Researchers in several states soon should be able to legally grow hemp for the first time in decades because of legislation approved today in the US Senate.
While the new exception to the US law prohibiting growing hemp will be limited and will not affect US government prohibitions related to other substances under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the exception is significant as a rare instance where a prohibition under the CSA — a statute at the core of the US drug war — is limited instead of expanded.
The legal change, now passed by both chambers of Congress and on its way to President Barack Obama for signing into law, may be a harbinger of the dismantling of the US government’s drug war mentality that has reigned since President Richard Nixon declared in June of 1971:
America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.
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