Thanks To Mitch McConnell, Hemp Production Might Be Coming To Kentucky

Yeah, you read that right

By James Higdon


A truck drives by bales of dried hemp in Eastern Germany.
Hemp production could soon be coming to Kentucky
LOUSIVILLE, KY. -- 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.

"By exploring innovative ways to use hemp to benefit a variety of Kentucky industries, while avoiding negative impact to Kentucky law enforcement's efforts at marijuana interdiction, the pilot programs authorized by this legislation could help boost our state's economy."

Mitch McConnell said that? Yes he did.  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 short answer is that hemp is popular in Kentucky: 65 percent of Kentuckians support industrial hemp, including 53 percent of self-described conservatives, according to a Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll released February 6, the day before the president signed the Farm Bill into law.

This comes on the heels of other polls showing McConnell's job approval rating is lower than President Obama's in Kentucky and with McConnell trailing his presumptive democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes, by four points. So, McConnell could use all the popular issues he can get.
Grimes and her campaign read the same polls. Though she has not been leading on this issue, Grimes recognizes that she cannot simply gainsay the hemp provision simply because McConnell claims authorship of it, as some in her party have.

"I support any legal opportunity to create jobs," Grimes says. "The measure allows pilot hemp programs, and I hope it does benefit our Kentucky farmers."

With that tepid statement, Ms. Grimes becomes only the second Kentucky democrat to support industrial hemp, after Rep. John Yarmuth of Louisville testified with his republican colleagues at a state senate committee hearing on the economic benefits of industrial hemp last year.

"I was proud to stand up for industrial hemp in Kentucky from the beginning, to testify to its economic benefits last year with Sen. Paul, Congressman Massie, and Commissioner Comer, and to work with my colleagues to advance this Kentucky priority in Washington," Yarmuth says.

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.

Once the hemp bill became law in Kentucky last year, Yarmuth's republican colleagues in DC introduced hemp bills in both chambers. When Sen. Paul re-filed his hemp bill at the beginning of this 113th Congress, Sen. McConnell came aboard as a cosponsor.

On July 11, 2013, the Farm Bill passed the House with language attached that would allow hemp for university studies, authored by two Kentucky republicans, Thomas Massie and Andy Barr. What McConnell takes credit for as "the McConnell Hemp Provision," is an expansion of this language in the final Farm Bill to include not just universities, but also state agricultural departments, like the one run by James Comer in Kentucky.

McConnell's maneuver to seize the mantle of libertarian pragmatist is a gambit that anyone could easily call out as craven, but democrats in Kentucky have done everything they could to derail the hemp train, so they can hardly criticize McConnell now for claiming credit for getting the train to station.

But with Grimes's lukewarm support, perhaps the democrats are slowly coming around to the idea that they can challenge the Drug War status quo now without hardline republicans labeling them as "soft on crime" when it's the republicans legalizing hemp.

Or maybe not. Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway's office is not commenting on whether the McConnell Hemp Provision satisfies its concerns. Conway, a Democrat best known to a national audience as the U.S. Senate candidate who lost to Rand Paul, is the last legal obstacle to hemp farming in Kentucky. Before the Farm Bill was signed last week, the attorney general's position was that before hemp can be grown, Kentucky must obtain a waiver from the Drug Enforcement Administration -- even as other states move forward with recreational marijuana legalization.
So now, Conway's office is waiting for the DEA's interpretation of the McConnell Hemp Provision before commenting. Will this last obstacle fall, or will the DEA find a narrow interpretation of the hemp provision that would discourage farmers from participating in pilot projects?

But it's not just Kentucky democrats that have gone soft on reforming our drug laws, it's the Obama administration, too.

On Thursday, a DEA spokesman said that the DEA "does not comment on pending legislation," and on Friday afternoon after President Obama had signed the Farm Bill into law, the spokesman did not return repeated phone calls from Esquire.com seeking comment. On Monday, the DEA responded with this statement:

"Under the newly enacted "hemp" provision of the FARRM Bill [sic], certain producers of 'industrial hemp' (as defined in the bill) will be permitted to grow or cultivate industrial hemp for research purposes. Specifically, institutions of higher education (colleges and universities), along with state departments of agriculture, will be permitted to grow or cultivate industrial hemp for research purposes, provided such production is authorized by State law, and the research is done as part of an agricultural pilot program, or other agricultural academic research. The provision defines "industrial hemp" as cannabis containing 0.3 percent or less of tetrahydrocannabinols [sic] (THC)."

This statement says nothing that wasn't already known, other than it confirms that the DEA understands that federal law has changed.

When asked directly whether the DEA interprets the Farm Bill as to permitting farmers to engage in commerce with the hemp they produce in these pilot projects -- whether farmers will be allowed to sell their hemp -- the DEA will not comment.

The DEA spokesman referred Esquire.com up the chain to the Department of Justice, and we've asked them the same question: Will hemp farmers be allowed to sell their hemp? As of the end of day Wednesday, the DOJ has yet to respond.