Update on California SB 676 - Legalize Industrial Hemp

The California Legislature faces another packed docket today with policy committees running at full capacity. Among the highlights:

-- Senate Bill 676 by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would permit the cultivation of industrial hemp in California. Previous iterations of the bill died at the hands of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who showed in "Pumping Iron" that he was familiar with another version of the plant. 

SB 676 is in the Senate Public Safety Committee, which starts at 9 a.m. in Room 3191.

Why Do Cops Hate Hemp?

by Scott Morgan

The effort to legalize hemp farming in California is heating up again, and unfortunately, law enforcement interests are still doing everything in their power to stand in the way:

Last week the California Narcotics Officers’ and Police Chiefs Associations announced that they oppose Senator Mark Leno’s hemp farming bill, SB 676. Their opposition letters were sent less than 24 hours before the hearing in Agriculture Committee and featured incorrect and outdated arguments against the bill. (Vote Hemp)

There’s nothing too surprising about that, but it continues to amaze me that opposing hemp – which is used to make just about anything besides drugs – would actually be considered a political priority for the law enforcement lobby. Who in their right mind would even bothering making a scene over something like this?

The answer is John Lovell, the Sacramento lobbyist for both law enforcement groups. Fortunately Vote Hemp attended the hearing in force, thanks to your support, and we were ready to counter his tired old claims that hemp farming was somehow going to make life difficult for law enforcement. In fact, Lovell was on the defensive and ended up being removed from the witness table by the Sergeant at Arms during the hearing due to repeatedly interrupting other witnesses!

Wow, that sounds like an instant classic. Let’s please get this up on YouTube if anyone has it, because this guy has been a nuisance for quite some time and hasn’t received the recognition he deserves for his deranged drug war demagoguery.

The bottom line is that hemp is food, not drugs. If you have a problem with hemp, you’re anti-food, and the very notion of being anti-food is so staggeringly absurd, it could only emerge from the perverted fantasies of paranoid, overzealous drug warriors.

They are actually claiming that allowing hemp farming would complicate the ever-so-effective methods by which they’ve been stopping people from growing pot across California. And this is all based on the theory that people will hide marijuana plants in their hemp fields, which would almost makes sense except that cross pollination would turn their sour diesel into a granola bush.

Leaving aside all the other reasons that marijuana prohibition promotes widespread waste, suffering, and idiocy, the simple fact that a healthy food plant is banned because it looks like pot is so intellectually and economically devastating that undoing this one insane injustice would by itself constitute sufficient grounds for making marijuana legal.

Artilcle From StoptheDrugWar.org – Creative Commons Licensing

Hemp Week

RICHMOND, Vt. (AP) Two Vermont groups are joining hands to promote the use of industrial hemp, the fiber harvested from cannabis plants.

Vote Hemp and Rural Vermont are hosting their second annual Hemp History Week, set for May 2 through May 8.

On May 4, at the West Monitor Barn in Richmond, there will be hemp displays, an annual meeting and opportunities to take action in support of hemp. Admission is $10 for adults, free for children and Rural Vermont members.

Rural Vermont is part of a national coalition hoping to make Vermont one of the first states to reap the benefits of hemp.

Hemp can be used to make paper, lotion and other products, and is related to marijuana. Under federal law, parts of an industrial hemp plant are considered controlled substances.