(Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
On Friday, President Barack Obama signed into law the new farm bill, which includes an amendment allowing industrial hemp to be grown for research purposes.
While the farm bill only permits research in states with existing hemp laws, advocates still celebrated the turning point in federal policy.
“This is the first time in American history that industrial hemp has been legally defined by our federal government as distinct from drug varieties of Cannabis,” said Eric Steenstra, the president of Vote Hemp, in a press release.
Now, academic institutes in ten U.S. states will be able to study different varieties of the crop in order to guide future farming practices. The pilot program could pave the way to a legal hemp industry in the U.S.
So far, few farmers have been brave enough to try growing hemp, even in states that have legalized it.
Under the Controlled Substances Act, hemp is still considered the same as marijuana – a Schedule I substance – though it only contains trace amounts of the psychoactive chemical THC.
But importing hemp products, from countries like Canada and China, is not illegal. According to estimates by the Hemp Industries Association, more than $500 million (retail value) of hemp product was imported to the U.S. in 2012.
Source Leaf Science
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