The most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill just filed a bill to radically change federal laws that currently make cannabis illegal for all purposes.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is guaranteeing that the 2018 Farm Bill will include his industrial hemp legalization provision after the Senate and House reach a compromise—ideally by the end of the year.
“If there’s a Farm Bill, it’ll be in there, I guarantee that,” he told reporters on Friday.
McConnell said he’s visited several hemp processors over the past few months, and one thing that occurred to him was the international implications of hemp legalization. Executives based in countries like Australia and major investors have expressed interest in the hemp business, he said, signaling the crop’s immense potential.
“I don’t want to overstate this—I don’t know if it’s going to be the next tobacco or not—but I do think it has a lot of potential,” he said. “And as all of you already know, in terms of food and medicine but also car parts. I mean, it’s an extraordinary plant.”
When industrial hemp is legalized, it will be “lightly regulated” by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, McConnell stressed. He added that . the Justice Department wouldn’t be involved and the “only federal involvement would be [hemp farmers would] be eligible for crop insurance.”
And because prospective hemp cultivators would have to register their business, local law enforcement would be able to identify legitimate grows, he said. That way they can find individuals growing “the cousin,” McConnell said, referencing marijuana.
See the video of McConnell’s hemp legalization guarantee, about 13:15 into the clip below:
“And by the way, there’s a lot of industrial uses for hemp that I understand from talking to Mitch McConnell is a big deal to Kentucky agriculture,” Ryan said. “And we’re all in favor of that as well.”
While McConnell said lawmakers are working to pass a farm bill before the year’s end, he also acknowledged that a separate provision concerning work requirements for food stamp recipients has caused delays.
While new legislation introduced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) would not legalize marijuana for recreational or medical use, it would remove non-psychoactive cannabis varieties known as hemp from the Controlled Substances Act.
It’s time the federal gov changes the way it looks at #hemp, which is why Senator @RonWyden and I, along with @SenJeffMerkley, are introducing legislation that will modernize federal law in this area & empower American farmers to explore this promising new market.
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“We all are so optimistic that industrial hemp can become sometime in the future what tobacco was in Kentucky’s past,” McConnell said last month when first announcing the new bill, which he formally introduced on Thursday with a bipartisan group of cosponsors.
Glad to introduce the #HempFarmingAct. Oregon farmers should be allowed to grow the hemp that goes into the products you can buy at your local supermarket.