Earlier this week, leaders in Congress announced steps to legalize hemp. A bipartisan bill, the Hemp Farming Act of 2018, is set to be introduced next week by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). McConnell says the bill “will finally legalize…hemp as an agricultural commodity and remove it from [the] list of controlled substances.”
Despite our inane domestic prohibitions, hemp products are ubiquitous worldwide. Foods containing hemp are also common. That’s increasingly the case here in the United States. In 2013, for example, I reported that Amazon sold nearly 250 different hemp food products. Today, that number stands at nearly 800—an increase of more than 200% in just five years. But little of the hemp foods sold in this country comes from hemp grown in this country. Most of the hemp used in foods and other products sold in the U.S. comes from Canada, China, and Europe.
Besides ending an entirely pointless federal ban and helping to meet consumer demand, legalizing hemp would help ease the way for hemp farmers to do some of the things farmers need the opportunity to do if they want to succeed, including buying crop insurance or opening bank accounts, both of which the current federal ban can make difficult or impossible, writes Baylen Linnekin.
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