Hemp stakeholders react to top Senator’s potential legalization bill

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) – Four years after the seed was planted, now the industrial hemp industry could grow to a nationwide business if a top U.S. Senator can plow his proposed bill through congress.

U.S. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell wants to see industrial hemp legal across the nation. He plans to introduce legislation to legalize hemp as an agricultural product.  Growing hemp without a federal permit has long been banned due to its classification as a controlled substance related to marijuana.

Hemp production and pilot programs around states has been common practice since Sen. McConnell and Congress passed the 2014 Farm Bill granting the programs.

Hemp does not have the full effects as marijuana. Locally, growers and sellers hope to see McConnell’s bill make it to harvest.

“Last time that I saw a number, it was 56,000 different products that hemp could replace as of today,” said Joe Ameri with Hempleton Investment Group which operates The Hemp Farmacy across coastal, southern and southeastern N.C.

From farm to fragrance or harvest to honey, The Hemp Farmacy and it’s partners have seen growth. The state of Kentucky has seen the same success. That’s why Sen. McConnell is moving forward to fully legalize the crop.

“This bill will finally legalize hemp, legalize hemp as an agricultural commodity and remove it from the list of controlled substances,” said McConnell Monday.

“It’s huge I mean that’s what we want,” said Ameri. “We want this just like I said to be another agricultural product.”

Ameri works with farmers, geneticists, and the retail arena. The crop contains less of the “high” affect compound THC than it’s cousin marijuana. McConnell’s bill has a clear opposition.

“The DEA still says, ‘we don’t like this, it looks like marijuana, it smells like marijuana, tastes like marijuana, to us it’s marijuana’,” said Ameri.

Cannabis of any kind sits as a schedule one drug to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Ameri is certain taking it off that list would plow the way for a new nationwide industry.

“It frees up the states from having any liability. Right now any state that is doing anything more than hemp federally in the wrong.”

The Hemp Farming Act of 2018 is expected to hit the U.S. Senate floor next week.