By Coco McPherson | Rolling Stone
In the annals of strange bedfellow politics, the story of how, in 2014, industrial hemp emerged from Drug War purgatory is an epic one. But even for long-time hemp advocates, the sight of Rep. Thomas Massie, a conservative Republican from northern Kentucky, biting jubilantly into a hemp bar on live TV last month was startling.
Buried in February’s $956 billion farm bill is an amendment, co-sponsored by Rep. Massie, that legally distinguishes industrial hemp from marijuana after decades of conflation. It defines hemp as an agricultural crop rather than a drug — and effectively frees American farmers to grow it for the first time in almost 60 years.
Widespread cultivation won’t happen overnight – for one thing, the U.S. has no hemp seeds or hemp-processing facilities. But the sudden change in hemp’s fortunes shocks its supporters. “If you’d asked me five years ago if I thought we could get Mitch McConnell to introduce a hemp bill, I’d have told you it was impossible,” says Eric Steenstra, president of Vote Hemp, the advocacy group formed in 2000 to educate and lobby for hemp legalization in state legislatures and on the Hill. “This is huge.”
