Versatile and tough, hemp fiber can be made into a number of products, and its seeds and oil are also very useful. (Los Angeles Times)
Of all the misbegotten drug laws foisted on this country in the 20th century, few were more abjectly counterproductive than the ban on growing industrial hemp.
Hemp has been cultivated for centuries — some of the Founding Fathers grew it — and has thousands of uses, from food, clothing and paper to body oil, horse bedding and biomass energy. Unfortunately for hemp, it is a variety of cannabis, although one that is nonintoxicating. It has almost no THC, the psychoactive constituent that makes marijuana popular.
But policy-makers were able to make that distinction in the anti-drug fervor of the 1930s and again in the 1950s and banned hemp cultivation. It is still legal to import hemp products — the retail market for them reached nearly $600 million in 2013 by one estimate — but not grow it.
For decades, advocates have pleaded the case that if the plant is non-intoxicating and its products have commercial value, it makes no sense to enrich Chinese and Canadian growers at the expense of U.S. farmers. It certainly made no sense to spend millions of dollars sending drug enforcement officers out to pull up harmless hemp plants or seize hemp seeds at the border.
As The Courant's Greg Hladky recently reported, things are changing. The federal farm bill passed early last year authorized universities and state agricultural departments to conduct pilot hemp-growing programs in states that legalize industrial hemp. The General Assembly followed with a bill authorizing a study of hemp production. Three state agencies are involved in that study, and plan to offer recommendations for licensing and regulating hemp growers to the legislature later this month.
Connecticut is one of nearly 20 states considering new policies on hemp.
Mr. Hladky found farmers who want to give hemp growing a try. Let them. Industrial hemp is an agricultural commodity, not a drug. It never should have been banned in the first place.
No comments:
Post a Comment