Politics | Bemidji Pioneer | Bemidji, Minnesota
ST. PAUL – A U.S. Appeals Court panel is considering whether North Dakota law trumps federal law when it comes to raising hemp.Two North Dakota farmers want to grow hemp, a close relative to illegal marijuana, but the federal Drug Enforcement Administration has not granted them permission. The farmers sued to get the permit, but a federal district court threw out their suit.
The DEA says federal law takes precedent over state law, and it does not allow for hemp production because of its close relationship to marijuana.
North Dakota Rep. David Monson, an Osnabrock Republican, and Wayne Hauge of Ray applied to grow hemp under a North Dakota law, which at the time required a federal permit. The state law has changed, so a federal permit no longer is required, but the farmers say they still want that permit so they do not face federal legal problems.
Federal attorney Melissa Patterson of Washington, D.C., said state law cannot override federal law. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress power to regulate commerce between states, which is the basis Congress used in passing laws regulating marijuana and similar plants.
But one of the farmers’ lawyers, Joe Sandler, said that is not the question judges should decide. Instead, he said, “the question here is whether the mere existence of a plant can affect interstate commerce.”
Monson said hemp would bring $800 an acre revenue, while wheat may make him $240.
The DEA doesn’t allow hemp production “because of its close relationship to marijuana”? Geez, if you shut down the production of non-drug items because of their close relationship to marijuana, there would never be any new video games, reggae records, or Judd Apatow movies!
The interstate commerce argument against hemp is so weak. The judge in the case mentions that it would be hard to differentiate between hemp and marijuana. How is it, then, that every other industrialized nation that has legal hemp and illegal marijuana is able to tell the difference?
In the Raich case, the court ruled that medical marijuana grown in California by Californians using only California implements, soil, air, water, fertilizer, which never left California and was used only medically, never commercially, by a California woman obeying California law, and never buying, selling, trading, gifting, or even showing the California marijuana to any other person from any other state was still under the federal government’s commerce clause power to prohibit because, well, marijuana is marijuana, and it’s conceivable that California medical marijuana could become Pennsylvania pot, Rhode Island reefer, or Wisconsin weed, and the court said you don’t have to prove that could happen or even that it has to be realistically feasible, just the existence of that hypothetical possibility is enough to invoke the federal government’s power to prohibit California medical marijuana because it could impact the national market in marijuana, which, of course, is an illegal underground black market, one that medical marijuana patients are forced to purchase from, therefore making the court’s Raich decision tantamount to a market support for weed dealers.
And now they’re going to use that logic to ban North Dakota hemp? A farmer can’t grow a tall reedy 0.5% THC hemp plant in North Dakota because some guy in Florida might smoke a 6% THC bud from a short bushy marijuana plant? Somehow, North Dakota hemp farming is going to affect the underground interstate market in marijuana?
I get why some people are against social cannabis use. I can even just barely see the reasoning behind those who oppose medical marijuana. But opposing non-drug industrial hemp is sheer madness in a world threatened by global climate change, hunger, deforestation, pollution, and peak oil.
