Agricultural Commissioner James Comer is lobbying for hemp legalization. Ky. official makes case for hemp

A top Kentucky official on a mission to legalize industrial hemp said Wednesday he got a warm Washington welcome from both administration officials and House Speaker John Boehner.

Kentucky Agricultural Commissioner James Comer told POLITICO both Boehner and officials from the White House and Agricultural and Energy departments seemed open to legalizing the plant, which is a close cousin of marijuana and whose growth is outlawed in the United States.


“I just think if more and more people studied this issue they would realize this is a no-brainer,” said Comer, a Republican who used a similar economy-focused message to push hemp legalization through the state’s general assembly earlier this year. “This is a way to create jobs.”

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The centrist nature of the commissioner’s pitch won him establishment support in Kentucky, including endorsements from the state’s Chamber of Commerce and the Louisville Courier-Journal. Comer and other backers, including both Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul, market hemp as a economic and environmental wonder plant that can be used to build everything from clothes to car doors.

The bill eventually passed with overwhelming margins in both Kentucky’s Democratic House and Republican Senate, but won’t allow Kentucky farmers to grow hemp until the federal government gives them the go-ahead. Hence the trip to D.C.

Comer is traveling with Jonathan Miller, a former Kentucky treasurer and Clinton administration official who was able to broker meetings with Obama administration officials. So far, the pair have met with Agricultural Department officials, who said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was “open to the idea and very receptive to it,” as well as Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency staffers, one of whom wore a hemp dress for the occasion. They also met with a White House staffer who was “somewhere above the janitor and somewhere below the chief of staff,” Comer said.

Comer also scored a 20-minute meeting with House Speaker John Boehner after meeting him at a private party during last week’s Kentucky Derby.

“He seemed very open to the idea,” Comer said.

But the duo couldn’t score a meeting with the Drug Enforcement Agency. Comer said the DEA told him they didn’t “meet with third parties,” and wouldn’t have met with the state’s Democratic governor, Steve Beshear, either. Comer chalked the decision up to the DEA protecting their turf — and their cash.

“I know there’s a lot of money appropriated for marijuana eradication,” he said.

Eight other states also allow the cultivation of commercial hemp, which lacks the THC necessary to produce the high a marijuana smoker typically gets. It is already legal to import hemp, but the size of the market isn’t clear.

There are three ways the plant could be legalized: as a stand-alone bill, which Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie have introduced; as an amendment to the farm bill; or with an executive order from President Obama. Comer said he was hopeful the plant would be legal by the end of the year.

“I think so,” he said. “Why not? This is something that united people from the far left and the far right and even a lot of moderates.”