Kentucky Can't Have Nice Hemp Things

If it's legislation that might help Kentuckians - even white, middle-class, male Kentuckians - you can count on Kentucky's repug state senate to kill it.

Janet Patton at the Herald:

A bill to license Kentucky farmers to grow hemp if federal restrictions are lifted is likely to get a hearing Feb. 11 in the state Senate Agricultural Committee, where it will be assigned once the General Assembly reconvenes next month. It isn't clear, though, whether the bill will get a vote.

Sen. Paul Hornback, R-Georgetown, chairman of the committee and sponsor of Senate Bill 50, said the Senate Republican Caucus might block the committee from voting.

You'd think the paleo-cons in Kentucky would love the idea of industrial hemp, given that it's a symbol of antebellum life when women and blacks knew their place.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/01/25/2490166/hemp-bill-to-get-hearing-but-might.html#storylink=cpy

Beverly Fortune at the Herald:

For advocates of reviving industrial hemp production in Kentucky, the state's past as a leading hemp producer shows the crop's potential.

Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James Comer and Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul are among those pushing to revive industrial hemp in the state.

It's ironic, Comer said in a recent interview, that until the Civil War, Kentucky led the nation in industrial hemp production.

The earliest settlers westward brought hemp seed in their baggage, James F. Hopkins points out in A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky. During the early 1800s, Kentucky hemp fibers were in demand for rope, sailcloth and rough fabrics used to wrap bales of cotton and make pants that were called Kentucky jeans.

Lexington was at the center of that production. 

Read the whole fascinating thing.