Free the Seed!

The DEA apparently ordered the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol at Louisville International Airport to hold a 250-pound shipment of hemp seeds from Italy in an apparent contradiction of current U.S. law regarding industrial hemp seeds following the passage of the 2013 Farm Bill.

Huffington Post reports:

The Drug Enforcement Administration has seized a batch of seeds that were intended to be part of the launch of Kentucky’s legal hemp industry following congressional legalization of the crop for research purposes.

The DEA has offered a wide variety of explanations to Kentucky officials perplexed at the seizure. “They’re interpreting the law a hundred different ways,” Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James Comer (R) told HuffPost. “The only way they’re not interpreting it is the way it actually reads.”

Comer said that he met with Kentucky Sens. Mitch McConnell (R) and Rand Paul (R) this past weekend and relayed to them the DEA’s claim that it was simply following the intent of the recently passed Farm Bill, which includes a passage championed by McConnell that allows colleges and state departments of agriculture to cultivate hemp for research purposes.

Read more.

This is just the latest example of a government agency unwilling to relinquish any of their perceived authority. Other sources indicate the DEA wants Kentucky to apply for a special DEA permit, a process that could take almost six months, effectively putting off this year’s planting of industrial hemp for research purposes in Kentucky.

On a somewhat humorous side note, Comer points out to HuffPo that Kentucky already has hemp seed on hand and plans to go ahead with their ceremonial planting on Friday, despite the DEA’s seizure of this latest shipment.

Dr. Paul  was a longtime champion of industrial hemp and its many commercial uses during his time in Congress and on the Presidential campaign trail in 2008 and 2012. His legislation, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act, to reclassify industrial hemp as a plant distinct and separate from “marihuana” in the Controlled Substances Act of 1971, was reintroduced this Congress by Kentucky Representative, Thomas Massie (KY-4), as H.R. 525. Massie, along with Senator Rand Paul and Senator Mitch McConnell helped to ensure the provision allowing for the cultivation of industrial hemp for research purposes was included in the most recent iteration of the Farm Bill.