Hemp Versus The Status Quo

By Rand Clifford
Source: countercurrents.org
The US rose to eminence by producing value, and by a fair percentage of citizens sharing the wealth. The further the nation has been corrupted from the stability of fairness, the faster our rate of decline. Runaway greed, lust for power, and raw capitalism have reversed our national trajectory so insidiously that not just we, but even Earth's biosphere, are in free fall. Is it more than simple coincidence that such comprehensive decline so closely parallels our prohibition of hemp?

Sure, there was a glitch 5 years after hemp was banned as the evil weed with roots in hell. Top government officials still insist, forcefully, that there is no difference between “marijuana” and industrial hemp. With that in mind, please compare marijuana propaganda and hysteria that heralded hemp prohibition and haunts us to this day, with the government's own film, Hemp for Victory , produced in 1942. We needed hemp to “win” WWII, so under duress, the feds resorted to truth.

So what changed in those 5 years? Certainly not hemp, exactly the same resource extraordinaire that has served humanity for at least 12,000 years. Priorities changed, propaganda changed. And hemp didn't change when the war ended and hemp reverted to our enemy. You might wonder, whose enemy?

Arguably, hemp is the most useful member of the entire plant kingdom. So how could nature's premier converter of sunshine and water into value, a superstar of the biosphere and powerful supporter of life on Earth be considered an enemy?

War is our enemy. Nobody wins in war, everybody loses...except the “ money changers ”. Ever since Jesus ran them out of the Temple with a whip (remember him, the Prince of Peace?), they have relentlessly, progressively embedded as a certain subspecies—psychopaths born without conscience, without any sense of right or wrong, without a soul; beings to whom truth and justice are alien concepts, to be in any way so much as acknowledged only under extreme duress. So yes, all of humanity loses in war, there are no winners. And coincidence has nothing to do with those at the root of hemp prohibition being the same as those who have blessed us with perpetual war.

As in the words of humanity's Rosthschild malignancy: “We own you. We will take everything.”

Greed is Not Good 
Remember “Morning in America” ( mourning? ) when “greed is good” pealed like church bells? Reaganomics was born that morning. Even after decades of wealth gushing ever upward, hardly any of it ever seems to trickle back down. Imagine that, shucks, the whole concept sounds so...Reagan. Millions of fossil Americans can still get misty at any mention of “Dutch”.

Despite reality ( real reality, not Bush, or reality TV kinds), the GOP (repugnantcan party) clings tenaciously to this fiendish canard even as we approach midnight in America. Trickle-down theory...Reaganomics.

Greed is the glue that sticks wealth to wherever it rises. Greed is also the essence that keeps hemp our enemy. Hemp has every potential to spread wealth down through the workers who actually create wealth, potential to energize regional economies—perfect antidote to the plague of globalization, that concentrator of wealth into, as George H. W. Bush described, “...higher, tighter and righter hands.” Same hands now steering humanity toward hell; hands with the stickiest fingers, and the greatest distance from those passé concepts: humanity, and commonwealth—or common good.

War is All Hell 

Keeping track of all our current wars gets increasingly difficult, especially with CorpoMedia so focused on future targets, such as Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Russia, China...even, as certain tea-party princesses have said, the “country” of Africa.

After so much of our manufacturing base has been gutted, fully one third of it within the first decade of “America's century” (four-fifths of that during the Bush/Cheney nightmare); and with so many other good jobs herded offshore, it might seem that war and financialization are becoming our primary industries . Plunder and casino, rape and manipulation, destruction and parasitism, murder and financial malignancy...the future is so bright we've gotta wear headlamps.

The farcical War on Terror is a dream come true for the money changers. The war against a ghost that could never surrender because it's, well, a ghost. Forever war. And the slimiest war mongers of all feverishly masquerade as hardcore fundamentalist Christians. The Prince of Peace would puke.

Almost seems we can't engage anything without declaring war on it. And talk about (intentionally?) miserable aim. The War on Terror, besides being a lurid excuse for pirating resources, especially oil, and “spreading freedom and democracy”, it cloaks a maniacal assault on our Constitution (with or without “boots on the ground”) to render the US a police state. Such irony might have only one viable competitor.... 
The War on Drugs 

Somehow, it might not seem quite so bad, a government waging war against its own people to eliminate the scourge of drug abuse; but when that same government is the world's top drug trafficker ...rather exceeds the term irony, transcending into the Twilight Zone.

If more people knew how much the Taliban's eradication of opium poppy production had to do with why we invaded Afghanistan , and have stretched it out to our longest war ever...well, it probably wouldn't matter.

It's sensible business, filling our increasingly-privatized prison system with marijuana smokers to capitalize on a huge, reliable slave-labor pool. And after all, as president Calvin Coolidge said:

    “The business of America is business.”

Bad business is one thing, but, the worst business...guess that's why we're Number One. When you're the Boss, anything you might say or do is right; hard right, nowadays, as hard as the righteous wing cherry-picking scripture...and through the most twisted, tortuous exegesis, all but actually saying—indeed, platforming : “In the beginning, God created corporations....”

Of course that's not quite correct. Hemp came way before corporations. Hemp is even older than money—has actually been used as money, the real kind, not faith-based money (fiat). In early America, taxes could be paid in hemp. Nowadays our tax dollars feed the rounding up of marijuana offenders and packing them into work prisons. Yes, our taxes perpetuate the drug war cash cow (that would wither without marijuana), and insure that hemp will not threaten the status quo in this corporate-controlled home of Big Oil.

Wisdom Versus Cleverness 

Our star, Sol, the sun...it gives us all the real-time energy we might ever need. The challenge is harvesting that energy as elegantly as with growing hemp. Luckily...or perhaps exactly the opposite for us—and even more unluckily for our progeny—Earth has been very good at fixing solar energy into fossil energy.

Millions of years worth of solar energy mostly sequestered from the biosphere; toxic, biocidal energy, black death safely isolated from Earth's life processes.... Perhaps fossil energy is some grand test of human wisdom, along the lines of: If you're clever enough to significantly tap fossil energy, are you wise enough not to disrupt the biosphere with it? 
Cleverness is plentiful—the human brain is magnificent...except for the wisdom deficiency, which so dependably invites disaster. Cleverness often breeds destruction; wisdom involves nurture, greater awareness and esteem for what gave us life and keeps life going, and utmost respect for the future. Wisdom versus cleverness influences being born into heaven, or hell.

Wisdom feeds the creation of value. Cleverness too often engenders a world controlled by parasites who create no value, but instead, employ every form of violence, murder, destruction and manipulation to usurp value from those who create value. Hemp is a paragon of wisdom—of fitting perfectly into and furthering Earth's living energy systems. Hemp could shield the wisdom in humanity from the parasitical cleverness driving us down the road of perpetual war, toward utter biospheric collapse.

Where will we , and the rest of Earth's species live after human cleverness collapses our biosphere?

For at least 12,000 years, humanity's wisdom embraced hemp as an indispensable ally. For 74 years (except for those few years of Hemp For Victory!), cleverness in this nation now become the greatest parasite the world has ever seen has kept hemp our enemy. But wisdom hangs on in the more than 30 countries treating hemp as the supreme natural resource it has always been. Those countries feed the annual $450 million retail hemp business in this country—business living exclusively on imported raw materials.

Nothing compares with hemp in terms of powering good jobs that cannot be offshored—millions of acres of hemp, an agricultural revolution creating an expanding spectrum of gainful employment. Nothing could touch hemp in terms of impacting the near total dominance of corporations in virtually every aspect of modern America.

Hemp offers many thousands of superior products that perpetuate living systems, instead of killing them as the fossil-energy empire is doing—a whole new industry of vast scope, creating value, virtually independent of the corporate fossil empire. Only hemp has such fantastic potential to wrest power from the parasites and spread it among their victims. Hemp could turn Power to the People from a trampled cliché, into glory!

If you believe that marijuana realistically had anything to do with the prohibition of industrial hemp farming in this world's most powerful parasite...please try to not judge me too harshly. I'm simply advocating wisdom.

For further reading about hemp, and its prohibition, please go here .

Rand Clifford's novel Castling , the classic “Story of the Power of Hemp”, and the sequel, Timing , are published by StarChief Press http://starchiefpress.com/   The novels, Priest Lake Cathedral , and Voices of Vires will be available soon. 

Paving The Way With Hempcrete

by Diane Walsh Salem-News.com
Source: salem-news.com

Hemp is a remarkable natural resource with many uses still untapped.

The industrial hemp movement is making big waves. Photo: Diane Walsh

(VICTORIA, B.C.) - For enthusiasts, it’s all about cementing the power of the industrial hemp movement right into people’s homes. You might ask, squinting one eye, and jutting forward to re-read...Hempcrete? Say what!

When it comes to hemp, the ranges of uses (including food, clothing, rope, paper, soap, cosmetics, and even fuel) are well-known. One not so readily understood usage, is hemp as a building material, and the science behind hemp composites. Hemp used in major construction is an innovation that’s already with us. In our last edition, we learned that here in B.C. there are plans for a manufacturing facility using industrial hemp to produce construction material.

The concept of industrial hemp in use as a building material is not only altering how we build in practice, but also how we conceptualize a sustainable development and build a new economy in Canada and beyond.

Yes, there’s a ways to go, but indeed it’s encouraging “big news.” So, taking from that, we need to delve deeper into the research, now, to find out why it’s taken so long for environmental modelling techniques for hemp construction to be validated. Much design guidance is needed in an expanding “hemp-as-a-building-material” industry since it is already in demand by contractors and their carpenters.

I can’t tell you how many builders have expressed the desire to work with hempcrete!

If more people are to get on board with the industrial hemp movement there will be a growing need for hemp as building material 101 education courses. Here’s a quick synopsis of the basic terms you might see floating around the internet, all legitimately presenting the low-carbon footprint potential. Hempcrete has an energy saving of 67 percent over using traditional concrete.

Marketed under names such as “Hemcrete,” “Canobiote,” “Canosmose,” and “Isochanvre,” these terms refer to a mixture of hemp hurds (a woody chip-like substance) and lime, used as material in a construction project.

The hemp-lime combination material is the lightweight composite material that combines the renewable plant-based aggregates, often referred to as the fast-growing hemp shiv, mixed in with a lime based binder. Sound simple? Depending on preference for building materials, hemp herds may be mixed with lime and sand and/or cement, as well.

An experienced contractor once told me that hempcrete is easier to work with than traditional mixes, and it’s less dense than concrete. Is that good? There are different things you can do with hemp, so it depends on need. For instance, Isochanvre, out of France, is suited to their historically stone-based edifices which have existed in the country for centuries.

It lends itself well and is known as “the method of crystallizing the hemp sap.” It is mixed with hydraulic lime and water to bind it together, then packed into timber formwork and left to solidify like concrete.

Moreover, I’m told by a talented and charming finish carpenter that when hemp hurds are mixed with a combination of lime products, they can produce a lightweight insulating plaster which can be cast around a timber frame or sprayed against a wooden or even stone form. He went on to say that in construction, a material has to have good working value and what’s being used must be durable, water-proof, fireproof, possess reliable insulating value, and it must be strong—otherwise you wouldn’t want to live in that house, right?

Such housing must retain heat in winter and keep cool in summer, and have breathable properties. In addition, it must be cheap to build in terms of the material itself and the labour hours it takes to build.

An integrated processing factory and development is essential, which explains the incentive for a large-scale facility in 100 Mile House, intended to feed market demand. Any credible industrial hemp publication will describe how to use hemp as a building material. It usually goes something like this:

House foundations can be made out of hemp hurds. Here is a sample explanation of the use, for example. On the site, assume a plywood frame is in place—needless to say this could be hemp plywood. An expert would fill with a mixture of hemp hurd, and combine with lime, sand, plaster, some cement, and enough water to dampen.

The mixture has to set a day or more. Then, take the frame down but let the mixture continue to harden for approximately a week. The lime and the hurds create a reaction which binds the mixture together.

More about the hemp plant.

It grows voraciously and represents a fine form of a renewable resource. A crop can be grown without the use of herbicides or insecticides. It takes one hectare of land to grow, in approximately four months, sufficient hemp to build a three-bedroom house. This estimated production amounts to four tonnes of material per acre per year.

Hemp is categorized as a bast fibre crop. It sports a stem made of an outer skin with strong lengthy fibres, and a core, or what’s called pith. Once processed, the stems turn into in two things: hurds and fibres. It is the properties of these materials which make them so adaptable to building construction.

What’s not so obvious, however, is why such barriers exist to move the industry forward. There are many experiments using hemp composite materials in building development all over the world, but due to social stigma, there are not that many well publicized buildings about which we can authoritatively speak in a workshop environment.

It’s clear from journalistic probing, that many carpenters enjoy working with hemp, but they may not want their businesses associated with the plant, for fear of being pigeon-holed.

However, this is not to say that the stigma shouldn’t be eradicated. Hemp homes do exist, in even more abundance, in France, the UK, Germany, and now South Africa.

Well known in the U.S. is the Pine Ridge Reservation, in South Dakota. There sits a community hemp house built as a model for sustainable economic redevelopment. It contains hemp insulation and stands as an experiment with hemp fibre reinforced cement board.

The gospel on hemp is that it can be converted into a building material and processed in such a way for it to be usable to make window panes, sills, roofs, floors, wallboards etc. In addition, it can be used as plaster and caulking.

Then there is hemp plywood, insulation made from hemp composite, and/or insulation panels. Also pipes, bricks, and/or green bio-degradable plastic composites.

Study, study, study

But there are some cautionary tales. The key here is how it’s done. One of the most interesting studies comes out of the University of Bath, in the UK, and the BRE Centre for Innovative Construction materials, with Peter Walker and Dr. Mike Lawrence. It’s called “Developing hemp-line low-carbon construction for mainstream uptake through innovation and optimization,” and explores spray applied hemp-lime, specifically, as a place to focus research and experiments in usage.

This study stresses the spray application of hemp-lime as a recent innovation. It is said to “increase the rate of application [of material] and has potential for wider adoption by mainstream construction.

It also offers opportunities for significant innovation with both material formulations and forms of wall construction” However, there are barriers which are interfering with its use, the study argues, including “a lack of confidence in the use and performance of a plant based material; lack of design guidance (including construction details and specification); and limited understanding of hygrothermal material behaviour.”

There are other reports from the ground and cautionary tales. Hempcrete can only be used if it holds up over the long-term and is found to have excellent durability. That would be a normal expectation.

There have been instances of cracking and softness, causes of which are not entirely understood. It’s likely that strict ratios were not followed. Experimental projects are therefore necessary, and will need funding together with the help of politicians to spread the word.

Errors are simply a reflection of a new building product where we haven’t, so far, had the resources or demand to properly research and develop.

The person who is in charge of the hempcrete portion of the building must have full construction training and must not be new to natural building techniques employing hemp and lime.

Without solid expertise one could easily imagine having the wrong ratios of material components, improper curing methods, not enough soak time etc., and needless to say this could lead to cracking or softness. It’s experimental. However, we can expect that a hemp building material, produced through industry, will receive the R&D needed for it to be durable and viable.

Final point. The U.S. Green Building Council contains the stat. that [traditional] buildings account for roughly 38 percent of all carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the country alone (Source: Pew Climate.org). That alone dictates a need to make much greater and significant use of hemp composites in our construction industry.

More information for readers: 

A useful resource
Hemp building materials video
The Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance, started in 2003 helps to co-ordinate research
background information
Story about a hemp house in South Africa
Pew Climate

_________________________________

Diane Walsh, MA, is an investigative journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. She contributes to new media outlets, newspapers which by some miracle haven't gone under, and magazines in the US, Canada and Europe. Diane became acquainted with the Salem-News.com team during a recent speaking tour that included Canada. She is a welcome addition to our lineup of truth-bound thoughtful and extremely talented writers.

For more information on specific publications and to reach Diane directly, please visit: indydianewalsh.wordpress.com

74 Years Ago This Month, The Marijuana Tax Act Changed Everything

By Jasen T. Davis
Source: theweedblog.com

According to a report by Jon Gettman, who has a Ph.D. in public policy and regional economic development from George Mason University, the war on cannabis costs U.S. taxpayers $42 billion per year.

Gettman is also the leader of the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis, and is the former head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

He based his calculations on U.S. government statistics and official federal reports, concluding that the business of cannabis in the country is worth $113 billion dollars. If taxed, the potential revenue stream from taxing this local economy would be significant.

What this means is that every year, instead of using those billions to help the American people, the government spends billions monitoring, arresting and jailing its citizens . . . all because of The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.

How did we get here? When America was first founded, hemp was cultivated by everyone—included George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Hemp was grown for rope and paper. Yes, the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp, and hemp’s relative, cannabis, was prescribed as a cure for a variety of medical ailments.

Hemp grows at a faster rate than timber. Hemp paper is naturally non-polluting and acid free, since converting trees into paper requires a highly toxic procedure known as the wood pulp sulfide process.

One man, William Randolph Hearst, made quite a profit from his pulp timber and paper mills. Hemp paper was superior, but the process to produce it was labor-intensive. Hearst and the Dupont company, which held the patent on the wood pulp sulfide process, made a lot of money turning trees into paper.

When an invention called the decorticator began to catch on in America in 1935, Hearst and Dupont stood to lose a fortune. If hemp could be mass-produced because of the decorticator, which eliminated the need for hours of labor, timber paper would go the way of the dinosaurs.

At the time Dupont’s main source of finance was Mellon Bank. Andrew Mellon was chairman of Mellon Bank and the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Pulling strings, he appointed Harry Anslinger as commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

With Anslinger in place, Mellon had nothing to fear. Anslinger was married to his niece. Mellon began to appear before congress in dramatic hearing, citing dubious sources and appealing to prejudice, claiming that smoking cannabis caused everything from dementia to violence to rape.

This was fueled, naturally, by the propaganda campaign waged by Hearst. Even though government and medical studies at the time had long-reported the health benefits of cannabis consumption, Hearst used his publishing empire to generate reports fueled by racial prejudice and dumb hysteria to sway public opinion, and Congress effectively made hemp illegal on Aug. 2, 1937.

Today the same companies that stand to lose from the legalization of hemp and cannabis employ the same strategies to maintain their profit margins. Public opinion is changing, and the discussion to legalize the plant is a lot more mainstream than it once was.

With enough work, proponents for cannabis legalization could possibly overturn decades of ill-conceived legislation to finally make hemp legal again. Perhaps the curse of 1937 might be lifted, and a once-great source of revenue could once again benefit our country.

Voice of Reason

When Harry J. Anslinger was waging his war against cannabis, a cooler head prevailed in the form of New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who was an opponent of the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. In response to reports of the “dangers” of marijuana, La Guardia in 1939 commissioned the New York Academy of Medicine to study the effects of smoking cannabis. In the end, the study (released in 1944) disproved all of the claims by Anslinger and all other pot propagandists.

Industrial Hemp Act vetoed

Veto of SB 676 is huge setback for California farmers, businesses and the economy advocates say.

Compiled by staff 

Source: californiafarmer.com

Vote Hemp and the Hemp Industries Association (HIA), the nation's leading grassroots hemp advocacy organization and industry trade group, respectively, both working to revitalize industrial hemp production in the U.S., are extremely disappointed to report that Governor Jerry Brown has vetoed SB 676, the California Industrial Hemp Farming Act. 


After moving smoothly through the California legislature with bi-partisan support, Gov. Brown has vetoed the landmark legislation. The first hemp bill to land on Gov. Brown's desk, SB 676 is the fourth bill since 2002 in support of hemp farming to pass the California legislature but ultimately be vetoed by the Governor. The bill would have established guidelines for farming the oilseed and fiber varieties of the plant, which are used in a myriad of everyday consumer products, including food, body care, clothing, paper, auto parts, composites and building materials.



In a statement dated Oct. 9, Gov. Brown stated, "Federal law clearly establishes that all cannabis plants, including industrial hemp, are marijuana, which is a federally regulated controlled substance. Failure to obtain a permit from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration prior to growing such plants will subject a California farmer to federal prosecution."



Despite his veto of the bill, Brown went on to express his support for legalizing hemp farming at the federal level. "Although I am not signing this measure, I do support a change in federal law. 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 veto letter from Governor Brown can be viewed at: http://www.votehemp.com/veto


Introduced by Senator Mark Leno earlier this year, SB 676 proposed to create an eight-year pilot program allowing industrial hemp farming in four California counties: Kern, Kings, Imperial and San Joaquin. The legislation would have allowed California farmers to grow industrial hemp for the legal sale of seed, oil and fiber to manufacturers.


"Vote Hemp and The Hemp Industries Association are extremely disappointed by Gov. Brown's veto. This is a big setback for not only the hemp industry — but for farmers, businesses, consumers and the California economy as a whole. Hemp is a versatile cash and rotation crop with steadily rising sales as a natural, renewable food and body care ingredient. It's a shame that Gov. Brown agreed that the ban on hemp farming was absurd and yet chose to block a broadly supported effort to add California to the growing list of states that are demanding the return of U.S. hemp farming. There truly was overwhelming bi-partisan support for this bill," says Eric Steenstra, President of Vote Hemp and Executive Director of the HIA.


Strong support for the bill had come from Kings and Kern County Sheriffs and the Kings County Board of Supervisors, as well as from the California State Grange, the UCFW-5, the Imperial County Farm Bureau, the California Certified Organic Growers and other leading farm organizations. The bill also had broad based support from businesses and consumers.


 "After four vetoes in ten years in California, it is clear we lack a Governor willing to lead on this important ecological, agricultural and economic issue. We will regroup, strategize and use this veto to our advantage at the federal level," notes Vote Hemp Director and Co-counsel Patrick Goggin.
Today, more than 30 industrialized nations grow industrial hemp and export it to the United States. Hemp is the only crop that is illegal to grow at the federal level, yet is legal for Americans to import. California businesses currently spend millions of dollars each year importing hemp, primarily from Canada, China and Europe.

Producer Fields Yield Mixed Results

Source: cjob.com

The fall harvest is still wrapping up across Southern Manitoba with mixed results.

In it's weekly crop report,  Manitoba Agriculture says spring cereal acres were down in the Southwest because of wet conditions and late seeding.   


Hemp yields in the Northwest are 600 to 800 pounds per acre with seed size and quality very good. 


Canola yields were disappointing for many in the Central Region. 


The grain corn harvest is 50-percent complete in the Eastern Region.   


In the Interlake,  soybean yields are below average, but winter wheat crops are in good condition.

Welch endorses legislation to end federal ban on hemp cultivation

by Tim Johnson 
Source: burlingtonfreepress.com

Vermont’s partisans of hemp received a boost Tuesday when U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., signed on as a co-sponsor of The Industrial Hemp Farming Act.

That measure, introduced five months ago in the House by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, would remove federal restrictions on the cultivation of hemp, a crop Paul calls a non-drug variety of cannabis grown for oilseed and fiber. Hemp and other varieties of cannabis are now classified as marijuana under the federal Controlled Substances Act, and cultivation of hemp in the United States is effectively banned, requiring a special permit from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Hemp is used to make a wide variety of products, including clothing, drinks, skin butters and auto parts. Virtually all the hemp used in products sold in the United States is grown in more than 30 other countries, including China and Canada. Unlike marijuana, according to the pro-hemp lobby, industrial hemp has a psychoactive content so low that it won’t produce a high if smoked.

Vermont is one of nine states that has enacted legislation that would permit controlled hemp cultivation — contingent on federal authorization, which the Paul bill would provide.

The local campaign to legalize industrial hemp has been spearheaded by Rural Vermont, a farmers’ advocacy group with about 750 members. Rural Vermont pushed for the state enabling legislation, which passed three years ago, and has been lobbying Welch to endorse the Paul bill.

The organization contends that hemp, as a crop option, would open up "significant economic opportunities" for Vermont farmers and for processors of such "value-added" products as food-grade oils, rope, paper and animal feed.

Welch’s office announced Tuesday that he had signed on to Paul’s bill, H.R. 1831, joining 26 other co-signers, many of them liberal Democrats.

Permitting cultivation, Welch’s statement noted, "will allow Vermont farmers and small business owners to compete in the growing worldwide market for hemp products."

Rural Vermont praised the decision.

"It’s a great step for the congressman to take," said Jared Carter, director of Rural Vermont, "recognizing the opportunity that industrial hemp provides to Vermont farmers."

Paul has introduced an "Industrial Hemp Farming Act" in each of the last four congressional sessions, but none of the bills has advanced to the Senate. The current bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.

Along with Vermont, the other states to pass measures reducing barriers to production or research of hemp are Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon and West Virginia. 

Brown vetoes bill that would have allowed industrial hemp

By Seth Nidever
Source: hanfordsentinel.com

Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday vetoed a bill that would have authorized industrial hemp farming in Kings and several other California counties, angering hemp supporters.

“I can’t believe it,” said Charles Meyer, a longtime hemp advocate with a 3,500-acre farm near Stratford. “I thought that, after 15 years of going up there to testify, we had convinced everybody and anybody, including the sheriff in Kings County.”

Meyer was referring to a July 26 Kings County Board of Supervisors meeting during which supervisors voted to support the hemp bill after listening to Sheriff Dave Robinson say he had no objection.

The bill would have given farmers the green light to grow hemp — a form of cannabis related to pot but lacking the mind-altering ingredients — as part of an exploratory program in Kings, Kern, San Joaquin and Imperial counties. Hemp is used in a variety of industrial and commercial applications, including clothing, rope and car door panels.

In his veto message, Brown said allowing the bill to become law would “subject a California farmer to federal prosecution.”

Brown’s decision comes just two days after federal authorities announced that they would be cracking down on medical marijuana shops and plant grows in California. Cannabis of any kind is illegal under federal law.

The veto outraged hemp advocates, who had seen previous measures rejected by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. This was the first hemp bill passed by the Legislature and sent to Brown for consideration.

“After four vetoes in 10 years, it’s clear we lack a governor willing to lead on this important, ecological, agricultural and economic issue,” said Patrick Goggin, director of Vote Hemp. “We will regroup, strategize and use this veto to our advantage at the federal level.”

Many hemp supporters like Meyer expected Brown to sign the bill into law, and were planning to seek a court order against the federal government to allow the pilot program to move forward.

“It occurs to me that the executive branch of the state of California is not too interested in supporting farming,” Meyer said. “Otherwise [Brown] would go to bat for us.”

The reporter can be reached at 583-2432 or snidever@HanfordSentinel.com.