Kentucky hemp farmers may face prosecution

Kentucky hemp farmers chance prosecution

Attorney General Jack Conway says hemp remains illegal substance under federal law

By Kevin Wheatley,Published: September 26, 2013 10:48AM

Farmers who plant industrial hemp in Kentucky soil risk prosecution regardless of a U.S. Department of Justice memo on federal marijuana enforcement issued earlier this year, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway said Wednesday.
Regardless, the Kentucky Industrial Hemp Commission will continue its effort to launch a hemp-licensing program, said Holly Harris, chief of staff for Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James Comer.
In an advisory opinion to Kentucky State Police Commissioner Rodney Brewer, Conway said hemp remains an illegal substance by federal law. Although the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 50 to set up a regulatory framework for industrial hemp farming, Conway said state law identifies hemp as a cannabis plant with a federally established concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient in hemp’s botanical cousin marijuana.
The problem, Conway said, is the federal government has not set such a tetrahydrocannabinol level and still bans hemp in the Controlled Substances Act.
“We do not have either a change in the Controlled Substances Act to exempt industrial hemp, nor do we have a federal waiver from the Drug Enforcement Administration,” Conway told reporters on a conference call.
Comer criticized Conway’s opinion, saying the attorney general “is wrong to threaten to prosecute farmers.”
“Hemp is legal in Kentucky, and the federal government has made it clear that it is not going to prosecute farmers for growing hemp,” Comer said in a statement.
“It makes no sense that Attorney General Conway would throw up an unnecessary government obstacle to an industry that has the potential to create jobs and revenue for Kentucky.”
The hemp commission pressed forward with a licensing program this month in light of a Department of Justice memo that laid out guidelines for prosecuting federal drug laws in Colorado and Washington, the first U.S. states to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana.
Luke Morgan, a Kentucky Department of Agriculture attorney, also presented a 2003 regulation from the Drug Enforcement Administration that separated hemp from marijuana.
The Department of Agriculture is drafting regulations governing hemp farming. Comer and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul will co-sign a letter notifying the Department of Justice of plans to implement a hemp-farming program.
But Conway disputed the department’s interpretations on both documents. The 2003 regulation deals with hemp products but not the plant itself, and the Department of Justice memo does not change the legality of hemp, he said.
“I think it’s irresponsible for anyone to take the Department of Justice’s guidance, their guidance to prosecutors in states that have legalized marijuana, and to take that and contort it that suddenly industrial hemp is now legal in Kentucky,” Conway said. “That’s not the state of the law.”
Conway said he heard concerns from state police and Gov. Steve Beshear’s office after the Department of Justice issued its memo to federal prosecutors, but he has not discussed the issue with Comer, a key supporter of industrial hemp farming in Kentucky.
Harris maintained that the 2003 DEA regulation clarified federal law on hemp and the Department of Justice ruling only cemented hemp’s status as a legal crop.
“It’s legal at the federal level, and it’s legal at the state level,” she said. “It’s legal, period. That is our position.”
Still, Conway’s opinion could have “a chilling effect” on progress made in recruiting hemp manufacturers to Kentucky, Harris said. The opinion does not carry the force of law, but she noted the department might need some clarification on his opinion before licenses are issued.
“It appears what he’s saying is farmers could be subject to prosecution,” Harris said. “Well, that’s not really an answer to that question: Are you going to pursue prosecution of hemp farmers?”
Conway did not say whether he would pursue criminal cases against hemp farmers, but the opinion made plain that those who plant hemp seeds could wind up in court.
“Any farmer that grows industrial hemp for business purposes is thus still subject to any applicable criminal provisions and the financial risks of investing and producing a product that it is illegal for the general public to possess or grow,” the opinion reads.

New York Times article on hemp

The New York Times yesterday (p. A16) published an article on hemp in Kentucky, after Senator Mitch McConnell joined Senator Rand Paul in his support of hemp, and after a meeting on 11 February in which the issue was debated. Kentuckians are most supportive of this, see the plethora of previous posts for the current and past history. Below, Trip Gabriel reports on the issue as follows:

Hemp Growing Finds Allies of a New Stripe in Kentucky

The Courier-Journal, via Associated Press

In the summer of 1952, hemp plants growing wild in a lot in downtown Louisville, Ky., were killed with chemical spray.

 

FRANKFORT, Ky. — In 1996 the actor Woody Harrelson, who has a sideline as an activist for legalizing marijuana, was arrested in Kentucky for planting four hemp seeds.       

 

 

James Crisp/Associated Press

Senator Rand Paul supports legalizing the growing of hemp in the United States.

 

John Sommers II/Reuters

Woody Harrelson in 1996.

Last month Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, announced his support for growing hemp in Kentucky, his home state.

Between those jarringly disparate events lies the evolution of hemp from a countercultural cause to an issue championed by farmers in the heartland and conservative lawmakers.

On Monday, a panel of the Republican-controlled Kentucky State Senate unanimously approved a bill to license hemp growers. It was promoted by the state agriculture commissioner and three members of the state’s Congressional delegation, including Senator Rand Paul, who removed his jacket to testify in a white shirt that he announced was made of hemp fibers.

If the bill is approved by the full Legislature, Kentucky will join eight other states that have adopted laws to allow commercial hemp growing, although the practice is effectively blocked by federal law that makes no distinction between hemp and marijuana.

Mr. Paul, a Republican, said he would seek a waiver from the Obama administration for Kentucky hemp growers, while pressing Congress to delist hemp as a controlled substance, which hemp supporters say is a legacy of antidrug hysteria.

Both plants are the same species, Cannabis sativa, but hemp has only a trace of the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. Hemp’s champions see it as a source of agricultural jobs, an alternative for struggling tobacco farmers and a wonder plant with uses from bluejeans to building materials.

Attitudes are changing in surprising places. At a hearing on Monday in Frankfort, the Kentucky capital, the state police commissioner’s opposition to hemp growing was challenged by a former C.I.A. director, R. James Woolsey.

“The specter of people getting high on industrial hemp,” Mr. Woolsey said, “is pretty much exactly like saying you can get drunk on O’Doul’s.”

Hemp supporters say it is only a matter of time before legalization comes as people more fully understand the plant. They also point to states where voters legalized recreational marijuana in November — Colorado and Washington — as inevitably forcing a change in priorities in the Obama administration.

“The demonology of hemp is exposed as being not valid,” said Representative John Yarmuth, Democrat of Kentucky, a sponsor of a bill in the House to allow hemp cultivation. He said the movement to accept hemp has the same inevitability that he attributed to acceptance of same-sex marriage.

Still, the federal government has been unyielding. Farmers in states that allow hemp must seek a waiver from the Drug Enforcement Administration or risk being raided by federal agents and losing their farms.

Dave Monson, a North Dakota wheat farmer and Republican state representative, has held a state hemp license since 2007, when North Dakota legalized cultivation. But he has no plans to plant. “I applied for a D.E.A. license, never got one,” he said.

A spokesman for the drug agency said it did not keep statistics on permits to grow hemp, which it does not distinguish from marijuana under the Controlled Substance Act of 1970.

Mr. Monson knows farmers just north of the Canadian border who profitably grow hemp, and he argues that it can be an economic boon. “The more states that do what we have done in North Dakota, if we can keep the pressure on, I think we’re going to see some movement at the federal level,” he said.

Hemp supporters claim a total retail value of products containing hemp at more than $400 million in the United States. But a Congressional Research Service report last year found that imported hemp raw materials was small, only $11.5 million. All hemp used in United States today — such as in Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps sold at Whole Foods — is imported, mostly from China.

Rodney Brewer, the commissioner of the Kentucky State Police, said that if hemp farming were legal, marijuana growers would hide their plants in hemp fields and the police could not tell them apart.

“They are identical in appearance when it comes to the naked eye,” Mr. Brewer said, predicting that legalizing hemp would create a boom for pot growers.

But Mr. Woolsey, who said he favored hemp because of “my interest in prosperity for rural America,” argued that no pot farmer would hide plants in a hemp field for fear that low-potency hemp would cross-pollinate with marijuana and lower the concentration of THC, its psychoactive ingredient.

Marijuana growers “hate the idea of having industrial hemp anywhere near,” he said.

The Kentucky bill faces resistance from some lawmakers, including the speaker of the State House.

Mr. Paul, after calling attention to his hemp shirt at the hearing in Frankfort, seemed to roll his eyes when he said, “You’d think you’re at a D.E.A. hearing.”

“This is a hearing about a crop,” he said. “It’s a crop that’s legal everywhere else in the world except the United States.”

Mr. Paul, elected in 2010 with Tea Party support, promised to introduce a Senate bill as a companion to the pro-hemp bill in the House, which has 28 co-sponsors. He is following in the family footsteps, since the first House bill allowing hemp was introduced several years ago by his father, Ron Paul, a former Texas congressman and Republican presidential candidate. Ron Paul’s embrace of the issue fit his deep libertarian streak, which also at times embraced legalizing marijuana and other drugs.

Those positions placed hemp far outside the mainstream in many lawmakers’ minds, just as the image of its products — soaps, sandals and natural foods sold at co-ops — placed it in a counterculture.

But no better sign exists that hemp’s image is changing than its embrace by Mr. McConnell, the minority leader, who said in a statement last month that his mind had been changed “after long discussions” with Rand Paul and the Kentucky agriculture commissioner, James Comer, a Republican.

“The utilization of hemp to produce everything from clothing to paper is real,” Mr. McConnell said.

Associated Press article on hemp in Kentucky

Kentucky makes news every day in the hemp world, today's hot of the press piece is by Bruce Schreiner (AP):




LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Industrial hemp's repositioning toward mainstream status gained ground with a timely endorsement from the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. But the plant's proponents have more work to do in cultivating support to legalize a crop that once was a Bluegrass state staple.
The chamber said recently that provided there's adequate regulatory oversight, it supports legislation to position Kentucky as a leader in the production and commercialization of industrial hemp. The position was hailed by hemp backers, noting the chamber's political clout.
"When Kentucky's leading voice for small businesses and economic development endorses a piece of legislation, lawmakers sit up and listen," said state Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, a former state lawmaker.
Comer is leading the comeback campaign for the versatile crop outlawed for decades due to its association with its cousin, marijuana. Hemp has a negligible content of THC, the psychoactive compound that gives marijuana users a high.
Comer, a farmer himself, touts hemp's potential while crisscrossing the state, saying Kentucky can become a hub of hemp production and manufacturing. The crop can be turned into paper, clothing, food, biofuel, lotions and other products.
"We could be the Silicon Valley of industrial hemp manufacturing right here in Kentucky," Comer said recently.
Bills aimed at legalizing the crop have been introduced in the Kentucky House and Senate, and lawmakers are expected to debate the issue when they return to the State Capitol in Frankfort next month to resume the 2013 session.
But hemp backers acknowledge challenges remain, namely resistance from Kentucky State Police. And that opposition could have a spillover effect with lawmakers hesitant to oppose the state's top law enforcement agency.
State Police Commissioner Rodney Brewer last month restated the agency's opposition, saying law enforcement may have difficulty distinguishing between hemp and marijuana.
Comer met with Brewer following a meeting of the Kentucky Industrial Hemp Commission late last year, but the commissioner said they've had no follow-up discussions. Comer said he'd like to have state police support but sees the agency's resistance as a "non-factor."
"I was a state representative for 11 years and very few bills ever passed without somebody being opposed to them," he said.
Republican Sen. Paul Hornback of Shelbyville, lead sponsor of one of the hemp bills, said state police opposition will be an obstacle. But he said the state chamber's support for legalizing the crop helps reshape the crop's image.
"Everybody has to feel comfortable with the bill," said Hornback, a tobacco farmer who once was lukewarm to hemp. "With the stature that the state chamber has, I think it does legitimize it. It brings credibility to the issue."
Supporters say there's a ready-made market for hemp, pointing to industry estimates that U.S. retail sales of hemp products exceed $400 million. Hemp is grown legally in Canada and many other countries, and imports into the U.S. include finished hemp products.
At least a couple of Kentucky companies - a tobacco processor and a seed supplier - have expressed interest in branching out into hemp. Hemp supporters say that could lead to jobs, especially in rural areas.
But the resistance of state police could be a sticking point for some lawmakers, including the top House leader.
"It will be difficult to pass any legislation that doesn't have the support of the Kentucky State Police and Kentucky's law enforcement community," said House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg. "As long as they have reservations, I have reservations."
Another potentially key player in the debate, Rep. Tom McKee, D-Cynthiana, said the biggest impediments to hemp's comeback are the federal ban on hemp and the concerns of state police.
But McKee, chairman of the House Agriculture and Small Business Committee, hasn't yet staked out a position on the issue.
"We don't want to close a door on any viable agricultural crop that is profitable and would be well-accepted," he said.
Under Hornback's bill, hemp growers would need licenses, and applicants would have to pass criminal background checks.
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul said he would seek a waiver from the federal ban on hemp for Kentucky if state lawmakers vote to legalize the crop. Paul also has pushed for federal legislation to remove restrictions on hemp cultivation. The Kentucky Republican said hemp supporters need to persuade law enforcement skeptics that the crop "won't make the drug problem worse."
"We live in a modern world where we have GPS," he said in a recent speech in Frankfort. "Couldn't a farmer or anybody who wants to grow it just get a simple one-page permit and say these are my GPS coordinates where it's being grown and it could be checked?"
As for Comer, the agriculture commissioner has said he won't defy the federal government on the issue.
The crop hasn't been grown in the U.S. since the 1950s. Kentucky once was a leading producer of industrial hemp. During World War II, the U.S. government encouraged farmers to grow hemp for the war effort because other industrial fibers, often imported from overseas, were in short supply.
Because it can thrive in small, sloping plots, Comer said hemp could be a viable crop on marginal land in central and eastern Kentucky.
"A decade from now, someone will look back and think, 'You mean there were people opposed to growing industrial hemp?'" he said.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/01/20/2483327/hemp-supporters-gain-big-endorsement.html#storylink=cpy