Source: orlandosentinel.com
Hemp isn't pot, advocates say, so why not let Florida farmers grow it?
Cory Trusty sells hemp-oil soap and shampoo bars, hemp-fiber pillows and hemp-and-cotton washcloths through her Internet business based near Daytona Beach.
She'd like to buy the hemp and finished products locally for AquarianBath.com, but Trusty must rely on China and Canada to fulfill her orders. That's because growing hemp is illegal in Florida.
A proposed law would change the status of the plant in the state, opening the door to a potential multimillion-dollar industry. The Hemp Industries Association, a nonprofit trade group, estimates that domestic retail sales of hemp products such as shirts and rope, which are legal, reached $620 million in 2014.
Hemp is used in a wide variety of products, including clothing, cosmetics, construction materials, jewelry, dog chews, birdseed and paper. Proponents say hemp seeds and hemp-seed oil, used in food and supplements, provide nutritional benefits and are high in healthy fatty acids.
The plant has other benefits, too, according to the bill, which calls it "an environmentally sound crop requiring less irrigation, fewer pesticides, and fewer toxic refinery processes than alternative materials."
"No one has given me a good reason not to grow hemp," said state Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda, D-Tallahassee, the House sponsor. "Hemp has many uses. It's good for the environment. Why not?"
The answer lies in guilt by association, experts say.
Hemp and its botanical cousin marijuana are genetically different varieties of the same species of plant, Cannabis sativa, said Walter Judd, a botanist and distinguished professor emeritus at theUniversity of Florida. The two plants have been bred over decades to look different — hemp with taller stalks and marijuana more spreading and leafy — but the most important distinction is that only marijuana can induce a high.
"If you smoke hemp, you're going to be very disappointed," said Robert Gilbert, chairman of the agronomy department at UF.
Nonetheless, both plants contain the mind-altering chemical delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, commonly known as THC. Because of this and because the DEA maintains that hemp and marijuana are different parts of the same plant, both are categorized as Schedule I drugs, those with a high potential for abuse.
Some law-enforcement officials have argued that growers could hide marijuana plants in hemp fields, but hemp advocates say that is unlikely because cross-pollination would weaken the pot.
U.S. cultivation of commercial hemp ended in the late 1950s, according to the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, but the plant's status as an outlaw was cemented by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which lumped marijuana and hemp with drugs such as heroin and LSD.
"There was just all this hysteria about marijuana, and hemp got caught up in that," said Eric Steenstra, executive director of the Hemp Industries Association. "We've been trying to unravel this for decades."
Last year, President Barack Obama signed the newest version of the farm bill, which contains a section excluding industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana. It allows departments of agriculture, colleges and universities to grow hemp for research purposes, but only if state law permits. Plants may contain no more than 0.3 percent THC.
Nonmedical marijuana has a THC content ranging from 5 percent to 20 percent, Gilbert said.
The proposed Florida law, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, would enable hemp research in the Sunshine State and establish regulations. UF estimates that it would cost about $1.1 million for each of three years to study the feasibility of a hemp industry.
A previous attempt to pass a similar bill died last year. One proponent is state Sen. Greg Evers, R-Pensacola, a farmer who calls the uses for hemp "phenomenal."
He said he thinks there could be bipartisan support for the bill in 2016 once legislators understand it.
"You have to educate the members that this is not something you roll up and smoke," Evers said.
More than two dozen states, most recently North Carolina in October, have taken steps to allow hemp research, according to the Hemp Industries Association. Seven states already have planted research crops, the group said.
Florida shouldn't be left behind or forced to rely on some of the about 30 countries that cultivate hemp, Rehwinkel Vasilinda said. The plant could provide an alternative revenue source for farmers, particularly in a state where orange trees are being killed by citrus greening, both she and Evers said.
"Other states grow it, and we import it," Evers said. "Why not allow agriculture — or at least let the university — to look at it for a viable crop for farmers in the state of Florida?"
Maya Fiallos, owner of Maya Papaya Organic Community Farm near Oviedo, said she believes in the benefits of hemp and would be willing to participate in the test research.
"The question is really: 'Why aren't we growing it?' Not: 'Why should we grow it?'" Fiallos said.
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