Hemp bill’s fate lies in governor’s hands.

Proposal, which allows research programs for plant, clears Senate with comfortable bipartisan vote

A bill to establish research programs for industrial hemp in New Mexico is heading to the governor’s desk.

House Bill 144 on Friday cleared the Senate in a bipartisan vote of 30-12. Members of the House of Representatives concurred with a small technical amendment to the bill hours later, so now it’s up to Gov. Susana Martinez to decide if the bill becomes law.

Martinez, a Republican who spent 25 years as a prosecutor before being elected governor, vetoed a hemp research bill two years ago. She believed the earlier proposal could complicate life for police because hemp is a cousin of the marijuana plant.

Five Republican senators — Bill Payne and Mark Moores of Albuquerque, Craig Brandt of Rio Rancho, Steve Neville of Aztec and Cliff Pirtle of Roswell — joined 25 Democrats on Friday in supporting the hemp proposal. One Democrat, Sen. George Muñoz of Gallup, and 11 Republicans voted against the bill.

It calls for the state Agriculture Department to administer a program in which industrial hemp could be grown to study the cultivation and marketing of the fibrous plant “or any other purpose allowed by federal regulation or law.”

Industrial hemp uses half as much water as wheat and a quarter as much as alfalfa. It is used in a wide array of products, from clothes and cosmetics to food and fiberboard.

Hemp is related to marijuana, looking and smelling the same. But industrial hemp has only a tiny fraction of THC, the chemical that intoxicates marijuana users.

Partly because of that relationship to marijuana, the federal government for decades prohibited growing hemp.

But in early 2014 Congress approved a farm bill that removed industrial hemp grown for research purposes from the Controlled Substances Act. Since then, 32 states have approved legislation allowing hemp research.

Some states have gone even further. The National Council of State Legislatures says at least 16 states have legalized industrial hemp production for commercial purposes.

Colorado produces more than half of the industrial hemp grown in the United States. Marijuana also is legal in Colorado.

And Kentucky has nearly tripled its hemp farming.

The Associated Press reported in January that Kentucky had approved 209 applications from growers, allowing them to produce up to 12,800 acres of hemp for research purposes this year. That’s up from 2016 when the state approved 139 growers to plant up to 4,500 acres. Kentucky’s most prominent hemp supporters are the state’s two Republican U.S. senators, Rand Paul and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Backers of hemp research in New Mexico say they want to make sure that farmers in this state are positioned to take advantage of a hemp industry once Congress decides to remove restrictions.

HB 144, sponsored by Reps. Bill Gomez, D-La Mesa, Antonio “Moe” Maestas, D-Albuquerque, and Rick Little, R-Chaparral, is the second hemp bill approved by the New Mexico Senate. Last month senators voted 37-2 to pass Senate Bill 6, sponsored by Sen. Cisco McSorley, D-Albuquerque. His bill has sailed through two House committees with little opposition and is awaiting action by the full House.

McSorley’s bill has received more support from Republicans than the House bill because it stays closer to the terms laid out in the federal farm bill, focusing more on the research aspect.