On Friday, the House passed Senate Bill 220, the Industrial Hemp Development Act, covering the sale of kratom and other hemp-derived cannabinoids including delta-8 and delta-10.
Updated on Saturday, March. 11, 2023 at 5:20 p.m.
The political ping-pong match that is the final day of session is starting to provide results. Saturday afternoon, the Senate received several bills from the House of Delegates and concurred on their amendments.
Senate Bill 220, the Industrial Hemp Development Act, became law, as did Senate Bill 534, which allows cities to designate outdoor areas for the sale, service and consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Senate Bill 422, which requires public schools to publish curriculum online at the start of each school year also became law.
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On Friday, the House passed Senate Bill 220, the Industrial Hemp Development Act, covering the sale of kratom and other hemp-derived cannabinoids including delta-8 and delta-10. The bill limits the sale to those 21 years old and up. Unapproved products are considered contraband with criminal penalties for unlawful possession, distribution and sales.
The House amended the bill to exempt products with no THC, derived mostly from the plant stems, such as clothing and flip-flops.
The vote was 92 to 4 and it returned to the Senate.
Online Curriculum
Senate Bill 422 requires each school to publish its up-to-date curriculum on the school’s or County’s website. This was recommended by Gov. Jim Justice during his State of the State address. New or revised curriculum would have to be posted within 30 days of adoption.
Some delegates said the bill duplicates what is already accessible. Others said working parents struggle to attend teachers meetings, and a curriculum posting should be easily accessible.
The vote was 75-21. SB 422 returns to the Senate.
Outdoor Alcohol
Senate Bill 534 allows cities to designate outdoor areas for the sale, service and consumption of alcoholic beverages through city ordinance and state-licensing. Del. Tom Fast, R-Fayette, objected to allowing free alcohol samples at fairs and festivals.
Del. Bryan Ward, R-Pendleton, also objected to government promotion of alcohol.
“I would just suggest maybe next year we can try to legalize prostitution and the state could just be the pimps and we could make some money,” Ward said.
The vote was 59-32 and it returned to the Senate .
Campaign Contributions
After an abrupt and vote-turning debate, the House advanced Senate Bill 508, increasing campaign contribution limits that trigger reporting requirements.
Currently, any person who contributes more than $500 in a three-month period, or $200 in any one month, to present a program to the public designed to influence legislation must register with the state Ethics Commission as a sponsor of a “grassroots lobbying campaign” under state law.
Additionally the campaign sponsor must report the names and addresses of each person contributing $25 or more to the campaign to the Ethics Commission under current state law.
Under SB 508, those reporting thresholds are raised to $5,000 and $1,000, respectively. The $25 threshold would be raised to $1,000.
Bill opponents said the measure would enhance dark money spending, referring to a term used for undisclosed spending to sway voters’ opinions.
SB 508 goes to the governor for signature.
Defining a Minor
House Bill 3190 amends the state’s definition of a minor to include adults who use electronic devices to catch child predators.
Trump explained that the current legal definition of a minor is so specific, it does not allow law enforcement to arrest predators that have been caught luring or soliciting minors online during stings where officers impersonate minors.
While in committee, an amendment was proposed to the bill that would removed the marital exemption for sexual assault from state code. The amendment failed on the Senate floor because it was not germane to the original bill.
HB 3190 now goes back to the House for concurrence.
The Senate Judiciary Committee spent close to three hours Thursday afternoon discussing a committee substitute for Senate Bill 546, which would update the state’s list of controlled substances.
About a dozen community members were invited to the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday afternoon to discuss issues around the banning of three substances in a meeting that stretched for hours, before a confusing ending.
The committee spent close to three hours discussing a committee substitute for Senate Bill 546, which would update the state’s list of controlled substances.
The bill would add dozens of substances to the state code, but the committee’s discussion focused on three substances: the hemp-derived cannabinoids Delta 8 and Delta 10, as well as the derivative of a Southeast Asian plant with opioid-like properties known as Kratom.
Sen. Mike Stuart, R-Kanawha, is the bill’s lead sponsor. Throughout discussion, he compared the current situation of Delta 8, Delta 10 and Kratom in West Virginia to the start of the opioid epidemic.
“We’re seeing similarities today to what we saw at the beginning of the opiate crisis,” Stuart said. “If we could go back in time and make a change to what happened to this countryside in West Virginia, I think we would have made those changes.”
As written, the bill would put the three substances in Schedule 1, along with opiates, methamphetamine and psychedelics such as LSD. Stuart’s argument, supported by several guests including a police lieutenant, a psychiatrist specializing in addiction and the Poison Control Center, revolved around not only the danger of the substances, but specifically their ease of availability.
“The drug normalization of America knows no partisanship or socio-economical notation,” Stuart said. “This is not going to be an easy vote, because it’s become so widely dispersed throughout West Virginia.”
Other senators asked why the substances under discussion didn’t merit regulation instead of a full ban. Sen. Mike Caputo, D-Marion, asked as much of Amy Minor, the director of regulatory and environmental affairs with the West Virginia Department of Agriculture.
Minor’s office already regulates the legitimate production and sale of industrial hemp products in the state, including Delta 8 and Delta 10. Some Delta 8 and Delta 10 products sold in the state are illicit, and there is currently no regulation of Kratom in West Virginia.
“You definitely support an age restriction just the same as we do alcohol, same as we do tobacco, same as we do medical cannabis?” Caputo asked.
Minor said the Department of Agriculture was in favor of an age restriction of 18 years and older.
“Yeah, I don’t know why we don’t have it for this. I would rather see us, Mr. Chairman, moving in a direction of a regulation rather than what direction we’re moving here, but I’m just one opinion,” Caputo said.
Caputo’s point was supported by several guests, including an industrial hemp farmer and a woman who uses Kratom to mitigate symptoms of Lyme Disease.
More than two hours into the meeting, there were still several witnesses who had not been heard and the chairman, Sen. Charles Trump, R-Morgan, indicated a desire to adjourn and reconvene Friday to continue hearing testimony. However, the committee was thrown into procedural confusion after Sen. Laura Chapman, R-Ohio, unexpectedly moved to vote on the bill, ending public testimony and committee discussion.
After several other procedural motions, including a motion to adjourn the meeting in lieu of a vote, Trump was required to consult with the Senate parliamentarian, who informed him that the motion to vote would need to be carried through.
“I have no no more to say except for we heard all this testimony. I think that we’re all tired, but we all know how we’re going to vote on this and we should just agree to the language,” Chapman said.
The committee agreed on the language of the committee substitute for Senate Bill 546 and moved to report the same to the House. However, no bill was reported to the Senate from the Judiciary Committee Friday morning.
A company owned by former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson is teaming up with a West Virginia cannabis farm.
News outlets report officials announced Monday that Tyson Holistic and West Virginia’s Almost Heaven Agriculture are partnering to put a hemp extraction facility at the latter’s existing greenhouse.
Tyson Holistic Chief Operating Officer Kevin Bell says they chose an existing license holder for a joint venture, as the state only gives licenses twice a year. He touted the uses of medicinal hemp, which retails for a higher price than industrial hemp, but says the state currently has no extraction facility.
Bell says the company plans to invest “whatever it takes” in the West Virginia hemp industry. The company is also looking at reclamation land to grow crops.
As the number of coal mining jobs continues to decline in central Appalachia, hemp is getting a lot of attention as one way to diversify eastern Kentucky’s post-coal economy. But the region’s burgeoning hemp industry is also riddled with uncertainty. The lack of land suitable for growing hemp, and its association with marijuana pose some significant challenges.
Neil Spears is a resident of Pikeville, Kentucky. He’s one of the pioneers in Kentucky’s burgeoning hemp industry.
On a hot Friday afternoon in September, Spears drives off a paved road, through a creek, and up to his friend’s hemp farm near Pikeville. It’s nestled among the ancient mountains of Appalachia.
“I used to tell everyone in Colorado, they’d talk about the mountains in Colorado, well, you all got majestic mountains, we’ve got beautiful mountains. That’s two different things. Awe-inspiring and beautiful are two different things,” he says.
Spears has a goatee and hair that brushes his shoulders. He walks through the five-acre plot in his beat-up straw hat, watching out for rattlesnakes.
Credit Brittany Greeson / The GroundTruth Project
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The GroundTruth Project
Hemp grown for CBD production and testing is seen at the Robinson Center for Appalachian Resource Sustainability in Quicksand, Ky., on Monday, September 25, 2017.
It’s not easy to see the hemp plants. Most of this year’s crop has been choked out by weeds.
“It’s not what I dreamed of,” Spears said as he walked through the field. “But first year out, you’ve got a crop up. Albeit a small crop, we’ve got a crop up.”
Spears grew up in Pikeville, pursued a career as a singer-songwriter, and eventually left to work in the marijuana industry in Colorado.
“A good friend of mine said, ‘Do you want to come home and get ready for what’s coming and start growing hemp?’ I said yeah. So came back last November and here we are.”
Hemp can be used for a wide range of products — plastics, health foods, biofuels. Spears and his friend plan on selling the fiber part of the crop to a processing facility in North Carolina later this fall.
But the most lucrative product is cannabidiol oil, or CBD oil. Spears is excited about their plan to build a 10,000 square-foot greenhouse to start growing hemp specifically for CBD oil.
CBD is different from THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the chemical in marijuana that gets you high. But some studies suggest it can be used to treat epilepsy, anxiety and depression. All these claims need more scientific research, but in the meantime, there’s a growing market for CBD oil.
“I’d like to see eastern Kentucky to be a big grower of hemp, you know, as a whole. This is something that can start making some people some money. I’m interested in helping whoever in eastern Kentucky wants to grow hemp, grow hemp,” Spears said.
But for hemp growers wanting to cash in on CBD oil, there’s risk involved. The hemp strains with the highest CBD levels also have higher levels of THC. And if the THC content is more than three-tenths of one percent, state law requires the grower to burn the crop.
Credit Brittany Greeson / The GroundTruth Project
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The GroundTruth Project
A highway is seen from the top of a mountain in Pike County, Ky., on Wednesday, September 27, 2017.
About an hour and a half away from Pikeville, in Jackson, researchers at the University of Kentucky are experimenting with creating hemp varieties more suitable for growing in the state.
University of Kentucky agronomist David Williams inspects one of his hemp research plots at the Robinson Center for Appalachian Resource Sustainability. The spindly, green stalks and the arrow-shaped leaves give off an earthy, slightly sweet smell.
“I don’t know how tall this plant is, but it was planted at the end of June. How tall would it be if it were planted 60 days earlier? We’ll find out next year,” Williams says as he examines a hemp plant. “The most important part about our work is determining which varieties are best adapted to our latitudes and our climate for optimum yields.”
This research would have been illegal a few years ago.
Hemp has a long history in the United States.
From the sails and rigging on the USS Constitution — America’s oldest naval ship — to the canvas on covered wagons heading out west, hemp is deeply tied to our nation’s past.
And Kentucky has played a vital role in that. While some was originally grown on small family farms, the majority of the nation’s hemp was produced in the Bluegrass Region of central Kentucky as a plantation crop.
“Hemp production is very tedious, very labor-intensive. One needs not look very deeply to understand that, that history is inextricably connected to slavery,” Williams said.
Hemp production in Kentucky dropped off after slavery was abolished and cheaper imported fibers became available. Except for a short-lived revival during World War II, hemp production was discouraged and finally banned because of its connection to marijuana.
Although CBD oil from hemp cannot get you high, it was still grouped in the same category as marijuana and heroin.
Then came the 2014 Farm Bill, which allowed certain states to grow hemp for the first time in about six decades. A number of Kentucky lawmakers said hemp would create thousands of jobs, and the Kentucky Department of Agriculture launched an aggressive research program.
“By most measures, Kentucky leads the nation in industrial hemp research,” said David Williams, the University of Kentucky agronomist. “The Kentucky Department of Agriculture has done a fantastic job managing what anyone would consider a very complex situation.”
And it is complex.
Those who want to grow or process hemp need a license from the Drug Enforcement Administration. And hemp seeds and plants cannot be taken across state lines.
Still, there were about 200 approved growers this year in Kentucky who – in total – planted almost 3,000 acres of industrial hemp. Some was for fiber, which includes everything from T-shirts to dashboards, but most of it was for CBD oil.
Almost all the hemp production was in central and western Kentucky, where the average farm is much larger — 100 acres or more. In the eastern, more mountainous side of the state, farms are smaller than 10 acres.
“We can’t expect eastern Kentucky and West Virginia to become major contributors to hemp as a commodity crop,” Williams said. “That being said, plant breeding or certified seed production [create] situations where you don’t have to have hundreds of acres to be profitable.”
In other words, Williams says eastern Kentucky doesn’t have the terrain to grow hemp for large-scale industrial products. But producers in the region could potentially grow hemp for the seeds or seedlings, and sell those to farmers in the central and western part of the state.
Credit Brittany Greeson / The GroundTruth Project
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The GroundTruth Project
The remains of a strip mine are seen from a mountain top in Pike County, Ky., on Wednesday, September 27, 2017.
With limited flat land, some entrepreneurs thought former strip mines could become farms.
Nathan Hall is president of Reclaim Appalachia – a nonprofit working to develop economic opportunities on former coal mining land.
“Hemp has this reputation of being a hardy plant that grows just about anywhere … there’s a big difference between a plant that will technically grow anywhere versus a plant that you can get profitable production per acre anywhere based on the type of soils you’re working with,” Hall said.
He tried growing hemp on an old strip mine site, but it didn’t go well.
“There is no topsoil at all. You’re planting into rock,” he said.
Hall says despite the small size of farms in mountainous eastern Kentucky, growing hemp for CBD oil in the fertile valleys could be economically viable … with a couple of caveats.
“We need to get clarity around the legal issues surrounding CBD; that still seems to be a bit undecided in terms of whether we can sell across state lines, with the current Administration where things like CBD might be deemed illegal at some point, there’s just a lot of uncertainty. There’s a lot of risk,” he said.
Despite those risks, Neal Spears from Pikeville is willing to bet on it.
“This is about helping people,” he said. “This is about making people better and making this region better.”
This story came to us from Crossing the Divide, a cross-country reporting road trip from WGBH and The GroundTruth Project. Rachel’s on a team of five reporters exploring issues that divide us and stories that unite us. Follow their trip across America at xthedivide.org.
