More from the Huffington Post

Hemp sprouts.

More from the Huffington Post by Ryan Grim and Lucia Graves: This venue started to take up this issue rather late and reluctantly, it is one that we have contacted many times in the past and have been totally ignored, so we do welcome the fact that they are finally working on it, but truth to tell, they only did so when it started to go viral and they had no other choice. They did little more than the mainstream press - in fact less, as the LA Times has had an excellent feature on hemp a few years back and this year in an editorial wholeheartedly endorsed it. But for what (little) it's worth, here is the HP contribution, better late than never...for those of you really willing to work on this, there is a petition to the White House to sign at:
www.minawear.com/about-us/

WASHINGTON -- A chance encounter at last weekend's Kentucky Derby may have given the hemp industry the break it's been looking for since the crop was banned in 1970, when the federal government classified it as a controlled substance related to marijuana.

Kentucky's Commissioner of Agriculture James Comer, a Republican, told The Huffington Post that he was at a private pre-derby party on Saturday when he found himself chatting with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his chief of staff Mike Sommers. Comer talked shop.

The topic at hand was the fate of the hemp industry in Kentucky, which could become the first state in the nation to successfully lobby for federal approval. Boehner and Sommers were interested enough to invite Comer and the chief supporters of the state's legalization bill to a meeting in Washington.

On Tuesday night, Boehner sat down with Comer and the bill's lead backers, Republican state Sen. Paul Hornback and Democrat Jonathan Miller, a former Kentucky state treasurer who currently serves on the Kentucky Industrial Hemp Commission (and who also moonlights as a HuffPost blogger). Sommers confirmed the meeting took place.

According to Comer, Boehner told the trio he would talk with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) about how a federal bill might be moved forward to remove hemp from the list of controlled substances. On Thursday, Comer and the Kentucky legislators plan to meet with McConnell, who surprised observers back home by endorsing Hornback's hemp bill, a move that quickly brought the state GOP in line.

The most likely path to passage for hemp legislation runs through the farm bill, as an amendment. That bill goes up for debate in the Senate Agriculture Committee next week -- fortuitous timing for hemp.

"I was impressed with his knowledge of this issue," Comer said of Boehner. "At the end he said, 'This is funny, because this issue's been around a long time. My daughter was talking about this 15 years ago.' So this is something he knows a lot about. And the difference today, as opposed to 10 years ago, is the only people who were pushing this issue 10 years ago were the extreme right or left, or people who wanted to legalize marijuana." Comer spoke with HuffPost and a Roll Call reporter in the office of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), their home base while they're in Washington, working with the group Vote Hemp, which advocates on behalf of the industry.

Kentucky's hemp bill, Senate Bill 50, became law in April and allows Bluegrass State farmers to grow industrial hemp for the first time in decades. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and local police have expressed concerns that allowing farmers to cultivate hemp would enable them to disguise the cultivation of illegal marijuana, which looks very similar to hemp but contains much higher levels of THC, the psychoactive agent in cannabis. Experts dismissed that argument, noting that cross-pollination between hemp plants and marijuana plants would significantly reduce the potency of the marijuana and devalue the crop. Beshear and Kentucky police remained skeptical, though the governor did not ultimately veto the legislation, letting it become law without his signature.

The chief objection, Miller said, came from a small element of law enforcement who feared "that this is a slippery slope, that they would lose money with marijuana eradication." The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, however, backed the bill.

Now Kentucky awaits federal action to approve the plant's cultivation. The Drug Enforcement Administration currently classifies hemp as a Schedule I substance with "a high potential for abuse," alongside heroin and LSD, despite the fact that industrial hemp has zero potential for abuse.

Comer said that the DEA has so far declined to meet with him or the Kentucky lawmakers, so they are hoping instead to meet with the Department of Justice, which oversees the DEA. He said that meetings with the Departments of Energy and Agriculture went well.

Paul and McConnell are co-sponsoring federal legislation that would remove the plant from the DEA's list of illegal drugs. A similar effort is also underway in the House, boosted by members of Kentucky's congressional delegation, with the exception of Rep. Harold Rogers (R). Should those efforts fail, the senators have vowed to seek a waiver from the DEA granting Kentucky special dispensation to grow hemp.

Other states that have also passed local laws allowing hemp licensure include Vermont, North Dakota, Maine, Montana, Oregon, Washington, West Virginia and Colorado. While some have sought federal validation of state laws from the DEA, those efforts have been unsuccessful to date.

Huffington Post and the liberals embrace hemp

Hemp is starting to go viral: Doonesbury characters, top GOP leaders, green gurus, yoga practicioners, you name it - this is the year for hemp. The left almost got left out - while the GOP took the lead - and is now trying to jump back in; Jonathan Miller has this to say on the Huffington Post, Ms. Huffington is just now getting on the bandwagon - another rich lefty from the wine and cheese circuit - whose $ ironically comes from oil - after divorcing her rich husband - so I might have some ironic comments after so many years of campaigning so hard and seeing the lefties wait and wait till they can make some $ off of it and try to take credit for what they did not support till others came along and did it. But for what it's worth, here is their rant as another log on the fire, and I welcome it, even if with sceptisism - note that Ms Huffington is NOT wearing any hemp - most of these lefties talk a lot and do nothing. Not that I am in the right - consider me a plain talking take-no-nonsense centrist:



This week, I have the honor and pleasure of joining Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James Comer as we meet in Washington, D.C. with an impressive swath of Obama Administration officials — from the White House to the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy to the Environmental Protection Agency — to seek their help in securing the federal legalization of industrial hemp.
Think the pairing of this proud progressive and the conservative Comer to be somewhat unusual? Let me further blow your political assumptions: We will be joined in our advocacy by the unlikely alliance of GOP Establishment favorite Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Tea Party poster child Senator Rand Paul, and liberal Democratic stalwart Congressman John Yarmuth.
This rare burst of No Labels-style Washington bi-partisanship is merely a reflection of the broad, deep and diverse support for hemp’s legalization among Kentuckians of all political persuasions. This March, the Kentucky General Assembly overwhelmingly passed Senate Bill 50 — sponsored by GOP Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Paul Hornback, and strongly championed by Democratic House Minority Leader Rocky Adkins — that establishes an administrative and law enforcement structure for hemp growers should the crop be legalized at the federal level, and would empower Kentucky to jump to the front of the line and establish itself as the national leader on the crop once federal approval was granted.
How have liberals, conservatives and everyone in between found such common ground? It’s because the case for hemp legalization is so compelling:

• While support for legalizing hemp’s distant cousin, marijuana, remains controversial (I support legal pot; Comer does not), hemp is not marijuana. The two plants are quite distinct in the way that they appear physically and are cultivated agriculturally. Moreover, smoking hemp can’t get you high; it just might make you feel a little stupid that you tried. Industrial hemp has less than one percent THC, while marijuana ranges from 5 to 20 percent THC content.
• Legalized industrial hemp production could emerge as a prolific cash crop that could bring hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue to Kentucky, and many billions of dollars to the United States. There are more than 25,000 uses for the crop, including rope, clothing, automotive paneling and door installation — even makeup.
• Most exciting to me — as a clean energy advocate — is hemp’s application as a clean-burning alternative fuel. Hemp burns with no carbon emissions and produces twice as much ethanol per acre as corn. While bio-fuels critics have raised alarms at the diversion of food products into fuel production — causing spikes in food prices — hemp has no such negative economic side effects. As the U.S. struggles with the dual enormous challenges of climate change and dependence on foreign oil, industrial hemp could become a powerful weapon in America’s energy independence arsenal.

Only one thing stands in the way of this exciting economic and environmental progress: The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) continues to classify hemp as an illegal, controlled substance, regardless of its THC potency.
Accordingly, Comer and I — and our bipartisan federal delegation — will be lobbying Obama Administration officials this week to provide Kentucky a waiver from the federal regulations; or better yet, to encourage the DEA to reclassify industrial hemp as legal, regulated agricultural crop.
But while our lobbying efforts will hopefully produce some progress, the key power is in your hands. While a majority of Americans now support legalized marijuana — and presumably a much larger majority supports legal hemp — only when you share your support with your elected officials will they feel the political pressure to take action.
Here are three very simple things that you can do — right now, at your computer — to register your support for legalized industrial hemp and pressure Washington to fulfill the people’s will:

1. Contact your Senators to urge them to co-sponsor and support S. 359, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2013. introduced by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY) that would exclude hemp from the definition of marijuana and allow states to legalize and regulate the product.
2. Contact your Congressman and urge him or her to co-sponsor the companion bill in the House, H.R. 525, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2013, introduced by Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY).
3. Sign the following petition to President Obama, urging his Administration to lift the barriers to legalized hemp: www.minawear.com/about-us/