The Politics of Hemp in Kentucky [View all]

[RainDog]

The Farm Bill included a provision for state-controlled hemp production for 10 states.

This link is a GREAT read about the way politics and patronage and power impact the legislative decisions of this nation.

Apropos to nothing...Kentucky got a big damn project financed (the Olmsted Dam) as part of the deal brokered by Republicans when they were threatening to shut down the govt. - and when their partial shut down took $24 billion out of the U.S. economy, and reduced projected fourth-quarter GDP growth from 3 percent to 2.4 percent.

McConnell is facing a challenge from both the Democrats and the teabaggers.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/mitch-mcconnell-kentucky-hemp-021214#comments

When President Obama signed the Farm Bill in Michigan on Friday afternoon, the "McConnell Hemp Provision" became the first Congressional action to roll back the prohibition on marijuana since World War II. That's right. Mitch McConnell might have accidentally taken the first step toward ending the Drug War.

How did Sen. McConnell become eponymous with language that permits pilot plots of the plant that until 2:45 eastern time on Friday were considered by the federal government to be indistinguishable from marijuana, a drug that remains classified by the Obama administration as Schedule I? It has left more than a few people scratching their heads.

The vacuum of democratic leadership on this issue (with the exception of Yarmuth) is what led to the opening that allowed McConnell to seize upon a popular issue that democrats had not claimed as their own. But the question remains for a national audience trying to make sense of Kentucky politics from the outside: If hemp is so popular, why are Kentucky democrats so afraid of it?

Hemp's original sin was to be born to a parent of the wrong party because James Comer, Kentucky's agricultural commissioner, is a republican. Last year, Comer shepherded a hemp bill through the Kentucky legislature by overcoming every obstacle thrown at him by the speaker of the general assembly, the governor, and the attorney general -- all democrats.

The McConnell Hemp Provision added to the existing bill included hemp growing for James Comer's Kentucky (and the other ten states) agricultural depts.

The magazine contacted the DEA to find out if farmers are going to be allowed to sell hemp they grow. The DEA referred the magazine to the DOJ.

Hemp contains less than 0.3% THC, so, as far as growing it, or selling it, it's not going to be useful as an intoxicant. HOWEVER, it has been included in the drug schedule since it was created by Nixon in order to avoid any legal cannabis plant, no matter the use.

So, does Congress or the AG's office have to deschedule hemp in order to allow the law to be implemented?