alternate streams of revenue

Because the reality is that both the House and the Senate passed the Hemp portion of the Agriculture Bill.

Title 21, Section 802a of the CSA says: (16) The term "marihuana" means all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa L., whether growing or not; the seeds thereof; the resin extracted from any part of such plant; and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such plant, its seeds or resin. Such term does not include the mature stalks of such plant, fiber produced from such stalks, oil or cake made from the seeds of such plant, any other compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such mature stalks (except the resin extracted therefrom), fiber, oil, or cake, or the sterilized seed of such plant which is incapable of germination.

http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/21cfr/21usc/802.htm

The only way to grow cannabis is with seeds and the stalks won't grow without the leaves. So, this provision allows for harvested stalks only. Otherwise, hemp stalks, growing in the ground, spurred by photosynthesis in leaves, is a controlled substance.

The way Congress got around this in the Hemp Bill is to designate it was for research purposes only, and limited that research to states that already had hemp laws that state legislators would not implement because hemp is considered a controlled substance.

Kentucky imported 250lbs of hemp seed. The hemp provision in the Ag. bill said nothing about the legality of hemp seeds - and they had to be imported since hemp production in the states has been illegal since 1937-ish, with a brief intermission when hemp was legal for the war effort in WWII, then back to being a terrible thing.

So Republicans were fighting with the DEA over the release of the seeds because Mitch McConnell, who was one of the authors of the bill, didn't include seeds. Brainiac, huh?

Congress did the least possible to make it possible to "study" hemp for agriculture - as if there weren't decades of research in the recent past, not to mention older agricultural uses. But... Congress isn't exactly the most progressive group of Americans around. But maybe not the worst.

DEA head Leonhart hates hemp. She is, imo, so far out of touch with the American people she is ineffective in her job and needs to be removed from her position. Let someone like Norm Stamper replace her (former head of Seattle pd).

If someone occupies a position of power and that person's attitude about something under their control is so out of touch with the American people, with science, with medicine - that person should've been gone long ago. She's a hangover from the Bush administration.

Personally, I hope the DEA hounds the Republican states with hemp provisions so that their representatives will get their heads out of their behinds and address the stupidity of the CSA regarding cannabis.

But Republicans don't want to rock the law enforcement vote.

You know what's funny? This guy who is the county sheriff, iirc, in Aspen spoke recently about the way that Aspen has long been a place where people smoke marijuana on their way up to the top of the slopes. Skiing while high on marijuana, he said, was part of the skiing experience in Aspen.

What makes Aspen so special?

It's a playground for the rich.
One law for the rich, another for everyone else.

http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/162473

Pitkin County Sheriff Joe DiSalvo speaks on Thursday during the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws conference held at The Gant:

"Ever since I’ve lived in Aspen, marijuana has been part of our culture here,” he said. “It is part of the ski culture — we have long been smoking on chairlifts here.

“It’s kind of a performance-enhancing drug for skiers.”

Amendment 64 passed in Pitkin County by a 75 percent margin, which “tells me that this community is very much in favor of marijuana,” DiSalvo said.

He explained the ideas behind the Valley Marijuana Council, which brought together stakeholders in the community, including law enforcement, Aspen Valley Hospital, the Aspen schools and those in the marijuana industry.

I agree with the Sheriff's approach to marijuana law in the past - benign neglect. But it's a shame that such a situation applies only when you are very wealthy.

[dixiegrrrrl]

29. I do hope you might be able to keep us informed on the progress of hemp legality

You sound pretty well informed and up to date.

[RainDog]

37. there's so much I don't know

and I learn as I go. I just hope I don't embarrass myself or hurt the progress of better legislation by misinformation - so I try to check as I go.

I'm watching the hemp bill and various mj provisions and get alerts when something new happens - so, hope there's lots of good news in the near future.

Here's a great article about the hemp provision.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-other-cannabis-war-20140603

How a 20-year campaign to distinguish industrial hemp from marijuana scored an epic victory

...Despite its patriotic bona fides, cannabis sativa was a victim of reefer madness in almost every decade of the 20th Century. Praised, taxed, vilified, confused with pot and blamed for killing sprees and the theft of American jobs by immigrants. The final nail in hemp's coffin was its classification as a Schedule 1 narcotic in 1970's Controlled Substances Act.

The U.S. is the only industrialized nation without a commercial hemp industry. All the hemp sold in the U.S., including the food and body products lining the shelves of Costco, the Body Shop and Whole Foods is imported. As Americans buy hemp, Britain, China, France and Germany are among the countries benefiting from America’s incoherent drug policy. Last year, Canadian farmers grew 67,000 acres of hemp and say they may not be able to grow enough to fill this year's orders. David Bronner began adding hemp oil — imported from Canada — to his liquid soaps in 1999. "I thought this was the most ridiculous piece of the drug war," he says "that a non-drug agricultural crop was caught up here."

In 2001, in a fit of drug war paranoia, the DEA declared a ban on foods that contain hemp including certain cereals, salad dressings, breads and veggie burgers — claiming that the foods contained THC. Effected businesses were given 120 days to dump their inventories. With the hemp food market just taking off, 200 hemp companies, including Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap, took the DEA to court. The lawsuit allowed the hemp industry to make its case in the media. Hemp won the bruising battle nearly three years later when a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the government couldn't regulate the trace amounts of THC that occur naturally in hemp seeds.

...In Kentucky, farming programs for veterans that teach families how to grow their own food have just sewn hemp in collaboration with the agriculture department and Vote Hemp. Mike Lewis, a military veteran and food security expert who founded the group in 2012 when his brother returned from the war in Afghanistan with a brain injury, now has grant money for a hemp textile project and part-time work for twelve people. This in a state with a 19% poverty rate. "Appalachia has a strong history of textiles," Lewis observes. "In my vision that's what's missing from rural communities, ag income. People used to survive off tobacco. If it has to be hemp for textiles, let's do it. People call hemp a panacea, a pipe dream, but look how many people came together from all walks of life in Kentucky to make this happen."

[Android3.14]

4. Way to go Mr. Prez.

There are occasions when you rock.

[SunSeeker]

6. K & R

[CarrieLynne]

7. we've been pushed so far out of reality

When I see this I can only think of how crazy it is that we live on a planet where certain humans tell others that we cannot grow a plant. A plant that like us evolved over time and we as natural animals of this planet are told not to partake. That in and of itself is Madness.

[Uncle Joe]

9. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, dixiegrrrrl.

[951-Riverside]

10. This only applies to "research or agricultural pilot programs". Its not 100% legal.

I didn't think Barack Ocorporate would legalize growing it across the board.

[Ikonoklast]

17. You do realize that corporations would love the chance to grow and process hemp, right?

Read up on agricultural research programs and what comes out of those studies.

[RainDog]

20. Not to mention that Congress legislates

i.e. writes the legislation, debates it, votes on it - and only sends it to the President to sign off on or veto.

I think Congress is much, much too conservative about this issue. They've been behind the American public for more than 20 years on medical marijuana, and now the same, with hemp.

Since hemp can be used for so many items that are currently made from petrol ("plastic" shopping bags that would decompose, for instance, and since it's the BEST insulator for homes and all other constructed buildings - Congress just seems to be dragging their feet.

[Comrade Grumpy]

24. American farmers would love the chance to grow and process hemp!

Right now, a farmer in North Dakota can look across an imaginary line and see his Canadian neighbor pulling in $250 an acre net profit on hemp.

Farms on the plains are big. A thousand-acre spread could bring in $250,000 a year. Net. Beats corn.

[Ikonoklast]

35. You know it. Hemp grows quite well on marginal ground.

Fields currently laying fallow because they aren't productive enough when planted with other crops would easily be turned into income-producing ground.

[liberal_at_heart]

34. If corporations really wanted it, it would be legal.

When they want it as bad as they want fracking, it will be legal.

[Ikonoklast]

36. If the current governmental ag pilot programs prove hemp to be worthwhile, watch out.

When there's money to be made, things will happen in a hurry.

[snowjob]

12. hemp, hemp,hurray

Save a tree, grow hemp! Save the planet!

[chknltl]

19. Hemp/marijuana is indeed dangerous....well to some.

If you buy a product made from hemp you are not spending that money purchasing the same product made out of something else. It was the 'something else' folks who banded together to knock off a third of their competition when they got hemp products off the market in the (I think) 1920s-30s. If memory serves, the Dupont corporation was a big factor back when it came to bumping off hemp. Dupont's Nylon and eventually Rayon only had cotton as their competition once hemp was removed from the field. It would not surprise me to learn that Dupont/King Cotton has now teamed up with Big Pharma to lobby against anything hemp/marijuana related as it will once again cut into their profit margins, which is who it is dangerous to. (Cry me a river oligarchs, cry me a river!). I believe I can source this from a reading of Jack Herers' "The Emperor Wears No Clothing" from back in the early 1990s.

[RainDog]

21. Half of all pesticide use goes on cotton

Think of how much healthier the soil and runoff ground water would be if the U.S. switched to hemp rather than cotton for clothing, bedding, etc.

Hemp doesn't have many pest problems - mostly mold or fungus if they're going to have a problem.

Plus, hemp stalks are phytoremediators - the plant pulls heavy metals out of soil - so planting hemp should actually improve the condition of soils, and hemp is a great crop for "fallow" fields to kill weeds because it's grown close together, like bamboo, and so no sunlight gets to the weeds in the soil below to germinate.

However, I think people have taken what Herer said without too much examination. I don't think hemp was outlawed b/c of dupont, etc.

I think hemp was outlawed because it's a form of cannabis and states on the border with Mexico were making cannabis illegal long before the federal govt. did.

To me, it's the same sort of thing that happened with alcohol prohibition - when large groups of Irish, Italian and Germans immigrated to the U.S., bringing their wine and beer cultures with them - people wanted to outlaw selling of those things (but not possession.)

The reason possession of alcohol was not illegal, most likely, is because Congress had alcohol delivered to members' offices every week. Anslinger, back then, said he could win the "prohibition war" if only he could make alcohol illegal to possess.

I think Congress probably laughed after he left the room.

Prohibition of alcohol built many political careers - Anslingers, on one side, and smugglers on the other. That's why I'm so gobsmacked to see Patrick Kennedy as a supporter of marijuana prohibition. His entire family's political career was made possible by prohibition of alcohol, so... makes no sense to me. Or maybe it does.

[chknltl]

22. You may be right

"However, I think people have taken what Herer said without too much examination." This is me because Jack was the only source I recall saying that about King Cotton and Dupont and I never bothered fact checking it so you may indeed be right on the money there.

Another factor to be considered about hemp is the bio-diesel factor. According to Herror (again) acre for acre hemp can produce more bio-diesel material than any other product because of it's short growing time. Accdg to Jack one can get two crops in in the same time one can get one crop of corn in for example and one can plant individual plants far closer to each other and at 20 ft in height the bio-mass per year per acre is quite phenomenal to say the least. I recall seeing a photo of this in his book and those hemp plants may indeed have been close to 20 foot tall and they were way too close together to have been able to walk through. I'll post this and see if the internets has that photo somewhere handy.

on edit: This wasn't exactly the photo I remember. It looks here like those hemp plants were around 12-15 ft tall but you can see how Jack is right about them being jammed in pretty tightly as opposed to something like corn.

[RainDog]

23. A historian looked at Herer's claim

and, tho, sure, there was no doubt some idea about the value of petrol for products, and Mellon was from Gulf Oil before he was at the Treasury Dept, and Anslinger was his relative and scratching each other's backs and the feds needed something to demonize after alcohol prohibition... I think the basic reason was bigotry.

It's been the reason for a lot of laws in this nation.

Hemp is carbon neutral - lots of people who have done studies on hemp thinks it's a great agricultural product - a great cash crop. We need to also make it possible for new business that can use the hemp.

Yeah, I've read it's better for biomass than corn - after the hemp bill, a few more states created hemp provisions, too.

Twelve states—California, Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and West Virginia—currently have laws to provide for hemp production as described by the Farm Bill stipulations. Nine of these states—California, Colorado, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont and West Virginia—sponsored hemp resolutions and have laws to promote the growth and marketing of industrial hemp. A tenth state—Hawaii—passed legislation in 1999 authorizing privately funded industrial hemp research that was conducted under a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency permit until 2003.

So, those nine states that have marketing provisions - that's also in violation of the Controlled Substances Act - and the Supreme Court ruling about Interstate Commerce, etc. etc. etc.

Hemp seed oil also provides the most complete EFA profile for humans - better than flax seed, or borage.

So, yeah, it's idiotic laws like the one against hemp that make me think people who get elected are too invested in the status quo to be effective, too often.

But Congress, from various remarks - have heard the American people on this issue and cannabis - whether they like it or not.

I'm sure various state legislatures also noticed that Colorado will take in something like 2.5 million in tax revenue, just for the first three months of cannabis legalization, that was previously handed over to cartels or whoever else.

And entire businesses are springing up around this new market. -- and that's just recreational marijuana, not hemp.

[IronLionZion]

26. The Kennedys were not bootleggers, that's a common misconception

They knew prohibition was coming to an end so they used their influence and fortune to invest in liquor importing rights. Frank Costello claimed the Kennedys were involved in bootlegging, but there was never any proof.

[progressoid]

25. Excellent.

[Michigander_Life]

30. Hemp is one of nature's miracles

[antiGOPin294]

31. It's about time Americans start to see sense about marijuana's legality in this country

Countless studies have proven the health benefits of using cannabis. And besides, the War on Drugs has been an abject failure. Good on Obama for doing this.

[dixiegrrrrl]

32. Just to be clear....hemp is different in that cannot get you high

Which it doubly insane that it too is classfied as Schedule 1 "drug" same as marijuana.
and as you say, teh war on Drugs is a total failure ( except for those who make fortunes from it).

Happily, there is a definite and fast moving trend to legalize marijuana, and hopefully also to get hemp off the drug list.

[Whisp]

33. K&R