Rep. Mike Verchio (R-20/Hill City) has delivered the industrial hemp proposal he promised last fall. House Bill 1054 would create a framework of state and federal background checks, annual licensing, fees of five dollars per acre planted, and sales reporting for anyone who wants to grow industrial hemp in South Dakota.
Bureaucracy be darned (really? the government gets the names of every hemp buyer?), Libertarian blogger Ken Santema is excited about HB 1054. Liberal cannabis advocate Larry Kurtz calls industrial hemp a noxious weed that will do more harm than good for farmers. GOP spinster Pat Powers asserts that industrial hemp is just a trick for legalizing pot. I remain ambivalent: I’d like to rotate more crops and see more hemp jeans and construction materials, but the economic and environmental returns on hemp investment are mixed.
HB 1054 has 31 House sponsors (20 Republicans, 11 Democrats), including Verchio, and nine Senate sponsors (four GOP, five Dem). The only House Democrat not sponsoring the industrial hemp measure is U.S. House candidate Paula Hawks. On the Senate side, Dems Angie Buhl O’Donnell, Scott Parsley, and Jim Peterson have not signed on. Republican sponsors include new Daugaard appointees Rep. Wayne Steinhauer and Senator Bill Shorma. The other Republican sponsors include a large swath of Verchio’s hard right, such as Reps. Tom Brunner, Lynne Hix DiSanto, Don Haggar, Josh Klumb, and Herman Otten and Senators Phil Jensen and Betty Olson. HB 1054 also has GOP Majority Leader Brian Gosch’s name on it: whether that’s a just a favor for a fellow Black Hills Republican or a signal that mainstream GOPers are willing to open the door to Libertarian-Lefties’ favorite leaf will become clearer when HB 1054 goes to House State Affairs, which Rep. Gosch chairs.
Does anyone know if farmers have to pay a fee to plant any other crop in South Dakota?
Maybe someday Mr. Powers will realize that hemp, like banana peels, doesn’t get anyone high. And no, I don’t know of any other crop that requires a fee to get planted.
Good question Larry not sure what crop it would be, tobacco maybe. Where is the end use for industrial hemp, processors, market for their products, etc. Is there an under servered market looking for supply? How many SD ethanol plants can process hemp? I have more questions but this is my beginner’s list.
larry, I have never paid any fees to any government to plant a crop. This provision doesn’t make any sense unless they expect to having agents monitor the crop. I am amazed by the number of sponsors.
Other than introducing an invasive species to reservations would anyone care to speculate why Republicans are behind this legislation?
Hemp was in North America when the colonists arrived so it would be considered either as a native plant or a naturalized plant. Like larry I wonder why Republican legislators are behind this bill. AG Jackley will surely fight this bill.
Hemp is a lesser-demon weed.
“The Spaniards brought hemp to the Western Hemisphere and cultivated it in Chile starting about 1545.”
http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/sb/sb681/
I suppose if they get a list of all these hemp buyers there will be many who will try and smoke it and they could arrest them for smoking something you are not supposed to be smoking. Jails are big business.
Said Grudznick:” Jails are big business.” And building jails is even bigger business and their contributions to the retrograde GOP has undoubtedly been a big factor in the “tough on crime” that has caused many insignificant drug holders to be stuck in prison for dozens of years with each costing us a huge chunk of money for no good purpose—unless you consider lining the pockets of the GOP with even more cash.
Hemp ropes are used in the military for rappelling. So there is a military side to it.
Verchio’s largest contribution to the legislative process in SoDak so far has been a photo of him, eyes scrinched shut, praying with Gordon Howie in the Capitol rotunda a coupla years ago. So what has brought him to a revelation that prohibiting cannabis production in SoDak is sinf…, er, bad?
Could it be Genesis 1:29; “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. 31And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
The language of Section 5 will ban now legal hemp products; i.e., with passage of the Bill grocery and health food stores will have to pull hemp seed food products, as under the new law you cannot posses hemp seed in any form without a license. So if you like hemp smoothies, you are going to need to pass that DCI check, hold the license, and pay all the fees. This Bill is deliberately nefarious to continue to contribute to the oppression of South Dakota Tribal Hemp Enterprise.
Ten days late and 100 dollars short, Pierre has realized that North Dakota is going to magically fill the enormous North Dakota State Tax Hole with Industrial Hemp. So at best, the hard right promotors of the Bill have at least some inkling that another economic ass whipping of South Dakota is about to be dispensed from the North, and SOMEONE has scared them enough to take what for them is drastic action.
You can’t write a sturdy hemp Bill for any community in less than a page.
I would as soon shoot myself in face than have another Twilight Zone event like Betty Olson writing a pro-hemp article in the BlacK Hills Pioneer.