Trump Officially Legalizes Industrial Hemp

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/422356-trump-officially-legalizes-industrial-hemp

President Trump legalized the cultivation of industrial hemp Thursday when he signed a widespread, bipartisan farm bill aimed at boosting the agriculture industry.

The fiber of hemp, a non-intoxicating derivative of the cannabis plant, is used to make a variety of products, such as cardboard, carpets, clothes, paper and more.

Hemp production and sales have historically been illegal under the same federal prohibition against marijuana. The farm bill only deals with industrial hemp and does not address recreational or medical marijuana.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) worked with Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to introduce a bill to legalize hemp, which was ultimately included in the farm bill.

"I used my very own hemp pen to sign the conference report, clearing the way for the House and Senate to pass legislation and send it to the president's desk. I'm proud that the bill includes my provision to legalize the production of industrial hemp. It's a victory for farmers and consumers throughout our country," McConnell said when the Senate advanced the farm bill earlier this month.

The farm bill helps removes obstacles farmers face in growing hemp, including restricted access to banking, water rights and crop insurance. Hemp is easier to grow than cotton, corn or soybeans as it requires little water and can be viable in lower-quality soil that is not practical for other crops.

The hemp provision is just one of several aspects of the farm bill meant to aid farmers as exports of agricultural products such as soybeans take a hit as Trump engages in a bitter trade war with China and other countries.

cool

As long as this doesn't result in more farming subsidies, I'm all on board.

Good.

Good, now federally legalize the recreational use of a plant. Or just continue to tip toe around it.

The fact that Marijuana is still a schedule 1 drug is insane they need to change it immediately.

@Damedius: trump is on a roll lately

The first good thing he's actually done as President.

Roll to the bottom.

Lrets just say I have enjoyed my recent move to Colorado.

Lets just say we have a similar 5 year plan. :)

:D

Credit goes where credit is due. Trump has been actually doing some good things as of late.

He also withdrew a lot of troops from the middle east. And one of his admins banned bump stocks.

@Maroxad: Didn't know about the bump stocks. Make that two good things. Too bad it came with two years of crap leading into this.

Yeah 2-3 good things doesnt make up for all the bad things he did.

The other "good" things were either redacted (that plant outsourced their jobs anyways, TPP, NAFTA were made worse under a new brand), or overcredited (North Korea was mostly due to peace activists in South Korea).

Nice, im from GA which I love(I could see it going blue and then Green withing the next decade) but for now if you can move to a legal state. Its not just weed, ive lived in CO for only 4 months and I can see why everyone is so freaking happy. I came for grad school but I may stay for my Phd, or move to Oregon.

I've been putting hemp seeds in smoothies for years. It's strange to think that they would be illegal to produce.

Yeah, i think it may be something different as it is not a part of the plant associated with the euphoric effects.

First good thing this adminstration has done, at least in a long while.

Hemp is pretty amazing stuff. You can make just about any everyday good from it--paper, plastic, fuel, cooking oil, clothing. Requires very little nutrients to grow.

Just really hope they don't have some weird "hey hemp is legal but cannabis isn't oh hey you want to grow hemp? Are you a factory farm? No. Well gee funny you want to grow hemp you need permit ABC to grow it because we made this weird little loophole law that only Monsanto can get around"

Right? it's like, come on.

With that said, I ask that they spend some time thinking about it because there is a whole new world to explore with cannabis and hemp and it would be a shame to see it ruthlessly exploited by people more concerned about their stock prices than the betterment of humanity.

Good, something done that's worth being on board with.

@mrbojangles25: you're deluded if you think governments operate for the betterment of humanity. Governments are largely run like companies nowadays and this move is likely the result of many factors spanning a long timeline coming to fruition rather than Trumps vision for the future or anything.

What I don't understand is what a coincidence it is that the world most popular soft drug is also a wonder material in manufacture.

I find this surprising. I've been to the woods and most plants have thick fibrous stems. I'm not sure I'm buying all this stuff about cardboard or ceremonial loin cloths. What do they do with all the leaves? Burn them in a giant bonfire? Mulch it? I wonder if some of it find it's way into the black market?

That's fine but you can't tax it. So much tax revenue lost to the cannabis laws. Did you know Brussels had the gaul to ask David Cameron for the UK's annual share of 'black tax' which is estimated from profits from crime! That is what 'Brexit' was all about I think. Tax dodging.

lol. loinclothes.

little more complex than that, but you can make just about any clothing item out of hemp that you can out of, idunno, wool or cotton. I have a 50:50 hemp and cotton shirt and it is soooooooooooooo soft. Love it.

As for other plants, they are (at best) limited; I am sure you can make syrup and paper out of a maple tree, but it might be more difficult to do the million other things as well that hemp can do. Maple trees also take decades to grow.

A lot of those trees we use for paper, for example, take a lot of time to grow. Trees are also critical to oxygen supply, wildlife, and so forth. If planting hemp solves this, prevents us from cutting down forests and destroying wildlife areas, while also being quick to grow and not leeching a lot from the soil, I'd say it's worth it.

This is not just hippie nonsense either, by the way, it makes sense from a dollar-standpoint as well. Imagine being able to just farm your paper-producing plants with existing infrastructure, instead of hiring lumberjacks to go up into the mountains with expensive machines, risking their lives and so on.

@mrbojangles25: I'm being a bit silly really. I'm sure the strain used for manufacturing is probably not even worth smoking.

I suppose I just think it's bizarre coincidence that one plant could be both a drug AND an industrial material.

Trees are useful for the environment but not so much as a monoculture. Alot of UK countryside is pine and it's all just pine and pretty much nothing else at all. There's no point in walking there, it's all dark and really, really boring and quiet as there's no birds.

Large hemp monocultures could be as damaging to the environment as forest monocultures if they are less productive in tonnes produced by hectare for instance.

If they require pesticides, could be more damaging than a forest to wildlife. With forests also retaining loose soil in hilly areas.

Russia has the world's largest supply of wood in it's forests which ring the northern hemisphere. There is enough wood there we could never even use it all in the history of the human race. Although it took millenia to grow.

It's not silly at all :) There are two different strains. Hemp is specifically non-psychoactive. Whether that is natural or it has been engineered that way, I do not know.

Hemp is a monoculture, which is one of the beautiful things about it as a crop; you can grow it from the same soil for years! And unlike trees, hemp only takes a season to grow.

Hemp is also naturally resistant to pests and disease, for the most part. More so than a lot of other crops.

As for Russia, that's nice and all, but frankly I would rather not be 1.) dependent on Russia for lumber, and 2.) we always say we have enough of everything until we don't.

Some more info, if you were curious:

• requires 1/3 the water of cotton
• actually regenerates the quality of the soil
• requires no herbicides or pesticides
• inhibits weed growth (it's a shelter plant, so no sun can get through it, therefore no plants grow beneath it)

The only downside to growing hemp, at the moment, is there is no real market for it; an article I read said it's about as profitable as poppy seeds or sesame seeds. In the US, it's not even a billion-dollar product yet. But then again it has only been legal import since 1998, and legal to grow since recently. I am looking forward to the future.