Source: courier-journal.com
Hopes of Kentucky being among the first states to plant a commercial hemp crop are waning, as officials here await more federal guidance on its legality even as other states — such as Colorado and Oregon — push ahead with plans for a crop next year.
While the U.S. Justice Department has indicated it won’t challenge marijuana legalization laws, Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James Comer said last week that he wants to make sure that means the federal government won’t attempt to prosecute farmers here who grow hemp. While hemp and marijuana are classified the same by the federal government, hemp is of no use to someone trying to get high.
Comer hasn’t ruled out settling the federal question in time for a 2014 hemp crop in Kentucky, but he concedes it’s increasingly unlikely.
“We’re going to fight to try to get this industry here, but I don’t want to do anything that would put one farmer in jeopardy of losing their farm, or one processor in jeopardy of losing their investment by coming to this state, until we know for sure the federal government’s going to leave us alone,” Comer said.
Senate Bill 50, championed by Comer and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., provides a regulatory framework for hemp production in Kentucky — should the federal government legalize it. Since then, federal government officials have indicated that states that have legalized marijuana likely wouldn’t be interfered with, but no clear guidance has been given in relation to hemp.
Comer and some members of the state’s congressional delegation — including Paul — asked the Drug Enforcement Administration for clarification in a letter last month, but no response has been received.
Meanwhile, other states are pushing ahead.
For example, Colorado, which in 2012 passed an amendment allowing for medical marijuana and hemp, has set rules for its production that take effect Dec. 31. Farmers can register to grow hemp starting March 1, in time for a 2014 crop.
(A Colorado farmer produced a crop on his own this year, but it was not under the state program, said Ron Carleton, Colorado’s deputy commissioner of agriculture.)
In proceeding, Colorado is relying on guidance in an Aug. 29 Justice Department memorandum issued in response to a series of ballot initiatives across the country to legalize marijuana.
The memo doesn’t say marijuana is legal but says enforcement in states with strong regulatory systems could be left to those states — unless the activity touches on one of eight federal priorities, such as marijuana use on federal property, or distribution of marijuana to minors.
Carleton said his state is interpreting that the federal statement “was meant for hemp as well, not just marijuana.”
Oregon also is developing rules for hemp production. But a Nov. 8 letter from Oregon U.S. Attorney S. Amanda Marshall said the Controlled Substances Act still requires hemp growers to register with the DEA, a restriction that has effectively prevented industrial hemp from being grown under existing federal law.
Marshall said hemp is the same as marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act, so the eight priorities outlined in the federal memo would apply to hemp. “Outside of these stated priorities, we will continue what we have been doing since the passage of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act, relying on state and local authorities to address lower-level or localized marijuana activity through the enforcement of their own narcotics laws,” Marshall wrote.
Oregon Department of Agriculture spokesman Bruce Pokarney said he’s not sure whether rules there will be adopted in time for hemp to be planted in the spring, but that is the goal.
The status for growing hemp is — at best — unclear for Kentucky, which once was a leader in U.S. hemp production before the crop was made illegal.
Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway issued an opinion earlier this year, agreeing with the Kentucky State Police, that hemp was still illegal under federal law and that farmers growing it could be subject to prosecution.
A DEA spokesman in Detroit, which covers Kentucky, agreed that farmers growing hemp would run the risk of arrest.
“If someone is growing large amounts of controlled substance — which in this case, under the letter of the law, hemp would be a controlled substance — certainly that would be a possibility,” said Special Agent Rich Isaacson of the DEA’s Detroit office that covers Kentucky. “And there’s nothing groundbreaking there. That’s just black and white.”
Isaacson said “even in those states where they have passed different marijuana legalization measures, we are still conducting investigations on large-scale groups that are manufacturing or trafficking in schedule one substances, including marijuana, and that would not be any different necessarily in Kentucky if there were large fields of cannabis sativa being manufactured.”
Issacson reiterated that production of hemp for industrial use would require a federal permit or registration.
A request for comment from David Hale, the U.S. attorney for the western half of Kentucky, was not immediately returned.
With that outlook, Comer said he isn’t comfortable proceeding until there’s some guidance from federal authorities specifically relating to Kentucky.
“We feel like Kentucky should be treated the same as a blue state like Colorado, so we’re going to keep trying to plead the case and hope that they’ll just give us some direction,” Comer said.
In the meantime, Comer plans to ask the next General Assembly to revise this year’s hemp law to put some of the regulatory processes for hemp in the Department of Agriculture rather than at the University of Kentucky, where legislators moved the state hemp commission in a compromise that helped pass the bill in the final minutes of this year’s session.
Even if Kentucky is third, Comer is optimistic about the prospects for hemp in Kentucky.
Spokeswoman Holly VonLuehrte said Comer believes that even if Kentucky isn’t the first state, it is best suited climate-wise and from its history for growing hemp. But — if it’s a niche industry as some suggest — it’s important to begin production early to get in line for processing plants that bring more jobs, she said.
University of Kentucky economists, projecting the outlook for Kentucky agriculture in 2014, did not make any predictions on whether hemp will be grown in Kentucky next year, nor did they factor it into projections of gross receipts released last week during the Kentucky Farm Bureau’s annual conference in Louisville.
“We expect it to get off to a slow start ... and not be a substantial contributor to Kentucky’s ag economy,” economist Leigh Maynard said. “It may be a profitable niche for some producers in the future. But there are a number of things that would delay any rapid expansion. There’s a learning curve behind producing any new crop,” besides competition from other fibers and other countries that produce hemp.
Comer concedes that even if farmers get to plant the crop next year, it’s “going to take about 10 years to develop that industry. It’s not going to happen overnight.”
No comments:
Post a Comment