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Title: Senate Votes To Legalize Hemp After 80 Years Of Prohibition
Source:
ZeroHedge
URL Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018 ... emp-after-80-years-prohibition
Published: Jun 30, 2018
Author: Tyler Durden
Post Date: 2018-06-30 21:18:14 by Hondo68
Keywords: legalize the cultivation, processing, sale of hemp, national policy
Views: 4065
Comments: 21
On Thursday, the U.S. Senate approved a bill to legalize hemp, an industrial crop that has been banned for decades. In April, Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) submitted a separate bill to legalize hemp, and those provisions were then incorporated into the broader farm bill. The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry approved that version before the upper house of Congress voted to approve it this week by a margin of 86-11. The bill would legalize the cultivation, processing, and sale of hemp. "Consumers across America buy hundreds of millions in retail products every year that contain hemp," McConnell said Thursday. "But due to outdated federal regulations that do not sufficiently distinguish this industrial crop from its illicit cousin, American farmers have been mostly unable to meet that demand themselves. It's left consumers with little choice but to buy imported hemp products from foreign-produced hemp." According to Wyden: “Legalizing hemp nationwide ends decades of bad policymaking and opens up untold economic opportunity for farmers in Oregon and across the country.” Hemp is a versatile crop that can be used in everything from construction material to clothing, and it has long been a staple in the United States and around the world. In fact, in the 17th century, the government encouraged people to grow it. Though hemp was eventually banned amid the widespread attack on cannabis in the 1930s, ironically, it then had to be imported to sustain the war effort during World War II. Farmers across the country have expressed relief and excitement that hemp has come this close to legalization. “It’s super big,” Dani Billings, who owns LoCo farms in Longmont Colorado, said, as reported by an NBC affiliate station in Colorado . “We have people who understand agriculture, that understand this is for farming and it’s not to get people high.” Bruce Perlowin, CEO of NC-based Hemp Inc., which worked with veterans, said in a press release: “With Veteran Village Kins Community B-Corporations set up in 8 states so far, the legalization of industrial hemp will now allow these future veteran villages to be built and to flourish - creating more support for our veterans than anyone can possibly imagine.” The bill still must be approved by the House, which has expressed opposition to hemp legalization, though McConnell is expected to campaign heavily in favor of the bill in the lower house of Congress. A list of concerns about the bill handed down from the White House reportedly did not include any objections to hemp legalization, meaning that if the bill makes it through the House, it’s likely President Trump will sign it into law. Some states have passed legislation in recent years legalizing hemp, but the latest legislation would make it national policy.
Poster Comment: This will reduce our dependence on petroleum based plastics too. Soon a significant percentage of you car, etc. may be made from hemp instead of plastic.
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#3. To: hondo68 (#0)
Canada will sell us all the hemp we need at a lower price than we can produce it. And we don't need much. The only way to make money on hemp in the U.S. is to tell the government it's hemp and actualy grow high-THC marijuana. Which is what will happen.
Exactly. So the folks who are hellbent to stop it, like you, will be defeated by deception in places where the law can't be swiftly changed outright by democracy, as had happened already in half the states. You've dug in like the Christian Ladies Temperance Union ladies did on alcohol. It took a combination of lawlessness, corruption, political pressure and expansion of legitimate activity, working in concert, to finally stop the application of that law and, ultimately, to overturn it. Same thing here. People will fight for this because so many have used it, and know it is relatively harmless. Not harmless, but relatively so. There is no such move suggesting the legalization of heroin. People know that the restrictions and legal enforcement is just like it was with alcohol: excessively oppressive and heavy handed given what the substance really does. It's about power and who gets to set the rules, much more than it is about the substance. Deckard and you are on opposite sides, and neither may admit that directly, or even fully realize that it is, but that's what a neutral like me sees: it's not about marijuana, it's about what can be made law and who decides how far. In the end I'm not with either one of you. I'm with the people who see the enforcement efforts against alcohol in the past and marijuana now, and am primarily focused on the arrogance and violence used by the police to enforce intrusive laws because "It's the law!" I do not agree that the rule of law should be treated as such an idol. When the law is bad or overly aggressive, I'd prefer to see it repealed, but failing that, I want common sense to prevail and for the people to ignore the law and the police not enforce it. The cop who writes a speeding ticket for 57 mph in a 55 mph is not a hero to me, he's a villain - and I don't support him, and frankly want something bad to happen to him so he cannot prey on people like me. I support law enforcement when they are reasonable. Back during Prohibition, when the police were aggressively pursuing people for drinking alcohol, when they got shot and killed that seemed pretty just to me. When oppressive men die, I don't really grieve for them. The war on drugs is pursued too aggressively. I do not support the cops on account of it. When you lose me, you have lost the center of the people. I can be gotten back, but the police seem to be getting more and more aggressive, which is causing more and more of them to get killed. I don't want the people on either side of the issue killed, but when they do kill each other, I assign equal guilt - the criminals are debased, and the cops are malignant. Bad people kill each other. I don't use drugs. But the war on drugs has caused me to become indifferent to police deaths, because the police have become too generally aggressive in their pursuit of it. I see them more and more as Redcoats. And while I intellectually acknowledge that the Redcoats were just doing their job, I also recognize that they chose that job and got killed doing something discreditable. And I don't care. That is ultimately the price of excessive law and law enforcement. The 55 mph speed limit reduced driving speeds somewhat, but radically diminished respect for the rule of law by the entire country, because virtually everybody became a casual lawbreaker - so when cops enforced the speed limit, they really were agents of oppression and became the enemy. You're never going to change your mind on pot. Neither will Deckard. Neither will I. Three different positions with different objectives are working their way through society. I think that maintaining respect for the rule of law and the police is important - and THEREFORE I think it's important that the oolice power be used lightly and not get so deeply into people's faces over private habits.
So the misery caused by alcohol isn't enough for you so you want to legalize more recreational drugs? Teen use of marijuana isn't high enough so you want to legalize it and send the message to teens that it's now acceptable to society? I'm guessing you don't have teenage children. You really believe that overall marijuana use won't increase with legalization ... or you simply don't care because you don't pay taxes and won't be affected by the financial consequences?
More people will suffer and die from drug abuse. There will be less abuse and social control by the police. There's a tradeoff. I'd rather let people choose paths that will destroy themselves than empower a vast army to police me.
Not enough and not marijuana users. They linger and we pick up the tab. "I'd rather let people choose paths that will destroy themselves" Those people don't concern me. It's the ones who destroy everything and everyone around them, leaving the taxpayers to pick up the tab. What is it -- Trump wants $13 billion to fight the opioid epidemic? That's MY money.
And the United States, a nation that has enough cheap nuclear weapons to wipe out the planet 12 times over, spends nearly a TRILLION on a huge, worldwide-deployed conventional military that is not necessary to actually defend the country at all. Nuclear weapons make the United States un- invadable. That's MY money, and I want the military budget slashed by 75%, because that is just money down the toilet for nothing. Don't talk to me about some pennies here and there for this social thing or that, that at least has some benefit for real suffering Americans, unless you first talk about the gross waste of nearly a trillion dollars a year on a useless military that hasn't won a war since 1945. We talk about the deadly cancer first, and THAT is military spending. THEN we can talk about a few billion here or there for social programs. If the inferno of waste that is the American military posture is not addressed, the rest is all just nickel-slot nonsense. If we're going to talk about MONEY as the reason to have various policies, then we start with slashing the military and the US world empire, because THAT is where the money is thrown away.
They're suffering because of choices they made. Why should hard-working taxpayers pick up the tab? You want all this freedom but you refuse to accept the personal responsibility that goes with it. No thanks.
#14. To: misterwhite (#12)
And I'm suffering, and paying a huge tab that I don't want to pay, because some tinpot dictator on the other side of the world makes people over there suffer. I don't mind spending a little bit of money to deal with suffering wrought by bad decisions of my countrymen. I greatly resent spending oceans of my money meddling in affairs of countries half a world away, to satisfy the egos of some big swingin' dicks in Washington DC. But I'll give up most of the social welfare if you'll give up most of the conventional military and all of the overseas deployment. There is no real threat to America, and we should stop spending money as though there were.
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#4. To: misterwhite (#3)
Which is what will happen.
#5. To: Vicomte13 (#4)
You've dug in like the Christian Ladies Temperance Union ladies did on alcohol.
#9. To: misterwhite (#5)
You really believe that overall marijuana use won't increase with legalization ... or you simply don't care because you don't pay taxes and won't be affected by the financial consequences?
#10. To: Vicomte13 (#9)
More people will suffer and die from drug abuse.
#11. To: misterwhite (#10)
(Edited)
What is it -- Trump wants $13 billion to fight the opioid epidemic? That's MY money.
#12. To: Vicomte13 (#11)
that at least has some benefit for real suffering Americans
Replies to Comment # 12. They're suffering because of choices they made. Why should hard-working taxpayers pick up the tab?
End Trace Mode for Comment # 12.
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