Jacob Redmond
Well-Known Member
As lawmakers attempt to clarify regulations allowing the production of hemp by the state's medical marijuana dispensaries, farmers remain concerned about the encroachment of the Department of Public Safety into the growth of an agricultural crop.
The Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules (LCAR) heard further testimony Thursday on a proposed administrative-rule revision by the Department of Public Safety that would, among other things, allow the state's four marijuana dispensaries to grow hemp. Controversy over that provision emerged after a VTDigger article reported on discussions at the Aug. 27 hearing of the same committee. DPS has now proposed an addition to the revision that addresses — but does not appear to satisfy - the critics' concerns.
The revision would allow the dispensaries to "acquire, possess, cultivate, manufacture, transfer, transport, supply, sell, and dispense hemp and hemp-infused products for symptom relief." Although not mentioned in the draft, the primary product concerned is cannabidiol, or CBD, an oil used in the treatment of epilepsy.
The plant in question, cannabis sativa, is illegal, with very limited exceptions, under federal law. However, Vermont law makes a distinction between two kinds of cannabis — hemp, which contains no more than 0.3 percent by dry weight of tetrahydrocannabinol, the chemical which produces the euphoric reaction; and marijuana, which has more than 0.3 percent THC. Vermont law allows for the growing of hemp, although its cultivation has been stymied by the federal statute, which is overseen by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
Farmers already dealing with the DEA don't want "to see another level of complexity coming at them from the state level," Andrea Stander, executive director of Rural Vermont, told VTDigger.
Given the controversy surrounding the rule, however, DPS marijuana program administrator Lindsey Wells has stressed that the regulations affect only dispensaries that wish to grow hemp, not farmers who grow hemp under the terms of a program overseen by the Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets (AAFM).
The draft of the rule revision contains nothing that prohibits farmers from growing hemp, but it imposes strict terms on dispensaries that want to grow it, and farmers are nervous that the same requirements, which Stander described as "onerous," will ultimately be applied to them, since they are handling the same crop.
The draft rule requires that dispensaries guard their hemp crops with security systems that include "exterior lighting sufficient to deter nuisance activity and facilitate surveillance . . . [and a] device or a series of devices, including at least, a signal system interconnected with a radio frequency method such as cellular, private radio signals, or other mechanical or electronic device to detect an unauthorized intrusion."
The uneasiness among growers stems from the fact that the draft rule, as originally worded, exempted dispensaries that grow hemp from the agricultural regulations on hemp-growing but did not not specifically extend farmers an analogous exemption from the rule and its strictures on how dispensaries must grow the crop.
Attempt To Clarify
An email statement from legislative counsel Erik FitzPatrick to Sen. David Zuckerman, P/D-Chittenden, and obtained by VTDigger suggested that the growers' concerns about the rule's applicability to them were overblown, but also noted that the draft rule lacked clarity.
In the email, which grew out of an approach by growers to Zuckerman, FitzPatrick suggested adding language "along the lines of: 'These rules shall apply only to the medicinal use of marijuana and hemp . . . and shall not apply to or impose any requirements on the agricultural use of hemp.'"
At Thursday's hearing, Wells reacted to the criticisms by presenting an addition to the draft. The added wording states that "these rules are not intended to impose any requirements on the agricultural use of hemp" under the agriculture statutes.
The addition did not make much of an impression on hearing witness and Addison County grower Netaka White, who said in an interview that "there is still this effort being made to move some aspect of hemp cultivation to the Department of Public Safety and that, I think, is wrong. They [AAFM] are abdicating their responsibility."
In administering the 2013 law allowing the cultivation of hemp, AAFM employs a much looser approach, the chief requirements being only that the grower plunk down a $25 annual registration fee and notify the agency of his or her name and address and the acreage of hemp to be grown. The agency does not impose elaborate security arrangements for hemp cultivation, leaving the electronics and arc lights a matter of the grower's discretion and ability to pay for them.
While it is difficult to understand why Farmer A can grow a crop more or less freely — almost as one might grow corn, for example - while Dispensary A needs security provisions that one would associate with a prison, Wells termed it a jurisdictional issue.
"That farmer resides under the Agency of Ag's rules and statutes," she said. "I only have the authority to deal with regulations for the four dispensaries."
While the new language submitted by Wells appears to remove any vagueness as to the farmer's rights, the question of unequal treatment of parties engaged in precisely the same activity remains. That raises, for some farmers, the possibility that hemp cultivated by growers who do not have to invest in the pricey security arrangement, and therefore can produce the crop more cheaply, would sell it to the dispensaries.
In written testimony submitted to LCAR, Chittenden County grower Joel Bedard put another possibility on the table — the creation of a new category of entity that would process hemp and fall under DPS jurisdiction.
"Create a category of business that leaves the farmer out of the equation, and places the responsibility and regulatory compliance upon those that would perform the extraction and bring the CBD product to market," he wrote.
Wells said after the meeting, however, that the proposed rule and the existing legislation would in themselves allow dispensaries to act as processors who could purchase the crop from farmers.
Interviewed by phone while in the midst of harvesting his hemp, Windsor County grower Ken Manfredi counted himself among those seeing a failure to engage stakeholders in the rulemaking process, which had reached LCAR before getting much public exposure.
"If it hadn't been for VTDigger, no one would have known this is happening. It really went under the radar," he said.
Final action on the rule was deferred until October, given the need to tweak the hemp language and other provisions in the 54 pages of regulations — and the rulemaking may ultimately prove so intractable that the matter goes back to the Legislature - but LCAR members voiced no objections to the DPS addition to the hemp language.
The debate over whether the rule will apply to farmers appeared to constitute only a growing pain in the process of establishing a legal framework for a nascent industry that could, in the future, encompass recreational marijuana in addition to medicinal marijuana and hemp.
News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Vermont: Hemp Growers Concerned About New Dispensary Rules
Author: C.B. Hall
Contact: Contact VT Digger
Photo Credit: Ken Manfredi
Website: VT Digger
The Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules (LCAR) heard further testimony Thursday on a proposed administrative-rule revision by the Department of Public Safety that would, among other things, allow the state's four marijuana dispensaries to grow hemp. Controversy over that provision emerged after a VTDigger article reported on discussions at the Aug. 27 hearing of the same committee. DPS has now proposed an addition to the revision that addresses — but does not appear to satisfy - the critics' concerns.
The revision would allow the dispensaries to "acquire, possess, cultivate, manufacture, transfer, transport, supply, sell, and dispense hemp and hemp-infused products for symptom relief." Although not mentioned in the draft, the primary product concerned is cannabidiol, or CBD, an oil used in the treatment of epilepsy.
The plant in question, cannabis sativa, is illegal, with very limited exceptions, under federal law. However, Vermont law makes a distinction between two kinds of cannabis — hemp, which contains no more than 0.3 percent by dry weight of tetrahydrocannabinol, the chemical which produces the euphoric reaction; and marijuana, which has more than 0.3 percent THC. Vermont law allows for the growing of hemp, although its cultivation has been stymied by the federal statute, which is overseen by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
Farmers already dealing with the DEA don't want "to see another level of complexity coming at them from the state level," Andrea Stander, executive director of Rural Vermont, told VTDigger.
Given the controversy surrounding the rule, however, DPS marijuana program administrator Lindsey Wells has stressed that the regulations affect only dispensaries that wish to grow hemp, not farmers who grow hemp under the terms of a program overseen by the Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets (AAFM).
The draft of the rule revision contains nothing that prohibits farmers from growing hemp, but it imposes strict terms on dispensaries that want to grow it, and farmers are nervous that the same requirements, which Stander described as "onerous," will ultimately be applied to them, since they are handling the same crop.
The draft rule requires that dispensaries guard their hemp crops with security systems that include "exterior lighting sufficient to deter nuisance activity and facilitate surveillance . . . [and a] device or a series of devices, including at least, a signal system interconnected with a radio frequency method such as cellular, private radio signals, or other mechanical or electronic device to detect an unauthorized intrusion."
The uneasiness among growers stems from the fact that the draft rule, as originally worded, exempted dispensaries that grow hemp from the agricultural regulations on hemp-growing but did not not specifically extend farmers an analogous exemption from the rule and its strictures on how dispensaries must grow the crop.
Attempt To Clarify
An email statement from legislative counsel Erik FitzPatrick to Sen. David Zuckerman, P/D-Chittenden, and obtained by VTDigger suggested that the growers' concerns about the rule's applicability to them were overblown, but also noted that the draft rule lacked clarity.
In the email, which grew out of an approach by growers to Zuckerman, FitzPatrick suggested adding language "along the lines of: 'These rules shall apply only to the medicinal use of marijuana and hemp . . . and shall not apply to or impose any requirements on the agricultural use of hemp.'"
At Thursday's hearing, Wells reacted to the criticisms by presenting an addition to the draft. The added wording states that "these rules are not intended to impose any requirements on the agricultural use of hemp" under the agriculture statutes.
The addition did not make much of an impression on hearing witness and Addison County grower Netaka White, who said in an interview that "there is still this effort being made to move some aspect of hemp cultivation to the Department of Public Safety and that, I think, is wrong. They [AAFM] are abdicating their responsibility."
In administering the 2013 law allowing the cultivation of hemp, AAFM employs a much looser approach, the chief requirements being only that the grower plunk down a $25 annual registration fee and notify the agency of his or her name and address and the acreage of hemp to be grown. The agency does not impose elaborate security arrangements for hemp cultivation, leaving the electronics and arc lights a matter of the grower's discretion and ability to pay for them.
While it is difficult to understand why Farmer A can grow a crop more or less freely — almost as one might grow corn, for example - while Dispensary A needs security provisions that one would associate with a prison, Wells termed it a jurisdictional issue.
"That farmer resides under the Agency of Ag's rules and statutes," she said. "I only have the authority to deal with regulations for the four dispensaries."
While the new language submitted by Wells appears to remove any vagueness as to the farmer's rights, the question of unequal treatment of parties engaged in precisely the same activity remains. That raises, for some farmers, the possibility that hemp cultivated by growers who do not have to invest in the pricey security arrangement, and therefore can produce the crop more cheaply, would sell it to the dispensaries.
In written testimony submitted to LCAR, Chittenden County grower Joel Bedard put another possibility on the table — the creation of a new category of entity that would process hemp and fall under DPS jurisdiction.
"Create a category of business that leaves the farmer out of the equation, and places the responsibility and regulatory compliance upon those that would perform the extraction and bring the CBD product to market," he wrote.
Wells said after the meeting, however, that the proposed rule and the existing legislation would in themselves allow dispensaries to act as processors who could purchase the crop from farmers.
Interviewed by phone while in the midst of harvesting his hemp, Windsor County grower Ken Manfredi counted himself among those seeing a failure to engage stakeholders in the rulemaking process, which had reached LCAR before getting much public exposure.
"If it hadn't been for VTDigger, no one would have known this is happening. It really went under the radar," he said.
Final action on the rule was deferred until October, given the need to tweak the hemp language and other provisions in the 54 pages of regulations — and the rulemaking may ultimately prove so intractable that the matter goes back to the Legislature - but LCAR members voiced no objections to the DPS addition to the hemp language.
The debate over whether the rule will apply to farmers appeared to constitute only a growing pain in the process of establishing a legal framework for a nascent industry that could, in the future, encompass recreational marijuana in addition to medicinal marijuana and hemp.
News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Vermont: Hemp Growers Concerned About New Dispensary Rules
Author: C.B. Hall
Contact: Contact VT Digger
Photo Credit: Ken Manfredi
Website: VT Digger
