Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I rise today with four of my colleagues to offer a bipartisan amendment that simply requires the DEA to comply with Federal law. Despite clear language in the recently passed farm bill that specifically allows State agricultural 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 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 research pilot program. What a waste of time, money, and the court system's limited resources. {time} 2145 States cannot launch industrial hemp pilot programs if the DEA seizes the seeds before they reach their destination, and although the DEA did recently agree to release the seeds, my amendment ensures that this type of DEA action won't happen again. If this were simply about seeds, I wouldn't be here. We have got that resolved, but there are further issues. There are more issues. For instance, the DEA has been very ambiguous on whether 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 is not like the government has farms. The farm bill is clear on this language. The farm bill says that the State authorities shall register these sites, not the DEA; yet the DEA refuses to acknowledge that.…”