Economic Desperation Erases Opposition to Industrial Hemp

For Kentucky's first two centuries, its number one crop was hemp. A renewable source of livestock feed, plus material for paper, rope, cloth, cosmetics and dozens of other products, hemp is a Kentucky native - a weed growing wild and needing virtually no maintenance.

If you could grow just one crop on which to support yourself, you'd have to choose industrial help.

If only it were still legal.

From the Herald:

Most candidates for agriculture commissioner have come out in favor of allowing Kentucky farmers to grow industrial hemp as an alternative crop, despite reservations from law enforcement that it could be used to camouflage illegal marijuana crops.

Only one candidate, Democrat John Lackey, said during a televised debate Monday that he is opposed to growing industrial hemp because it could complicate the jobs of law enforcement agencies that use pilots and spotters to search for marijuana fields from the air.

“It seems to me that if you want to continue to make marijuana illegal, there is absolutely no way that we can legalize hemp, because you just can’t pick it out from a helicopter,” said Lackey, a farmer and former state senator from Richmond.

Two Republican candidates, James Comer, a state lawmaker from Tompkinsville, and Rob Rothenburger, a judge-executive from Shelbyville, haven’t shied away from the issue, suggesting hemp could be a viable alternative crop in a post-tobacco farming economy in Kentucky.

Most Kentucky politicians have traditionally considered industrial hemp politically radioactive because of fears that voters might somehow leap to the false conclusion that they’re also pro-marijuana.

Industrial hemp, a cousin to marijuana, is used to make textiles, paper, lotion, cosmetics and other products. Though it contains trace amounts of the mind-altering chemical tetrahydrocannabinol that makes marijuana intoxicating, it remains illegal in the U.S.

As someone who, as a teenager, was stupid enough to try to get high smoking the hemp that still grows wild in fence rows everywhere in Kentucky, let me assure you that hemp is a "cousin" to pot the way Mars is a "neighbor" of Earth's.

Industrial hemp would, not to put too fine a point on it, vault Kentucky into place as the wealthiest state in the nation.

Hemp would make not just tobacco, corn and soybeans irrelevant, but make coal an economic asterisk.

Hemp is the elusive economic silver bullet. It's a political no-brainer. So much so, that it's also a simple litmus test for candidates. Those who support industrial hemp deserve your further consideration. Those who don't are morons.