SENATOR WANTS MORE INFORMATION ON HEMP

Proposal To Permit Plant's Growth Will Have To Wait A Week

Sen. Karen Facemyer will have to wait at least until next week to get her
bill to permit the growing of industrial hemp moving in the Senate.

Senate Agriculture Chairman Leonard Anderson wants to hear more about the
legal and agricultural consequences of growing hemp, which is related to
marijuana, before allowing his committee to take action.

Deputy Agriculture Commissioner Steve Hannah told the committee Wednesday
that hemp is produced commercially in 22 countries, including Canada, but
the obstacles to its production in West Virginia would be law enforcement
concerns and a lack of production facilities.

David Miller of West Virginia University said 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.

Facemyer, R-Jackson, wanted to amend her bill to make federal approval part
of the process leading to hemp cultivation in West Virginia, but Miller
said state officials should speak with federal officials before going
forward with legislation. Although Facemyer was eager to get the bill out
of the Agriculture Committee and over to the Judiciary Committee, where she
said a staff attorney is already working on it, Anderson, D-Summers,
insisted on waiting until next week for the Agriculture Committee to deal
with the bill.

One concern of some lawmakers is that, even though industrial hemp contains
only a fraction of the ingredient that gives marijuana its hallucinatory
properties, it looks so much like marijuana that permitting the cultivation
of hemp could make law enforcement efforts against marijuana growing more
difficult.

Bob Williams of the West Virginia Farm Bureau told the committee that the
difference between industrial hemp and marijuana is like the difference
between grain corn and silage corn: they're just different varieties of the
same plant.

Facemyer argued that even if the Drug Enforcement Administration currently
prohibits the cultivation of hemp, West Virginia could be in the forefront
of benefiting from its growth by getting out early with legislation to
permit it.

Hemp can be used in the manufacture of many things, including rope, sacks,
seat belts, oil, fuel and diapers.