With a push to loosen fed­eral hemp laws, high hopes for the crop in Ver­mont

By Elizabeth Hewitt
Source: bartonchronicle.com

WASH­ING­TON — When Scott Sparks de­cided to open a hemp-fo­cused store in Brat­tle­boro, he ran into lots of lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges: Find­ing a land­lord, open­ing a bank ac­count, get­ting in­sur­ance, set­ting up pay­roll.

“I had lots and lots of doors slammed in my face,” he said in a re­cent phone in­ter­view.

While hemp has be­come an in­creas­ingly com­mon crop in Ver­mont and across the coun­try, it re­mains il­le­gal un­der fed­eral law. Though pi­lot pro­grams have been per­mit­ted since 2014, the pro­hi­bi­tion stands and those in­volved in the bud­ding sec­tor say the strict fed­eral laws have hin­dered its growth.

That could change.

A new pro­posal from Sen­ate Ma­jor­ity Leader Mitch Mc­Connell, R-Ky., would lift fed­eral re­stric­tions on hemp, and pass reg­u­la­tory re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the states.

Many in Ver­mont see great po­ten­tial for hemp as a ve­hi­cle for eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment, of­fer­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties for the state’s farm­ers and en­tre­pre­neurs. How­ever, some have con­cerns that Mc­Connel­l’s pro­posal could re­sult in crack­downs on re­lated in­dus­tries.

Sparks opened his store’s doors only five weeks ago, but al­ready busi­ness is tak­ing off, he said. He sells a range of hemp-based prod­ucts, every­thing from twine to cannabid­iol oil, also known as CBD oil.

Hemp is a va­ri­etal of cannabis, though lack­ing the psy­choac­tive prop­er­ties of its close cousin, mar­i­juana. As a crop, it can be used for every­thing from fiber to food.

CBD oil, de­rived from hemp, is in­creas­ing in pop­u­lar­ity as well. Though it has not been ap­proved by the FDA, many look to it as a way to treat a range of con­di­tions, from anx­i­ety to in­flam­ma­tion to symp­toms as­so­ci­ated with neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions.

Sparks is hope­ful Con­gress will move for­ward with the change.

“I think it would make do­ing busi­ness a lot eas­ier on the fi­nan­cial as­pect of things pri­mar­ily,” Sparks said. “And it would take away a lit­tle stigma. That would help.”

Hemp his­tor­i­cally was a ma­jor crop in many parts of the coun­try, but it was banned in the 1950s, af­ter a decades-long tight­en­ing of laws around cannabis. The plant is widely cul­ti­vated in other parts of the world, but it re­mains tightly con­trolled in the United States.

A push to re­vive a hemp in­dus­try in the United States took a ma­jor step for­ward with the 2014 Farm Bill, which al­lowed states to launch pi­lot pro­grams al­low­ing the lim­ited cul­ti­va­tion of hemp.

Mc­Connell hopes to take the next step to loosen fed­eral re­stric­tions around hemp in the next farm bill, cur­rently in Con­gress. His pro­posal would dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween hemp and mar­i­juana in fed­eral drug law, and would make states and the U.S. De­part­ment of Agri­cul­ture re­spon­si­ble for reg­u­lat­ing hemp pro­duc­tion.

There has been bi­par­ti­san in­ter­est in Wash­ing­ton for re­lax­ing hemp laws, in­clud­ing from all three mem­bers of Ver­mon­t’s del­e­ga­tion, ac­cord­ing to their spokes­peo­ple.

“Who knows how big it could be,” Mc­Connell said in a re­cent ra­dio in­ter­view in Ken­tucky, tout­ing hemp’s eco­nomic po­ten­tial.

“Hemp could end up in your car’s dash­board, it could end up in your food, it could end up in your med­i­cine,” he said. It “has many di­verse po­ten­tial uses and we are op­ti­mistic it could be very sig­nif­i­cant for Ken­tucky agri­cul­ture.”

It’s not just Ken­tucky.

Ver­mont Sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture An­son Teb­betts sees great po­ten­tial for the in­dus­try in Ver­mont.

“It’s an­other form of agri­cul­ture that we need to ex­plore,” Teb­betts said. “And if the fed­eral gov­ern­ment could get out of the way, I think it would have a chance to take off even more than it has al­ready.”

Teb­betts re­gards hemp as a promis­ing op­por­tu­nity for Ver­mont agri­cul­ture.

Hemp, he said, has the po­ten­tial to help bol­ster farm­ers eco­nom­i­cally, sim­i­lar to the way maple syrup pro­duc­tion has proven a lu­cra­tive side busi­ness for some in agri­cul­ture in Ver­mont. He re­cently vis­ited a dairy farm that also had 15 acres of hemp.

How­ever, there’s a “cloud” over the in­dus­try be­cause of the fed­eral re­stric­tions, which leaves many peo­ple re­luc­tant to get into hemp now, he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tional Hemp As­so­ci­a­tion, only a hand­ful of states don’t al­low some form of hemp cul­ti­va­tion now.

In some states, law en­force­ment have op­posed hemp cul­ti­va­tion — cit­ing con­cerns that looser laws around the cannabis va­ri­etal would weaken mar­i­juana laws.

Mc­Connel­l’s pro­posal would be a big step for­ward for the bud­ding in­dus­try, ac­cord­ing to Ge­off Whal­ing, chair of the Na­tional Hemp As­so­ci­a­tion.

“It re­ally cre­ates a level play­ing field,” he said.

Like Sparks in Brat­tle­boro, peo­ple around the coun­try who have be­come in­volved in the hemp in­dus­try have strug­gled with the lo­gis­tics of run­ning a busi­ness be­cause of the fed­eral reg­u­la­tions, Whal­ing said.

Lift­ing the fed­eral re­stric­tions on hemp won’t to­tally free up the in­dus­try. The Mc­Connell pro­posal au­tho­rizes states to work with the U.S. De­part­ment of Agri­cul­ture on reg­u­la­tions.

Be­cause of hemp’s re­sem­blance to mar­i­juana, there will con­tinue to be a need for reg­u­la­tions, he said, if only to pro­vide law en­force­ment a way to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween what is be­ing grown le­git­i­mately and what is not.

“Per­mit­ting will al­ways be part of this crop,” Whal­ing said.

How­ever, some in­volved in the in­dus­try have reser­va­tions about Mc­Connel­l’s pro­posal.

Joel Be­dard, of the Ver­mont Hemp Com­pany, sees Mc­Connel­l’s pro­posal as a path to re­lax­ing the laws cov­er­ing the hemp in­dus­try while crack­ing down on its other cannabis cousins — specif­i­cally the med­ical and recre­ational uses of mar­i­juana.

“It’s a bait and switch,” he said.

He is also con­cerned about in­dus­trial com­peti­tors, specif­i­cally phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, which he said could harm small-scale CBD oil pro­duc­ers.

Be­dard has been in the hemp in­dus­try since 2014, and will be grow­ing the crop in four dif­fer­ent states this year, in­clud­ing Ver­mont.

He said there has been a high level of in­ter­est in his busi­ness, and de­scribed the in­dus­try as “bull­ish.”

Aside from hemp’s po­ten­tial in­dus­trial and food uses, it also could bring with it a slew of en­vi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits, he said. It can be ben­e­fi­cial to soil qual­ity and has a high rate of con­vert­ing car­bon diox­ide to oxy­gen, he said.

“There’s an op­por­tu­nity here for an agri­cul­tural rev­o­lu­tion,” Be­dard said.