MASSIEFLIX

Massie defends a hemp amendment on the House floor

May 29, 2014 · 2:44 hempkentucky

He argues the Justice Department should not spend money blocking state industrial-hemp research.

Original by Office of Rep. Thomas Massie on YouTube ↗ · Is this yours? Claim credit →

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Chapters

  1. 0:00 The DEA should follow the law
  2. 1:00 More than a bag of seeds
  3. 2:00 Thousands of pounds of seed

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18 lines
  1. the chair recognizes the gentleman from Kentucky thank you Mr chairman I rise today with four of my colleagues to offer a bipartisan amendment that simply
  2. requires the DEA to comply with federal law despite clear language in the recently passed farm bill that specifically allows State agricultural
  3. agencies and universities to grow industrial hemp for research the DEA decided to ignore the plain text of a federal statute officials in my home
  4. state of Kentucky were recently forced to file a lawsuit in federal court to compel the DEA to release industrial hemp seeds intended for a University
  5. Research pilot program what a waste of time money and the Court's limited resources States cannot launch Industrial Hemp pilot programs if the
  6. DEA seizes the seeds before they reach their destination and although the DEA did recently agree to release the seeds my
  7. Amendment ensures that this type of DEA action won't happen again again if this were simply about seeds I wouldn't be here we've got that we've got that
  8. resolved but there are further issues there are more issues for instance the DEA has been very ambiguous on whether
  9. they are going to assert authority to say that hemp can't be grown on private property listen where else are you going to grow it it's not like the government has farms and the the farm bill is clear
  10. in this language the farm bill says that the state authorities shall register these sites not the DEA yet the DEA refuses to acknowledge that Furthermore
  11. with regard to the seeds the DEA requires and this I found ridiculous that the seeds and these are industrial hemp seeds with no active THC must be
  12. kept under lock and key with only three keys available and you and the way we've got these stor in Kentucky now is you put your handprint on the door and you
  13. can get into these hemp seeds you want to know how ridiculous that is by the end of this growing season we're going to have thousands of pounds of hemp seeds not 250 pounds of hemp seeds
  14. there the question is what is the DEA going to do going forward we just want them to Simply obey the law the fact is that growing hemp for research purposes
  15. has always been legal so why hasn't it been done because it required interfacing with the DEA and the DEA purposely used regulations to stop any
  16. of this research the farm bill that I co-sponsored was to clear the way for hemp Industrial Research not to
  17. perpetuate a broken process where the de DEA obfuscates and delays but to give that freedom to State and local
  18. governments and I reserve the balance of my time

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