DEA overruled on hemp bill

The DEA, often called DEA/LER - is an agency which many think is full of drug dealing morons who hate America. It may well be the truth. Congress finally opposed them and their stupid contention that they could not tell hemp from pot - anyone else in the world can, and the first American flag was made of hemp - so these guys may be either bozos or drug dealers or both. For a full account read below:

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives on Thursday overcame last-minute lobbying from the Drug Enforcement Administration to pass a farm bill amendment that would legalize the growing of hemp for research purposes. The 225-200 vote came after a flurry of opposition from the DEA, which argued that it would be too difficult for the agency to differentiate legal hemp from illegal marijuana, both varieties of the cannabis plant.
The House amendment, proposed by Reps. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), is far more modest than a Senate effort by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to fully legalize growing hemp for industrial purposes. McConnell had hoped to have his measure inserted into the underlying farm bill or approved on a simple voice vote, but neither path proved open.
Polis said he'd been unsure whether the amendment would pass, but was gratified by the final tally. "We're having a hemp milkshake," he joked to HuffPost afterward. "Break out the hemp ice cream."
"On the merits, this is a no-brainer. Industrial hemp is an important product," he added. "It's perfectly legal, but currently we require that it be imported from other countries. Basically it's taking jobs away from American producers."
Allowing hemp to be grown in this country for research purposes, said Polis, would likely pave the way for Colorado State University to take a closer look at the crop.
Other hemp advocates were bullish about House passage, having had a chance encounter with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) at the Kentucky Derby in early May. The state's agriculture commissioner, James Comer, bent the ear of Boehner and his chief of staff, after which the speaker invited Comer and others to Capitol Hill for a meeting. Boehner was receptive to their pitch, Comer told The Huffington Post later.
On Wednesday, HuffPost obtained a copy of talking points the DEA was circulating among members of Congress to press them to oppose the amendment. "I saw that ridiculous, inaccurate letter. I'm glad my colleagues in the Congress saw through the bogus attempts to discredit" the hemp amendment, Polis said.
Hemp is legal in many countries, including Canada, and is legal to import but not to grow in the United States. Nineteen states have passed pro-industrial hemp legislation, and nine have removed barriers to its production: Colorado, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia.
Polis waved an American flag made of hemp on the House floor during debate over the measure.
The next task for hemp advocates is to keep the provision in the farm bill when the House and Senate versions are melded. "We just wanna make sure this language remains in the conference," Polis said. "We hope that with the help of [Senators] Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul and others, we'll be able to keep it."
A recent HuffPost/YouGov poll found that by a 56 percent to 24 percent margin, most Americans think it should be legal to grow hemp.

Ron Wyden's comments on defeat of Hemp Farming Bill

The Hemp Farming bill failed to pass, and Senator Ron Wyden has made a statement about why; basically there is too much opposition about the dope issue, which is clearly a smoke screen, but he does have a point - the hemp issue ought to be distinct from any pot issue. The 420 movement supports but is not a part of the industrial hemp issue, and many of the pot smokers in the US are selfish drug addicts, child abusers, or worse. I speak  from many years of writing about this and supporting both industrial hemp and the rigth to grow cannabis for other purposes - quite importantly, for medical purposes. But I have seen time wasted by selfish dope addicts who shout me down and have no care about anyone else in the world and have tarnished the image of hemp. The are NOT cool as they think they are, they are hurting the US economy and that is how they will be remembered.

Below is the report from the Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), following the demise of his effort to legalize industrial hemp production Thursday, pinned the failure on disorganized advocates who had not "clearly separated from advocacy for cannabis."
Finger-pointing after a legislative loss is not an uncommon feature of Congress, but Wyden wasted no time. "Between the generational misconceptions about hemp within the Congress, continued opposition from the Drug Enforcement Agency, [sic] and no clear opportunity to vote on further Farm Bill amendments, the time is not yet ripe for industrial hemp," he said in a public statement. "Better organized advocacy on behalf of hemp, clearly separated from advocacy for cannabis, is vital to overcoming these obstacles. As we continue to build support and look for other avenues, state agricultural commissioners, farmers and business that would benefit from this legislation need to help get the facts out there and push for Congress to pass this bill."
The main advocacy group working for the amendment was Vote Hemp, which Holly Harris, chief of staff to Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James Comer (R) previously called "the greatest grassroots operation I've ever seen."
It may be the greatest, but it certainly isn't the largest. The group boasts a volunteer board and staff of two, Tom Murphy and Ben Droz, neither of whom is employed full time with the organization. Eric Steenstra, who worked regularly with Senate offices throughout the process, is a volunteer. The most recently available tax form on Guidestar.org from 2008 lists total revenue and contributions just north of $17,000.
What worked at the state level wasn't quite ready for Washington. Vote Hemp played a leading role in passing a law legalizing hemp in Kentucky this year, a state not known for embracing hippies. The bill became law despite the opposition of powerful leaders in the state. The Democratic governor let it become law without his signature, McConnell surprised the state by supporting it, and the Democratic House passed it despite opposition from key leaders.
Harris said she worked closely with Vote Hemp during the legislative fight in Kentucky and when members were wavering, the group could turn up persuasive farmers and businessmen quickly. Hemp advocates don't have such an infrastructure on the national level, owing in part to the simple fact that hemp is illegal to grow, and therefore there are no growers to defend it.
One Democratic aide who'd been involved in the Senate effort said that Wyden deserves "credit for admitting there needs to be work done and this issue can't just be slipped into a bill."

The failed hemp saga is a window as well into the limits of an individual senator's power, absent corporate or interest group support. And, as gun control advocates learned earlier, broad public support isn't enough. A HuffPost/YouGov poll recently found 2-1 support for legalizing industrial hemp growing. Senators are powerful in their ability to block legislation, but positively enacting it is more difficult. In those instances, they serve as the brokers of someone else's power, rather than holding power in their own right.
That was true even for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who worked hard behind the scenes to insert the hemp provision into the farm bill, first at the committee level and then later on the floor. The measure also had the active support of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a tea party favorite, as well as backing from Sens. Jeff Merkley and Wyden, both Democrats of Oregon.
HuffPost, in canvassing senators, found only one flatly opposed, while most were simply not familiar with the issue. Hemp is related to marijuana, but has such a small psychoactive ingredient that it is not possible to smoke enough to get high. Nevertheless, the perception that it is somehow drug related persists in the Senate.
Wyden's swipe at advocates, said Adam Eidinger, a former Vote Hemp spokesman who worked on the bill, is illogical and insulting. Hemp is only illegal because it is related to its psychoactive cousin, so it's not the advocates who need to separate the two, he argued.
"Senator Wyden makes a lame excuse for not getting the votes. Hemp is illegal because of marijuana prohibition that has overstepped, not because there is something wrong with hemp. I say, admit failure, bro, and blame your colleagues' narrow mindedness, not the hemp advocates," Eidinger told HuffPost. "His statement is insulting, yes."
Steenstra said that he takes no offense, however. "I was trying to read between the lines on that [statement]. I didn't take it that way," he said of Eidinger's reaction. "I think Senator Wyden is taking a long-term approach to this and maybe the rush to get this into the farm bill -- he thought we needed a little more time before we jumped into this."
The hemp sprint was still a valuable exercise. "It enabled us to engage in the dialogue with the staffs, because in the past they wouldn't want to meet with us because we didn't have anything pending," he said. "It's a process, sometimes these votes take awhile. We just have to keep coming back."
During the process, advocates won the support of Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which has oversight of hemp policy, a major step forward, Steenstra noted. Advocates also bent the ear of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) after Comer lobbied him at the Kentucky Derby.
While the farm bill was being debated, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) approached Paul and offered to give Paul a vote on the amendment on the Senate floor, according to an aide to Agriculture Chairwoman Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), whose staff witnessed the exchange. Paul began canvassing his colleagues for support, and reported back that not enough existed to move forward yet.
Unable to get a voice vote or slip the provision into the underlying bill, the advocates weren't able to assure senators that they had the 60 votes needed for amendment passage. "We didn't actually know," said Steenstra. "We could not clearly count that we had the votes."
Eidinger said he hopes that Wyden will press for hearings "so the senators who need to learn a thing or two still about hemp can make inquiries. I hope Wyden will help make hearings the way forward, not a blame game."

Patrick Leahy supports ammendment to Farming Bill that would permit hemp

WASHINGTON -- Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on Tuesday signaled to advocates that he would support an amendment to the farm bill that will legalize industrial hemp production, according to Tom Murphy of Vote Hemp. Leahy's office, he said, told the group Rural Vermont that he'd be backing the effort, and a Leahy aide confirmed his support to HuffPost.

Leahy's backing is a major boost, because his committee oversees the Drug Enforcement Administration, which has jurisdiction over hemp, despite the fact that it's not a drug. His support is also a critical momentum swing because he had previously objected to inserting the provision into the farm bill based on jurisdictional concerns. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a hemp backer, requested late last Monday night, the day before the farm bill came up for consideration, that Leahy grant a waiver of his jurisdiction, a request he declined. It was tough timing for McConnell: Leahy was in the midst of marking-up the historic immigration reform bill working its way through his panel.
In January, however, Leahy sent a strongly worded letter to the DEA asking why it had not been granting permits in recent years to hemp producers, and citing increased state support for domestically grown hemp. The DEA, in its reply, pointedly refused to refer to the plant as hemp, preferring cannabis or marijuana instead.
“Under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), cannabis is a schedule I controlled substance regardless of its potency,” Eric J. Akers, the DEA’s deputy chief of congressional and public affairs, wrote in response, saying he believed the current regulations on hemp were adequate.
About eight people have applied to grow industrial hemp since 2000, he said, with half being approved and the rest denied because they had insufficient security.
The DEA is concerned that looser regulation of hemp would be “readily exploited by drug seekers,” including manufacturers of “hash oil,” Akers wrote.
The proposed amendment to the farm bill was introduced Monday by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and would exclude industrial hemp from classification as “marihuana,” removing it from the DEA’s purview.
It is cosponsored by McConnell, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).
"For me, what's important is that people see, particularly in our state, there's someone buying it at Costco in Oregon," Wyden told HuffPost. "I adopted what I think is a modest position, which is if you can buy it at a store in Oregon, our farmers ought to be able to make some money growing it."
If the hemp measure can make it through the Senate, it stands a reasonable chance in the House, where Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has expressed openness to it.

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.

Warm welcome in Washington for hemp

A top Kentucky official on a mission to legalize industrial hemp said Wednesday he got a warm Washington welcome from both administration officials and House Speaker John Boehner.
Kentucky Agricultural Commissioner James Comer told POLITICO both Boehner and officials from the White House and Agricultural and Energy departments seemed open to legalizing the plant, which is a close cousin of marijuana and whose growth is outlawed in the United States.


“I just think if more and more people studied this issue they would realize this is a no-brainer,” said Comer, a Republican who used a similar economy-focused message to push hemp legalization through the state’s general assembly earlier this year. “This is a way to create jobs.”

The centrist nature of the commissioner’s pitch won him establishment support in Kentucky, including endorsements from the state’s Chamber of Commerce and the Louisville Courier-Journal. Comer and other backers, including both Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul, market hemp as a economic and environmental wonder plant that can be used to build everything from clothes to car doors.
The bill eventually passed with overwhelming margins in both Kentucky’s Democratic House and Republican Senate, but won’t allow Kentucky farmers to grow hemp until the federal government gives them the go-ahead. Hence the trip to D.C.

Comer is traveling with Jonathan Miller, a former Kentucky treasurer and Clinton administration official who was able to broker meetings with Obama administration officials. So far, the pair have met with Agricultural Department officials, who said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was “open to the idea and very receptive to it,” as well as Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency staffers, one of whom wore a hemp dress for the occasion. They also met with a White House staffer who was “somewhere above the janitor and somewhere below the chief of staff,” Comer said.
Comer also scored a 20-minute meeting with House Speaker John Boehner after meeting him at a private party during last week’s Kentucky Derby.
“He seemed very open to the idea,” Comer said.
But the duo couldn’t score a meeting with the Drug Enforcement Agency. Comer said the DEA told him they didn’t “meet with third parties,” and wouldn’t have met with the state’s Democratic governor, Steve Beshear, either. Comer chalked the decision up to the DEA protecting their turf — and their cash.
“I know there’s a lot of money appropriated for marijuana eradication,” he said.
Eight other states also allow the cultivation of commercial hemp, which lacks the THC necessary to produce the high a marijuana smoker typically gets. It is already legal to import hemp, but the size of the market isn’t clear.
There are three ways the plant could be legalized: as a stand-alone bill, which Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie have introduced; as an amendment to the farm bill; or with an executive order from President Obama. Comer said he was hopeful the plant would be legal by the end of the year.
“I think so,” he said. “Why not? This is something that united people from the far left and the far right and even a lot of moderate