Bluestem looked at South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's heel-dragging on industrial hemp agriculture on August 19 in Knowns & unknowns: SD Gov. Kristi Noem goes full-bore Donald Rumsfeld on industrial hemp.
Since then, news has broken about a driver arrested for transporting hemp from Colorado to Minnesota, a Dakotafest panel considered the debate over growing the benign weed, and editorial boards across the state have grown snarky toward Noem's position.
The pull-over and arrest
In USDA said states can't block hemp drivers. So what happened in South Dakota?, Forum communications capitol reporter Dana Ferguson reported:
Colorado driver hauling nearly 300 pounds of hemp to Minnesota was pulled over last month in South Dakota despite an order from the U.S. Department of Agriculture not to block hemp shipments.
South Dakota troopers on July 16 pulled over Robert Herzberg, 41, as he transported hemp to Minneapolis, a Minnesota hemp trade group said and South Dakota Public Safety Secretary Craig Price confirmed to lawmakers on Monday, Aug. 19.
Herzberg was pulled over and charged with possession of marijuana, possession with intent to distribute, unauthorized ingestion of a controlled substance and ingesting a substance, according to an amended complaint filed Tuesday in Jackson County. A trooper in his report of the arrest said he smelled marijuana in the vehicle when he pulled Herzberg over for speeding and upon inspecting the rental car found two white grain bags full of a "green leafy substance" that appeared to be raw marijuana.
"This person who was driving faces very severe criminal penalties if they’re prosecuted under the existing marijuana laws, and that would be sort of a personal tragedy on that level,” said Joe Radinovich, executive director of the Minnesota Hemp Association. “My expectation is that when South Dakota can move forward with testing this material that they’ll find out that it is legally grown and certified hemp and that they’ll drop those criminal charges.”
Under the 2018 Farm Bill, hemp was legalized at the federal level and terms were set for its growth, transport and sale. Hemp and cannabis are in the same family, but industrial hemp plants can't contain more than 0.3% THC, the ingredient that causes psychological effects in marijuana, under federal law.
And in May, the USDA issued a memo clarifying that states, Native American tribes and other sovereign nations have the right to bypass legalizing hemp, but they can't block the transportation of hemp through a state or tribal territory.
Public Safety Secretary Price on Monday told state lawmakers that a field-test marked the bud positive for marijuana and for THC, but police have had trouble finding a lab to test the 292 pounds of hemp for THC content.
Meanwhile, the loss to the Minnesota-based extractor company expecting the hemp exceeded $36,000 for the seized buds and legal fees, Radinovich said. The estimated value of that hemp after processing was $100,000.
“The member involved here did nothing wrong,” Radinovich said. Despite that, the association told members to bypass South Dakota for the time being, he said. . . .
Forty-seven states have approved the growth of industrial hemp, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But South Dakota remains among the few that haven't. Gov. Kristi Noem earlier this year vetoed a proposal to legalize industrial hemp. . . .
The Dakotafest panel
We'd mentioned that the dirty hippies running Farmfest in Minnesota (an LLC owned by the American Farm Bureau Federation) featured a hemp growing demonstration plot. Things were not so blooming in South Dakota's version of the farm show, Dakotafest.
In the Rapid City Journal, Forum News Service's Ellen Bardash reports in South Dakota's hemp debate moves to Dakotafest:
South Dakota's ongoing conversation about the possibility of legalizing industrial hemp took center stage Wednesday morning at a Dakotafest panel in Mitchell.
The majority of the discussion, like that around House Bill 1191 that was vetoed in March by Gov. Kristi Noem, centered around how hemp might be regulated if a program were to begin in South Dakota and whether the potential benefits to farmers outweigh the strain it could put on law enforcement.
"We've had the benefit, and will have the benefit, of relying on states like Minnesota, North Dakota, Kentucky, even Colorado — they're the ones that have been doing this for the past five years," said Rep. Oren Lesmeister, R-Parade, the primary sponsor of HB 1191. "We will learn from their mistakes. We'll take that into account. The issues that keep arising, I think we can deal with them. I think we'll be fine."
South Dakota is one of three states that does not allow hemp to be grown. The others are Idaho and Mississippi.
South Dakota House of Representatives Majority Leader Lee Qualm, R-Platte, said there are a number of benefits that South Dakotans could reap with legal hemp, both because of the plant's variety of uses after it's harvested and because of the economic effects it could have on the farmers who choose to plant it.
"This is an agricultural product that we're trying to deal with," he said. "Will it have social implications? Yeah, it probably will, because of the nature of the beast. But with that said, I don't think it's things that we can't overcome, that we can't deal with, that we can't work with."
Indeed, 47 states seem to have found a path forward. Bardash continues:
Craig Price, secretary of the South Dakota Department of Public Safety, said legalizing hemp would put the state's law enforcement officers in a difficult position, as there is currently no technology that would allow them to distinguish hemp from marijuana without sending a sample to a lab and waiting for the results.
Current law enforcement equipment can test for the presence of THC, but not the concentration, which is what differentiates hemp from marijuana. The two products come from the same plant, but a plant with less than 0.3% of THC is hemp, and anything above that percentage is considered marijuana. . . .
Price also expressed concern that legalizing hemp could lead to the decriminalization of marijuana, either as a legislative stepping stone or by causing prosecutors to pursue fewer marijuana-related cases once they have to take the time to prove that a substance is marijuana and not hemp. Lesmeister and Qualm both said they would not support the decriminalization of medical or recreational marijuana.
"I think that we're in a very good position in South Dakota," Price said. "We've held a firm line where we haven't taken that step towards the legalization of marijuana, either recreational or medical, and I'm just really cautious on taking any steps which might lead towards that. I believe this could be one of those steps." . . .
Okay then.
Editorial boards share embarrassment
Editorial boards across the state are not pleased with the Noem administration's inability to walk and chew gum for an agricultural issue 47 other states have managed to tackle. The Rapid City Journal editorial board writes in OURS: Noem should present genuine arguments against legal hemp:
If Gov. Kristi Noem’s team could brainstorm 50 additional questions to impede the legalization of industrial hemp, she could create a novelty calendar covering all 365 days.
Question No. 1 for Jan. 1: “What will USDA requirements be for testing protocols?”
No. 236 for Aug. 23: “How long will plants be allowed to be stored?”
No. 315 for Nov. 10: “Do troopers process the tests or are other staff required to complete the process?”
Not that a hemp calendar would sell any better than Noem’s recent list of 315 questions did to a key Republican.
“It wasn’t questions that were really relevant to where we are at,” said House Majority Leader Lee Qualm, explaining why he didn’t pass them along to members of the Industrial Hemp Summer Study.
Legislators seldom deal with this level of granular detail. Bureaucrats do. Lawmakers address the big picture with help from experienced professionals.
And officials from states actually working with hemp programs testified they have encountered no difficulties with hemp implementation, and no blurring of lines between industrial hemp programs and efforts to legalize marijuana. Zero problems raised by officials who have worked with something will always outweigh 315 potential problems from those who have not.
“I’m not trying to encourage or discourage anybody from growing it; I’m just trying to give ‘em the facts,” said Doug Goehring, North Dakota commissioner of agriculture. . . .
Read the rest at the Journal. The editorial board of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader write in Editorial: Time to end Noem's 'reefer madness':
Every so often, a news story emerges from South Dakota that underscores the relative lack of enlightenment among state leadership. The fact that we’ve become accustomed to it doesn’t mean it should continue.
The latest face palm occurred when a Minnesota hemp delivery driver was pulled over while transporting nearly 300 pounds of industrial hemp through South Dakota in July. He was arrested and charged with marijuana possession after a state trooper found two bags full of a “green leafy substance” that the driver was transporting from Denver to a processor in Minneapolis.
City Council: Sioux Falls would benefit from hemp
The Minnesota Hemp Association quickly called out South Dakota for violating the 2018 Farm Bill, which federally legalized industrial hemp to be used in products such as clothing, food and construction materials. Federal guidelines assert that states cannot prohibit interstate transportation of hemp that meets legal standards, including a low threshold of THC, the substance that produces the “high” associated with marijuana.
That’s not a problem in most cases, since 47 states have passed laws to allow for industrial hemp cultivation and production, giving farmers an alternate crop and revenue source in challenging times. . . .
There's more at the Argus Leader. In the Vermillion Plain Talk, columnist David Lias writes in Please Remember, Gov. Noem: Marijuana And Hemp Are Not The Same:
Let’s take a look at what’s going on in Colorado’s agriculture industry right now.
Blue Forest Farms used to grow hundreds of acres of kale, squash and pumpkins. But it has since switched its focus to a different cash crop: hemp.
The farm, which is located in Erie, Colorado, has dedicated 150 acres to growing hemp so far -- and it's still planting. "We're now expanding it to 1,000 acres," said McKenzie Mann, Blue Forest's production manager in a CNN Business report published last April.
About 500 acres will come from land previously used to grow kale and squash.
Farmers across the United States have been rushing into hemp ever since President Donald Trump signed the Farm Bill into law last December. The legislation removed hemp from the government's controlled drug category, triggering a surge in demand for cannabidiol, or CBD, a chemical that is derived from hemp and marijuana plants.
CBD is non-psychoactive, meaning it won't get you high. (THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the chemical in cannabis that does that). Instead, CBD extracted from hemp is marketed for everything from pain relief to reducing inflammation, stress and anxiety and it is sold in an array of products from shampoos and oils to pet treats and granola.
We wish we could say there’s a rush going on in South Dakota, too. But there’s not. Our state currently seems mired, instead, in a painfully slow, molasses in January, herd of snails through peanut butter process that appears to be far from reaching a conclusion.
The South Dakota Legislature passed a bill to legalize industrial hemp during the 2019 session earlier this year, but Gov. Kristi Noem vetoed it.
South Dakota lawmakers are currently conducting a summer study of the issue, gathering information so that legislation can be crafted that hopefully will satisfy South Dakota lawmakers and the governor. . . .
South Dakota Farmers Union President Doug Sombke said members of his organization are watching the process closely.
"Legalizing the growing of industrial hemp has been part of our policy since 2018, because our family farmers and ranchers need new opportunities. And industrial hemp is a new, potentially high-value opportunity," he said in a statement.
We suggest that Gov. Noem adopt the same stance as Kentucky’s state agriculture commissioner: commit South Dakota to treating hemp as a farm commodity and not as a step toward legal marijuana.
Seriously, Noem's stance about a valuable farm product is not merely a face-palm moment, but a slap in the face to farmers, who could use a valuable crop to add to their rotations. And it's not a partisan issue. Uffda.
Photo: Kristi Noem, the governor with Michele Bachmann eyes. She says the state has more questions than answers when it comes to industrial hemp and that “Other states are struggling to implement their industrial hemp laws," according to Noem has hundreds of questions about industrial hemp. Photo credit:SD Gov/MGN via KOTA TV.
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