Sunday, March 3, 2013

Hemp Bill Clears Hurdle in the Hawaii House

Rep. Cynthia Thielen stands before a hemp crop in France

REPORT FROM THE HOUSE MINORITY – The House Finance Committee unanimously passed HB154 HD2, to establish an industrial hemp research pilot program, on Monday, February 25, 2013. A primary focus of the research is phytoremediation, the process by which the hemp plant draws toxins out of the soil and processes them safely through its roots, stalk, branches, and leaves, leaving the soil refreshed and ready for the next crop.

Lawmakers are working to expand the scope of the research to include the viability of industrial hemp as a biofuel feedstock, an application that has shown promise elsewhere.

HB154 now goes to the floor of the House for a third reading, after which it goes to the Senate.

"This is great news for Hawaii's agricultural industry," said State Representative Cynthia Thielen (R, 50th District: Kailua, Kaneohe Bay), who cosponsored HB154. "Phytoremediation is how the hemp plant actually cleans pesticides, oil, and other toxins from the soil it's growing in. They planted hemp to clean the soil at Chernobyl -- surely our overstressed agricultural lands could benefit from it, too."

"The bill's passage through three House committees also is a good sign that people are recognizing that hemp is a really useful plant," Thielen added. "Not just for phytoremediation, but in making clothing, termite-proof building materials, food products, and biofuel. Hawaii is poised to really take advantage of hemp cultivation, the way that Canada, China, Japan, and several European countries already do."

HB154 was introduced by Thielen, Speaker Joseph Souki, Representative Derek Kawakami, Representative Sylvia Luke, and Representative Angus McKelvey.

HB154's companion legislation, HCR3 and HR6, which call on Congress and the President to remove hemp from the Controlled Substances Act, passed the Hawaii House of Representatives earlier in February.

EnviroTextile Hemp Products Listed With USDA Biopreferred Program

Source: theweedblog.com

Hemp Based Products Receive Federal Procurement Preference From The USDA

EnviroTextiles, LLC, a Colorado based Industrial hemp and natural fiber manufacturer, is pleased to announce that it has earned approval from the USDA BioPreferred® Program as the only Hemp products manufacturer to list their products in the Federal Procurement Preferred category. To quote the USDA’s website: “The purpose of the USDA BioPreferred® program is to promote the increased purchase and use of biobased products. The program is expected to promote economic development, creating new jobs and providing new markets for farm commodities.”

In addition of hemp to a U.S. approved government program and historic achievement for biodiverse agriculture, Envirotextiles and the world supports the growing of Hemp as an industrial crop in the U.S. Legalization would provide our farmers with a drought resistant, pesticide-free, multi-purpose, and value-added crop. Hemp has over 25,000 uses including variations of Food, Fuel, Feed, and Fiber.

While critics fear that hemp will have little economic impact, the reality is clear. With investment in farming, manufacturing, and jobs training, the US could experience a large resurgence in virtually all industries – farming, manufacturing, and export to name a few. The reach of the industrial hemp industry has incredible potential, with the ability to introduce new raw materials that are already successfully used for wide ranging products across the world. Industrial hemp would open up new markets and expand existing markets while leaving a very small carbon footprint.

It should be noted that the US is one of the world’s largest consumers of hemp derived products. However, we are unable to grow hemp locally and in all States until legislation currently under way is passed. The question is not if industrial hemp will have a positive impact in the U.S. – the question is will we see the opportunity to grow and develop this commodity within our own borders.

EnviroTextiles is a woman-owned industrial hemp and natural fiber manufacturing company based in Glenwood Springs, CO, and is the largest importer of hemp textiles in the U.S. Barbara Filippone, founder and president of EnviroTextiles, has created thousands of jobs across the globe in her 37 years of developments surrounding natural fiber production. She has developed industry in India, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Mexico, South Korea, and China, with China presently providing hemp to EnviroTextiles for their products. Being a leading expert in processing and economic development, EnviroTextiles proudly sells their products in the U.S. and to over 70 countries worldwide.

EnviroTextiles presently has offices in the U.S., China, and Mexico, and focuses on natural fiber products and economic development in regions with commodity levels of various natural fibers. Being one of the first companies to be USDA Bio-Preferred qualified and having Federal Procurement Preferred status, EnviroTextiles is leading the way for investment in bio-diversity, non-GMO farming, and job creation.

Marijuana And Hemp Bills Filed In Missouri

By Phillip Smith, StopTheDrugWar.Org
Source: theweedblog.com

missouri marijuana hemp cannabis

Members of the Missouri legislature have introduced three different marijuana law reform bills this month — one to decriminalize possession; one to expunge misdemeanor offenses, including possession, from the record after five years; and one to legalize industrial hemp.

Rep. Rory Ellinger (D-University City) and two cosponsors introduced the decriminalization bill, House Bill 512, at a press conference earlier this month. The bill would make the possession of up to 35 grams of marijuana or paraphernalia punishable only by a fine, but it would still be a criminal offense — a misdemeanor — instead of a civil infraction. The bill would also encourage judges to use “suspended imposition of sentence,” under which the person is not convicted and, if he successfully completes a probationary period, there is no longer any public record of the matter.

Perhaps decriminalization is not quite the right word.”Depenalization” would be more correct.

“Every year, nearly 20,000 Missourians are put in chains and then relegated to second-class citizenship by a criminal record for the possession of small amounts of marijuana,” said John Payne, executive director of Show-Me Cannabis Regulation, who addressed the press conference. “This policy costs Missouri taxpayers tens of millions of dollars every year, but does nothing to decrease marijuana use or eliminate the harms associated with the black market. There are no other proposals before our legislators that can do so much good so easily.”

At the same press conference, Rep. Ellinger also introduced the expungement bill, House Bill 511. Under current Missouri law, only a very few specified offenses can be expunged. This bill would allow expungement for all misdemeanor offenses, including marijuana and paraphernalia offenses, except for violent or sex offenses.

“Although these measures may seem like long shots, one year ago, no one would have predicted that the Republican majority in both houses would reduce the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine or reduce the term of probation in most felony drug cases by one half, especially during an election year,” said Dan Viets, a veteran attorney with Show-Me Cannabis Regulation. “Those reforms passed with bipartisan support, and these bills can too. That means we will do everything we can to make it happen in 2013.”

And this week, Sen. Jason Holsman (D-South Kansas City) introduced an industrial hemp bill, Senate Bill 358. It would exempt industrial hemp — defined as containing less than 1% THC — from the state’s controlled substances act and allow anyone not convicted of a drug-related crime to grow it. An identical bill was introduced in the House last year, but didn’t move.

After the snow melts in Missouri, legislators will be getting back to work. It would be nice if the Show Me State could show the rest of us the way forward.

"Unleash your Alter-Eco" with Locals Hemp Denim Eco Jeans

PRESS RELEASE
Source: surfline.com

Local Clothes is a core action sports brand dedicated to producing truly sustainable apparel for eco conscious customers.

Local Clothes is the original eco action sports apparel brand. Our objective is to produce quality, sustainable, and stylish apparel at a minimal cost to you and the planet. We challenge ourselves to be truly sustainable and recently designed a unique garment called the 'Green Gene', a Hemp Denim Jean made in the USA using environmentally sound fabrics, but we need your support to launch these innovative jeans and help the repel the evil ways of pollution...

Feel the Difference knowing that for every product you pledge, a tree will be planted in its honor.

Unleash your Alter Eco! Join Local. Be the first to own a pair and you will blow your friends away with these high performance eco threads!

Help support at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1512194111/unleash-your-alter-eco-with-locals-hemp-denim-eco

Funding ends: Mar 27, 2013

Do you have the 'Green Gene'?

Local's 'Green Gene' Hemp Denim Jeans

Our blend of hemp and recycled polyester denim are just what you need for that ultimate skate sesh and hot date all in one. They have the performance you expect on the 'battlefield' plus the style you need to rescue that special damsel in distress. Impress even the most stunning eco mistress and get back on the true path of a real Earth Soldier with these cutting edge sustainable jeans.

The Bottom Line...

To kickstart the 'Green Gene' and help fight global pollution Local is asking for $25,000. This money will be used to manufacture 500 pairs of jeans including: the cost of the initial sample run, all the materials needed (denim, zippers, buttons, rivets, etc.), and the actual cut and sew cost of production.

Local is a leading force in the eco-revolution. We encourage you to joins us in our quest to make sutainability a reality!

For more information about who and what Local is visit our website athttp://localclothes.com/.

We really appreciate your contribtuion!

Thank you, Live Long and Prosper...

California Marijuana Legalization Backers Hope To Get Measure Onto 2014 Ballot

By Aaron Sankin
Source: huffingtonpost.com

California Marijuana Legalization

SAN FRANCISCO -- The push to legalize marijuana, both in its standard and non-psychoactive hemp forms, is alive and well in California.

The California Cannabis, Hemp and Health Initiative plans to start collecting the necessary 500,000+ signatures this May to get a measure on the 2014 ballot that would legalize marijuana in many forms.

The bill would specifically allow both the growing and possession of marijuana, direct the legislature to establish a regulatory, taxation and licensing structure for the retail sale of cannabis, legalize industrial hemp production and prohibit state officials from enforcing federal law (which explicitly states that pot is illegal) over state law.

While California voters rejected a marijuana legalization bill in 2010 by a margin of just under 700,000 votes, the backers of this current initiative hope that successful efforts mounted in Colorado and Washington in the interim may have helped push public opinion far enough in their direction to overcome any opposition.

Some drug law reformers have questioned the wisdom of aiming for a 2014 legalization ballot measure. As a mid-term election, it likely won't draw the same level of interest as something put before voters in 2016.

"We need to take a breath--because we're California, and we're super complicated," Amanda Reiman, California policy manager for the Drug Policy Alliance, told the Sacramento Bee.

As such, many legalization backers plan on targeting their resources for 2016. Mounting a viable pro-marijuana ballot campaign isn't cheap; according to campaign finance tracker MapLight.org, the backers of Prop 19 outspent their opponents by $3.7 million and still came up short.

Even if the 2014 measure were to pass, it would leave California's marijuana industry in limbo: pot would be permitted on the state level but remain illegal on the federal level. Hoping to rectify that, a pair of Democratic congressmen, Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) introduced a bill earlier this month that would allow any state that to chooses to legalize marijuana to do so unperturbed, as long as federal taxes are paid on all sales.

Meanwhile, up in Sacramento, a couple of legislators are looking to take on similar issues while leaving behind much of the political baggage that comes with advocating outright legalization. State Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and Assemblyman Allan Mansoor (R-Carlsbad) recently introduced bills that would legalize California's production of hemp.

The legislation would revise the definition of marijuana to exclude industrial hemp, meaning varieties of the cannabis plant containing less then three-tenths of one percent of THC. Under the proposal, hemp products would be regularly tested by the Drug Enforcement Agency in order to ensure that THC levels remained below the legal threshold.

Hemp, which has a wide variety of uses from clothing to bio-fuels to fishing bait, is illegal to produce in California, leading to significant imports from countries like Canada. States such as Oregon and West Virginia have laws on the books permitting hemp production; however, even in those states, hemp isn't produced on an industrial scale due to it being illegal on the federal level.

As such, the state's large demand for hemp products presents a significant business opportunity for potential California hemp producers. "California manufacturers of hemp products currently import from around the world tens of thousands of acres’ worth of hemp seed, oil, and fiber products that could be produced by California farmers at a more competitive price, and the intermediate processing of hemp seed, oil, and fiber could create jobs in close proximity to the fields of cultivation," argues Leno in his bill.

This bill isn't Leno's first attempt at cultivating industrial hemp production in the state. A previous effort on the same subject was vetoed by California Governor Jerry Brown in 2011. The Sacramento Bee reports:

In a veto message, Brown said federal law considers industrial hemp to be a regulated, controlled substance, and that failure to obtain a federal permit would subject California farmers to federal prosecution.
"Although I am not signing this measure, I do support a change in federal law," Brown said in a veto message. "Products made from hemp - clothes, food, and bath products - are legally sold in California every day. It is absurd that hemp is being imported into the state, but our farmers cannot grow it."

The California Narcotics Officers Association opposed Leno's prior hemp legalization on the grounds that, because it's difficult to tell hemp plants from standard pot plants using the naked eye, illegal marijuana plants could be easily hidden inside of a larger field of hemp.

Give this plant its due: legalize hemp

EDITORIAL

Source: latimes.com

The highly useful weed has been entangled too long with that other 'weed.' That's silly.

The global market for hemp consists of some 25,000 products, according

to a report by the Congressional Research Service, including fabric, paper,

rope, auto parts and home furnishings. (Los Angeles Times)

As states of a more liberal bent battle the federal government over the legalization of medical and even recreational marijuana, another cannabis battle has reemerged in the farm states. But if pot smoking raises troubling moral and safety questions, industrial hemp does not.

Activists have been struggling to legalize hemp for decades in the U.S., but only recently has the issue seemingly caught fire in Congress. Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signed on to legislation that had for years been championed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the former GOP presidential contender, and has now been taken up by his son Rand, the Republican senator from Kentucky. It would remove hemp from the federal government's list of Schedule 1 controlled substances and make it legal to cultivate the plant.

What's so hep about hemp? Supporters tout it as a wonder fiber with dozens of potential uses that would find a lucrative market in the U.S. But while that may be an exaggeration — hemp is unlikely to become anything more than a specialty crop for a few hundred growers supplying goods to high-end food markets and low-end textile producers — there's no denying that it's a highly useful weed. The global market for hemp consists of some 25,000 products, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service, including fabric, paper, rope, auto parts and home furnishings. Hemp seed, meanwhile, is an alternative protein source used in a variety of food and beverages, and can be pressed to make body oils, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

Despite all this, it is illegal to grow hemp anywhere in the U.S. without permission from the Drug Enforcement Administration. There are currently no active federal licenses, so all hemp products produced here are made from imported material.

Based on its classification under the Controlled Substances Act, one might suspect that hemp provides a cheap high for pot fiends, but one would have to smoke an absurd amount of rope to catch a hemp buzz. The plant seems to have been deemed guilty by association with marijuana because both come from the same species, Cannabis sativa. But just as some mushrooms are magical while others are only good in a salad, not all varieties of cannabis are the same. The intoxicating chemical in marijuana, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), is heavily concentrated in the marijuana plant: anywhere from 10% to 30%. The THC content of hemp, by contrast, is less than 1%, and in the varieties legally cultivated in the European Union and Canada must be less than 0.3%.

Historically, hemp was an important crop in the U.S. before it was caught up in an anti-marijuana crusade in the 1930s. When the Controlled Substances Act was approved in 1970, it took the definition of marijuana from the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, which considered all varieties of Cannabis sativa to be dangerous and narcotic. Despite court challenges, the DEA continues to insist that any plant containing THC, no matter how little, must be tightly controlled.

Legalization opponents, including the California Narcotics Officers Assn., argue that legalizing hemp would complicate the enforcement of laws against cultivating marijuana because the plants are almost indistinguishable from each other; marijuana growers, in other words, could easily conceal their plants in hemp fields. The association opposed a 2011 state bill to create pilot programs for hemp cultivation, which was approved by the Legislature but vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown because hemp production violates federal law.

Of course, few sensible growers of marijuana would raise their plants in a hemp field. The two varieties would cross-pollinate, severely lowering the pot's THC content and rendering it all but useless medicinally or as a recreational drug.

Reasonable people can disagree about whether marijuana should be legalized. But the dangers of growing industrial hemp are next to nonexistent. To date, nine states have approved its cultivation, but none has any active fields because of a refusal by the DEA to grant growing permits.

Enough. Hemp is a rare issue that Republicans and Democrats, and members of Congress from both rural and urban states, ought to be able to agree on.

Legalize it.

Gatewood's hemp bandwagon moving into Ky. mainstream

By Dea Riley
Source: kentucky.com

Large stickers of Gatewood Galbraith have been placed on many traffic signal boxes around town.

This year has ushered into the state legislature a renewed conversation about the restoration of hemp as an agricultural crop and potential economic engine for Kentucky. This isn't a new discussion, but rather an old one with renewed support.

For nearly 30 years, lawyer and activist Gatewood Galbraith discussed, lobbied and even campaigned for hemp restoration. He wasn't alone. Former Gov. Louie Nunn created legislation that passed in 2001 not only making hemp legal in Kentucky but creating a plan for its reintroduction. At one point in the early 20th century, Kentucky was the leading producer of hemp in the United States.

Suddenly we see the city of Lexington, the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, Agriculture Commissioner James Comer and even U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell jumping on the bandwagon that Galbraith drove into the ground.

Hemp is a no-brainer. Agreed, there will be many details to work out, but the least of those details would be any correlation between hemp and marijuana. The qualities of hemp and marijuana are separate and distinct. The two plants, the growing method and product end use are easily distinguishable. In 2011, the University of Saskatchewan of Canada mapped the hemp genome, conclusively verifying hemp and marijuana are separate strains.

During the early 20th century, hemp production was labor intensive, and there existed little understanding of the plant and its various beneficial qualities. Hemp was used almost exclusively to create rope and canvas, a relatively limited market and not necessarily a lucrative one for farmers. Technology has advanced hemp processing to a point where that is no longer the case.

Research has advanced to a point where we now know not only the industrial benefits and multitude of uses, but the nutritional benefits of hemp. During the past century, the hemp industry has developed a viable and lucrative market, established worldwide and ever growing.

Canada and China enjoy $100 million hemp industries while the U.S. Congress remains bogged down in political partisanship. Political fame seekers have historically plagued and in large part stifled U.S. hemp restoration. Kentucky needs to rise above this mentality. We are more than capable of having a difficult but mature conversation on the issue — politics aside.

If other countries are capable of creating policies adequate to distinguish between hemp and marijuana, surely the United States and Kentucky are capable of doing the same. Hemp is more an economic discussion than a political, legal or drug-policy one.

As we proceed in our effort to restore hemp, it is important we make note of the self-appointed pied pipers in support or opposition of the cause. This should neither diminish nor enhance the fact that hemp is potentially of great benefit to Kentucky's long-term economic viability. It will not prove to be an economic saving grace, but indisputably hemp would prove a good addition to the economic/manufacturing base. Hemp restoration is an opportunity for Kentucky to become a national leader in the development of a new industry.

I cannot help but point out the obvious: Gatewood was so criticized by the very people now standing up and making a name for themselves in support of his life's work — now that hemp has become nationally popular and political expedient. Maybe we had better heed all of Gatewood's lessons and take a second look at marijuana policy, too.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/02/25/2530834/gatewoods-hemp-bandwagon-moving.html#storylink=cpy