The RP: The Business Community Should Support Hemp Legalization

In the wake of his notorious call to legalize marijuana, the RP is now taking up a much less controversial cause — that of legalizing the production and sale of pot’s non-narcotic cousin, industrial hemp.  Because of public misunderstanding and stereotypes, a product that could be an enormous economic boon for America — and especially the RP’s home state of Kentucky — is the grossly unfair victim of the overreaching war on drugs.

In this week’s edition of , the RP challenges the Kentucky business community to get behind bipartisan legislation to put the Commonwealth at the forefront of hemp legalization efforts. Here’s an excerpt:

When new Agriculture Commissioner Jamie Comer—a rising star of the Kentucky Republican Party—and State Senator Joey Pendleton—a long-time and well-respected Democratic leader—joined last week to endorse a major public policy proposal, political insiders took notice of the much-too-rare instance of bipartisanship.

But when the two mostly conservative politicians revealed that their common objective was the legalization of industrial hemp, the halls of Frankfort let out a collective gasp.

That’s because the subject of hemp legalization, while discussed and debated for decades, has been mostly seen as a cause célèbre of the political margins, either the “hippie” Far Left or the libertarian Far Right. And the politician most associated with hemp’s advocacy was the perennial candidate and courthouse jester of Kentucky politics, the recently deceased Gatewood Galbraith.

But as the Comer/Pendleton alliance reveals, public support for industrial hemp legalization—particularly within the agri-cultural community (both men are active farmers)—is reaching a tipping point.

And it’s time for Kentucky’s business community to shoulder-pad-up and push legalized industrial hemp across the goal line.

Click here to read the RP’s full piece in Business Lexington.