HEMP BILL PASSED TO SENATE JUDICIARY

Agriculture Panel Sends Bill Without Recommendation

The fate of a bill to permit the cultivation of industrial hemp is now
in the hands of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Senate Agriculture Committee quickly got rid of the bill in a
brief meeting Thursday by voting to send it to the Judiciary Committee
without recommending whether it should be approved.

But that's OK with the bill's sponsor, Sen. Karen Facemyer, R-Jackson.
She thinks she can find more support for it on the Judiciary Committee
than on the Agriculture Committee.

If she can get her Senate colleagues to approve the bill, she's
confident she can get the House of Delegates to go along with it. "I
got it all lined up in the House," Facemyer said. "It's ready to go in
the House."

Sen. Walt Helmick, D-Pocahontas, helped her get the bill out of the
Agriculture Committee, although he's not sure whether he would
ultimately support it. "I won't necessarily vote for it, but it should
get out," he said.

But Sen. John Unger, D-Berkeley, was one of the few votes against
releasing it from the Agriculture Committee.

"I just don't see what the big deal is," he said. "There are other
agricultural products out there that farmers are presently growing
that need assistance, that need more encouragement."

Unger cited aquaculture, which essentially is fish farming, as an
example of the type of agriculture the state should do more to
support. Last August, the National Center for Cool and Cold Water
Aquaculture opened in his Eastern Panhandle district to study such
topics as breeding rainbow trout. It was suggested the state could
develop a $60 million aquaculture industry.

"We ought to be focusing our attention on how to help those farmers,
instead of bringing in another product and just making it available
and you don't know if a farmer's going to grow it or not," he said.

Questions about whether it would be legal for West Virginia farmers to
grow hemp even if the Legislature approved it also affected Unger's
decision. Hemp is related to marijuana, although it contains only a
miniscule amount of marijuana's hallucinatory ingredient.

David Miller of West Virginia University told the Agriculture
Committee last week he believes a rule of the federal Drug Enforcement
Administration prohibits the growing of hemp and that agency might
have to issue a waiver for WVU to even research whether it would be
feasible and profitable to grow it in West Virginia.

Some senators have also expressed concern that industrial hemp looks
so much like marijuana that permitting the cultivation of hemp could
make law enforcement efforts against growing marijuana more difficult.

Facemyer is interested in promoting hemp, because it can be used in
the manufacture of many things, including rope, sacks, seat belts,
oil, fuel and diapers.