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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: 4069
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 "But due to outdated federal regulations that do not sufficiently distinguish this industrial crop from its illicit cousin, American farmers have been mostly unable to meet that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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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 18.
#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.
The strength of our military is the reason North Korea backed down, and we avoided a war that would have cost us much more in money and lives. No other nation could have forced North Korea to do that. But you want to cut the military by 75% and use that money to make drug users more comfortable. Lord save us from bleeding hearts like you.
Who the fuck cares if North Korea had CONQUERED South Korea in 1950? What difference would it make to anybody but Koreans? The same argument was made in Vietnam, we lost, the dominoes fell, and that mattered...? Precisely Fuck All to Americans and American lives. Vietnam mattered to us ONLY because we lost 55,000 of our own people's lives there, and 250,000 of their limbs, losing a civil war that had no bearing at all on the safety of Americans except to the extent that Americans decided to go over there and fight it. But you're going to bitch about spending $13 billion on treating American people. Yeah, we're going to continue to have big heavy social welfare, because we need it. Your side is never going to agree to anything reasonable, so we're just going to have to keep on beating you. We've beaten you again and again: on working hours, on overtime, on unemployment insurance, on disability insurance, on retiree medical insurance, on Social Security, on food stamps, on housing assistance, on medical assistance for the poor, on universal public education, on racial segregation and on the availability of all services to minorities from all businesses in public commerce. We won on ending Prohibition, and we won on the decriminalization of homosexuality. We're going to win on pot legalization. You spend tax dollars on things you don't like, but you say "tough shit" to my bellyaching about spending tax dollars on things I don't like. Therefore, it's simply a test of power, and my side is stronger. Therefore, you WILL spend your tax dollars your entire life on social welfare you don't like, we will not curtail it because it's the right thing to do, and you can howl at the moon forever about it. You've lost, and you will pay. Nothing more to discuss really. It's a matter of power, pure power, and my side has won and will keep on winning nearly all of the battles.
No. I'm bitching about spending $13 billion on treating American people who chose to do recreational drugs and didn't die like you said they would. Now they, and you, expect the rest of us to spend the money we were earning while they were partying in order to save their sorry asses. Where's the personal responsibility? Can we expect more of this bullshit with legalization?
The personal responsibility is the same that there is with cigarettes, alcohol, food, sunbathing without sunscreen, texting while driving, driving without a seatbelt, or choosing to live in a place where others have concealed pollution. The full measure of responsibility is meted out by nature itself, in the form of a sick, crippled and weakened body and faculties, physical pain, the loss of function, the loss of the ability to do what one once could, the depression and pain from self-inflicted wounds, and the gnawing loneliness that comes from the accumulation of the effects of those things. Nature punishes addicts, and they suffer, on an ongoing basis. That's why they try to stop and why they seek treatment. The last few years of the lives of most heavy smokers is an unhappy one. The personal responsibility for their smoking is meted out to them by nature; ditto for heavy drinkers. You're old enough to know people dying of cancer from smoking- related illnesses and alcoholism. Ultimately, the personal responsibility for people who abuse their bodies is that they are all slowly tortured to death, without reprieve. Nobody gets away with anything, in the end. That is enough for me. I am willing to let nature take its course. I'm not willing to inflict a large police presence on myself in order to stop other people from harming themselves.
#19. To: Vicomte13 (#18)
Yep. Then government -- with my tax dollars -- steps in to make their life easier. And you want to increase drug use by making drugs legal? Are you insane? "I'm not willing to inflict a large police presence on myself in order to stop other people from harming themselves." But you ARE willing to inflict a large police presence on others in order to collect their taxes and use that money to stop other people from harming themselves. If addicts need help, why can't they turn to charitable organizations rather than the governent? Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous are free and they work. I know people in both programs.
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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.
#13. To: Vicomte13 (#11)
(Edited)
spends nearly a TRILLION on a huge, worldwide-deployed co conventional military that is not necessary to actually defend the country at al all.
#15. To: misterwhite (#13)
(Edited)
The strength of our military is the reason North Korea backed down
#17. To: Vicomte13 (#15)
But you're going to bitch about spending $13 billion on treating American people.
#18. To: misterwhite (#17)
Replies to Comment # 18. Nature punishes addicts
End Trace Mode for Comment # 18.
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