Pubdate: Mon, 04 Feb 2013
Source: Daily Independent (Ashland, KY)
Copyright: 2013 The Daily Independent, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.dailyindependent.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1573
Author: Ronnie Ellis, CNHI columnist

HEMP HOT TOPIC IN FRANKFORT

Frankfort seems suddenly enveloped in a haze. It's not a purple haze
but it's close. Hemp is all the rage and those for it and those
against it are raging.

For a person of my age and generation, there's something funny here
but I haven't quite cut through all the smoke to figure out exactly
what it is. But the folks once known as the law-and-order bunch are
fighting the Kentucky State Police and others over whether to legalize
industrial hemp.

Why, on Monday, Republican Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, who
rails against environmental regulations, was trying to sell a reporter
on the advisability of legalizing hemp "because it's so green." The
same fella who ran for office a couple of years ago traveling Kentucky
on a "coal and corn tour," raging against President Barack Obama for
declaring a "war on coal," now says hemp is "sustainable" and a
valuable bio-fuel.

It's enough to make one's head spin, even one who came of age during
the flower child era.

Take a deep breath. Mitch McConnell now favors legalizing hemp. But
perhaps we shouldn't be all that surprised.

McConnell's hero is Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser and the man who
made the job of Speaker of the House a powerful and important
position. Clay grew a whole lot of hemp in his day. He was also father
of the American System which proposed federal subsidies for roads,
canals and other "internal improvements" to develop agricultural
markets. It sounds now sort of like a stimulus plan, but McConnell
would rather you didn't notice.

(The current Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
is a notorious smoker but not hemp or marijuana. Ask Michelle Obama.)

The tea party in Kentucky favors legalization of hemp, another reason
we shouldn't be surprised McConnell suddenly sees the light. Tea, not
hemp or marijuana, is now McConnell's favorite herbal leaf. Those who
long saw McConnell as an establishment Republican appropriator have of
late been wondering what he's been smoking.

McConnell probably hopes we're all suffering short-term memory
loss.

Kentucky is a red state, but maybe it's becoming a purple state. Given
our apparent collective distaste for President Obama it's clearly not
because of our political sentiments. But proponents of an even more
liberal approach to cannabis have long claimed Kentucky's real leading
cash crop is marijuana.

Why couldn't Gatewood Galbraith have taken better care of himself and
managed to live to see all of this and regale us with his wit and
commentary? Galbraith said he smoked marijuana to treat his asthma and
he was an early supporter of legalizing hemp.

(It reminds me of one of the impish Galbraith's best campaign lines:
"Thirty years ago, they said: 'Gatewood, you're 30 years ahead of your
time.' Well ... here we are.")

Bill Clinton is the most popular national Democrat in Kentucky but he
insists he never inhaled, which doesn't sound like it was really worth
the trouble or risk or all that much fun either. Clinton reportedly
favors cigars.

Maybe Democratic state Sen. Perry Clark of Louisville, who won
re-election despite publicly admitting to "smoking a little weed" and
is sponsoring a bill to legalize marijuana for medical uses, can join
forces with Comer.

Then hemp or marijuana might take their places alongside of Kentucky's
other "signature" industries like coal, Bourbon, horse racing,
basketball and tobacco.

That would further prove just how wrong Obama is about us. You see, we
cling to a lot more than our guns and religion. We really love quick
fixes - and our vices, too. 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D