Bill seeks to make industrial hemp legal

Ohio Farm Bureau supports change; bill’s future begins.

The bill would allow the Ohio Department of Agriculture and universities to grow and the public to possess, buy, sell, process and research industrial hemp and hemp products without a license.

A new bill COLUMBUS — in the Ohio Senate would decriminalize industrial hemp cultivation and specify that people can possess CBD oil which is derived

— from the plant legally in

— the state.

Senate Bill 57 would create an industrial hemp program under the Ohio Department of Agriculture. It is sponsored by Republican Sens. Brian Hill of Zanesville and Stephen Huffman of the Dayton area. Co-sponsors include Sens. Nickie Antonio, a Lakewood Democrat, and John Eklund, a Munson Township Republican.

Hemp and marijuana come from the same genus but are different plants, Hill and Huffman wrote to Senate colleagues. The main difference between the two is that marijuana contains THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient that produces the “high.” Industrial hemp contains 0.3 percent or less of THC, they write.

The bill makes it clear that industrial hemp and marijuana are separate plants: “‘Marihuana’ does not include hemp or a hemp product,” it says, using an older-spelling of the drug that has been used for decades in state law.

Under S.B. 57:

■ The Ohio Department of Agriculture director would issue hemp cultivation licenses, which are valid for five years. People who have been convicted of a controlled substance felony in the past 10 years could not get licenses. Licensees would be required to have a procedure to test THC.

■ The state could randomly sample licensees’ plants to ensure the hemp is being grown for lawful purposes. Growers who violate the law would face a minor misdemeanor charge on the first offense and a fourth-degree misdemeanor on subsequent violations. On the third offense, growers would be ineligible to possess a license.

■ The state Ag Department and universities would be allowed to grow industrial hemp without a license.

■ The public could possess, buy, sell, process and research hemp and hemp products without a license, according to the bill.

The bill specifies that hemp products include cosmetics, personal care items, food and dietary supplements, cloth, fiber, fuel, paint, paper, particleboard “and any product containing one or more cannabinoids derived from hemp, including cannabidiol.”

Cannabidiol or CBD, is derived from the hemp plant. The Ohio State Board of Pharmacy has said it is illegal for drug stores or gas stations to sell it. The pharmacy board said it could only be sold in medical marijuana dispensaries. The only people who could obtain CBD would be patients who were cleared by the state to buy medical marijuana.

Congress passed the 2018 Farm Bill removing hemp from the scheduled substances list, meaning the only barrier between Ohio and legal hemp is state law.

The Ohio Farm Bureau Federation announced that changing the law so producers can grow hemp was a 2019 legislative priority.

At a Tuesday event sponsored by the Associated Press, General Assembly leaders didn’t indicate they would support the bill — saying they either didn’t know much about hemp or were concerned about Ohio’s medical marijuana program running smoothly.

“It’s at the beginning of the legislative process, and we will assign it to a committee and air out the issues and we’ll see where we end up,” Senate President Larry Obhof said.