Editorial: With hemp, no more hemming and hawing

At the dawn of 2019 we suggested hemp production would be a major issue for Florida this year. Now, two state lawmakers representing Polk County are working to make it so.

Sen. Ben Albritton, a Wauchula Republican whose district includes parts of southern Polk, and Rep. Sam Killebrew, R-Winter Haven, have introduced bills to create a state hemp program under the guidance of the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Florida needs such a program, so we encourage the Legislature to get behind it.

According to their bills, the state would establish such a program, treating hemp as "an agricultural commodity" and not a controlled substance, "to promote the cultivation, handling, processing, and sale of hemp, hemp products, and hemp extract."

Such thinking is overdue.

The federal government has long misled the public about the uses, benefits and risks of hemp, a crop first grown in America during our earliest colonial days. For example, 400 years ago King James I decreed that planters in Jamestown, Virginia, would each grow 100 plants, partly to help produce the ropes and canvas sails used aboard British ships. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both prominent hemp growers.

Yet hemp has been collateral damage in America's war on drugs since the federal Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

Albritton, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, undoubtedly spoke for many when he recently told The Ledger, "I heard the word ‘hemp’ and I thought ‘marijuana,’ and I was very skeptical. What I’ve learned is they are two very different things."

Indeed they are.

Although pot and hemp are members of the cannabis family, hemp contains only minuscule amounts of THC, the ingredient in pot that produces its euphoric effect.

Last year, President Donald Trump largely and finally freed hemp of its stigma. Although in recent years the federal government had allowed pilot hemp-growing programs in a handful of states, Trump enacted the new federal farm bill that, for the first time, allowed hemp to be regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and permitted domestically grown hemp to be transported across state lines and eligible for crop insurance. (Hemp products are sold in America, but the base substance is imported.)

While Albritton and Killebrew want to broaden potential hemp production, its cannabis connection will still ensure Tallahassee keeps a watchful eye.

Under their bill, if passed, hemp farmers, processors, transporters and sellers must register with the state. They also must provide the state Agriculture Department written documentation granting state and local police access to their property upon request.

In one sense, the program would resemble the state's medical-marijuana provider registry. But, comparatively, the hemp initiative is refreshingly streamlined, largely devoid of the precautions necessary to track a substance the federal government still deems among the most dangerous narcotics.

The program's application process would be "minimal," the bill says, and not mandate "extensive and prohibitive requirements to become registered, such as additional credentials, expertise, certifications, licensing, bonding capacity, financing, insurance, equipment, security and chain of control, or other similar provisions."

That's good, and should ensure this program will get up and running much easier than the medical-marijuana licensing effort.

The state program, if created, still must pass muster with the USDA. But it seems that, especially with hemp sympathizers like Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell in Congress, a profound shift in thinking is taking place in Washington, which should spur widespread hemp production.

We applaud Albritton and Killebrew for making this a priority — which, for example, could reverse the falling fortunes of citrus growers beset by greening disease and Panhandle farmers devastated by Hurricane Michael. Hemp's time is now.