Some Hemp for Lunch??

Just got back from an exhausting, and very productive trip from Washington DC with Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James Comer and State Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Paul Hornback (both pictured with me at left).

I will have more to write about it in the coming days (after I get my paying job done), but here are some clips from the the national coverage of our trip:

Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim: “Kentucky Hemp Lobby Makes Inroads In Washington”:

A chance encounter at last weekend’s Kentucky Derby may have given the hemp industry the break it’s been looking for since the crop was banned in 1970, when the federal government classified it as a controlled substance related to marijuana.

Kentucky’s Commissioner of Agriculture James Comer, a Republican, told The Huffington Post that he was at a private pre-derby party on Saturday when he found himself chatting with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his chief of staff Mike Sommers. Comer talked shop.

The topic at hand was the fate of the hemp industry in Kentucky, which could become the first state in the nation to successfully lobby for federal approval. Boehner and Sommers were interested enough to invite Comer and the chief supporters of the state’s legalization bill to a meeting in Washington.

On Tuesday night, Boehner sat down with Comer and the bill’s lead backers, Republican state Sen. Paul Hornback and Democrat Jonathan Miller, a former Kentucky state treasurer who currently serves on the Kentucky Industrial Hemp Commission (and who also moonlights as a HuffPost blogger). Sommers confirmed the meeting took place.

According to Comer, Boehner told the trio he would talk with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) about how a federal bill might be moved forward to remove hemp from the list of controlled substances. On Thursday, Comer and the Kentucky legislators plan to meet with McConnell, who surprised observers back home by endorsing Hornback’s hemp bill, a move that quickly brought the state GOP in line.

The most likely path to passage for hemp legislation runs through the farm bill, as an amendment. That bill goes up for debate in the Senate Agriculture Committee next week — fortuitous timing for hemp.

“I was impressed with his knowledge of this issue,” Comer said of Boehner. “At the end he said, ‘This is funny, because this issue’s been around a long time. My daughter was talking about this 15 years ago.’ So this is something he knows a lot about. And the difference today, as opposed to 10 years ago, is the only people who were pushing this issue 10 years ago were the extreme right or left, or people who wanted to legalize marijuana.” Comer spoke with HuffPost and a Roll Call reporter in the office of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), their home base while they’re in Washington, working with the group Vote Hemp, which advocates on behalf of the industry.

Click here to read the full piece.

===

Roll Call’s Niels Lesniewski: “Kentuckians Say Legalize…Hemp, That Is”:

The upcoming farm bill might be a venue for legalizing industrial hemp production, at least if Kentucky lawmakers get their way.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his home-state GOP colleague Rand Paul are already among those backing the proposal along with numerous House members, and advocates are looking for more support in advance of next week’s Senate farm bill markup.

Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James R. Comer is on Capitol Hill this week meeting with senior lawmakers and promoting proposals to remove federal barriers to cultivating hemp, including a measure being pushed by Paul with the backing of McConnell. Kentucky legalized production at the state level in April.

“You can make textiles. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper,” Comer said. “It was a leading crop that Henry Clay grew and Abraham Lincoln’s in-laws grew in Kentucky.”

Comer and two Kentucky colleagues said in an interview in Paul’s office that meetings with lawmakers and administration officials were going well and that the trio had not encountered much opposition, except, as former Kentucky State Treasurer Jonathan Miller acknowledged, from law enforcement.

“Most of all, we believe it’s based on the fear that this is a slippery slope and they would lose money with marijuana eradication, and it’s a lack of education.” Miller said, noting that the group’s attempts to meet with the Drug Enforcement Administration had been fruitless.

Advocates say that law enforcement should no longer worry about telling the difference between pot and hemp, which are related but not the same plant.

“We have found tremendous policy support from liberal Democrats, conservative Republicans, everybody in between, but law enforcement continues to have some reservations based on what we think is misinformation, so we’re trying to clear up the record,” Miller said.

Click here to read the full piece.

===

Politico’s KEVIN ROBILLARD: “Kentucky official lobbies Hill, White House on hemp”

A top Kentucky official on a mission to legalize industrial hemp said Wednesday he got a warm Washington welcome from both administration officials and House Speaker John Boehner.

Kentucky Agricultural Commissioner James Comer told POLITICO both Boehner and officials from the White House and Agricultural and Energy departments seemed open to legalizing the plant, which is a close cousin of marijuana and whose growth is outlawed in the United States.

“I just think if more and more people studied this issue they would realize this is a no-brainer,” said Comer, a Republican who used a similar economy-focused message to push hemp legalization through the state’s general assembly earlier this year. “This is a way to create jobs.”

The centrist nature of the commissioner’s pitch won him establishment support in Kentucky, including endorsements from the state’s Chamber of Commerce and the Louisville Courier-Journal. Comer and other backers, including both Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul, market hemp as a economic and environmental wonder plant that can be used to build everything from clothes to car doors.

The bill eventually passed with overwhelming margins in both Kentucky’s Democratic House and Republican Senate, but won’t allow Kentucky farmers to grow hemp until the federal government gives them the go-ahead. Hence the trip to D.C.

Comer is traveling with Jonathan Miller, a former Kentucky treasurer and Clinton administration official who was able to broker meetings with Obama administration officials. So far, the pair have met with Agricultural Department officials, who said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was “open to the idea and very receptive to it,” as well as Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency staffers, one of whom wore a hemp dress for the occasion. They also met with a White House staffer who was “somewhere above the janitor and somewhere below the chief of staff,” Comer said.

Click here to read the full piece.