Tony Venhuizen just got hired as Governor Kristi Noem’s chief of staff, but he’s been on the Second Floor since January coordinating the Governor’s Legislative agenda, so evidently even he can’t get the Snow Queen over her reefer madness and move hemp to passage.
Noem’s early lack of focus belied her State of the State profession of a desire to wrap get hemp done “within a few days.” Now with just three days left for regular Legislative business and three days for conference committees in the 2020 Session, the Senate is having to sit on House Bill 1008, this year’s attempt to give farmers the freedom the federal Farm Bill offers to grow and sell industrial hemp, while we wait to see if Noem will give up her inflated cost estimates and sign a bill that received veto-proof support in the House. Hemp proponents smell bait and switch from the Governor:
Rep. Oren Lesmeister, a Democrat from Parade and a proponent of hemp, said the governor’s office inflated the numbers based on a false presumption that drug cases would “sky-rocket” as a result of an industrial hemp program. He charged that the governor is using the high estimates as a tactic to thwart the bill.
“It is how she wants to kill hemp,” he said.
On Tuesday morning, Noem told a legislative committee that the program would need $3.5 million to cover the cost of 15 full-time positions, new testing equipment, four police dogs and expanded drug storage space for the state’s drug lab and Highway Patrol.
Lawmakers’ estimates were more frugal: $250,000 for the program, with about $80,000 of that covered by licenses and fees paid by hemp farmers and processors.
Noem’s staffers indicated that the lower estimate would not meet her demands for the hemp program [Stephen Groves, “Governor, Lawmakers Disagree on Cost of Legalizing Hemp,” AP via Brookings Register, 2020.03.04].
Come on, Senators: you’ve got the votes. Pass HB 1008, brace for veto override, and tell the Governor’s advisors to tell her to let this distraction go and focus on her broader agenda of keeping South Dakota open for business.
Open for business… that should mean hemp, too, right?
I think it is stupid to rush to do a full-blown program on hemp without first doing some sort of pilot project. There are going to be regulatory issues to work out. Noem may be high-balling the costs, but it might be better to overestimate than underestimate those costs.
Wisconsin’s program in its second year was underfunded and understaffed, considering the number of farmers wanting to try hemp cultivation. It resulted in testing being delayed farther into the season, which resulted in higher THC levels, which meant farmers lost their investment. You can get around that, perhaps, with third party testing.
Has anyone done a survey to see how many farmers might be interested?
Hmmmm…
3.5 Million?
15 additional state employees?
Four Drug Dogs?
Extra Storage capacity?
I don’t believe that AK,CA,CO,IL,
MI,NV,OR,MA,VT ,ME or D. C. have
those expenses.
As a matter of fact since 2014 Colorado
has generated 1 Billion dollars in revenue since 2014 because of recreational cannabis sales. They evidently can differentiate between
Hemp and Cannabis.
Meanwhile in Sioux Falls a new Taj
Mahal of Liquor has opened up to
great fanfare !!!
Lots of revenue generated there.
Don Pay, you have absolutely no basis to profess “caution” on this issue. I can not figure you out. Every member of the European Union allows hemp production.
Well, farmers who invest in hemp, want a program that is going to work for them. If you fund a half-assed program, you’ll end up with half-assed regulation, and farmers are going to take in the shorts when they can’t sell their crop, but have to destroy it.
Testing has to be done in a narrow time window. If you don’t have the manpower to do the testing within that window, that farmer is going to have to destroy the crop, losing the investment. That happened last year to some farmers in Wisconsin.
Other parts of the world have been growing hemp for a long time, and have worked out the bugs in how they deal with the crop. South Dakota is just beginning. Wisconsin has two years in, and had problems both years. It’s a very finicky crop, taking lots of labor. No one wants to put in all that money, time and effort to get nothing out of it.
It think it should start it off as a three year pilot project with growers added each year through a lottery. In Wisconsin they did it by lottery the first year. The second year they had too many growers for the regulators and testing. You can do third party testing if there are professional folks that do the plant sampling and lab testing in a scientific way. That would limit the number of state employees you need.
Let’s not forget that Wyoming was right where we were. They looked at their total prohibition and legalized hemp….for 1FTE less than half a million.
https://www.wyoleg.gov/Legislation/2019/HB0171
Why Noem feels the need to include an HPLC machine and a PR campaign in her budget for hemp is outright bonkers and unprecedented in other states despite what she claims.
How about letting farmers decide what they can sell and can’t sell? If “farmers might take it in the shorts” is a criterion for allowing farmers to grow a crop, then all crops would be banned.
Don, you sound like the butt plugs I ran into continuously in committees before I ran out of resources to bring enlightenment to the legislature.
Donald Pay is still stuck in gumbo, with no handyman jack. There are more uses for hemp than CBD, but that is where the rub is. There are many among us who think like him, including the governor.
Here is Henry Ford, the old car guy, with his hemp car run on hemp fuel. Beats the crap out of corn based fuel that should be eaten as the world starves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=109&v=54vD_cPCQM8&feature=emb_title
Had Mr. Newland’s ideas and determination been adhered to, there could have been a market for a viable crop here that still grows in the wild.
You want hemp or do you not want hemp? Do it right or you’re likely to have people turning against it. Start small, work out the kinks, then build it out. Regulation builds confidence all the way around.
Of course this was a ploy of hers from the starting gate. Legalize medical and recreational across the board and the hemp issues go away! Farmers, compassionate caregivers, and recreational users get out and VOTE. Unfortunately, even if it were to pass, I fear the corruption that occurred with IM22, leads me to believe an “emergency” situation will ultimately overturn the peoples will. I have no hope for our political system.
Donald Pay, what do you mean, “Do it right?” For Haysooce’s sake, man, you have a butt plug in your brain on this. Let people grow hemp. Let them check out out the market and see if they can make money, just as they do with every other farm crop. That would be doing it right.