Supervisors to weigh support on hemp bill
EL CENTRO — The Imperial County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will vote on sending a letter of support on an Assembly bill that could lead to more revenue for hemp uses, particularly in food and beverage products.
In December Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry introduced a bill to remove food, beverage or cosmetic restrictions on the use of cannabinoids derived from hemp.
What Aguiar-Curry is proposing has already been implemented in several states, including Wyoming, Nevada and Texas.
The federal government issued guidelines for hemp use and cultivation in 2019 after it was taken off the federal list of controlled substances in 2018.
Imperial County even put on a Hemp Expo in 2019 to educate the public and others about the potential impacts.
Research shows that CBD acts as a potential medicine for the treatment of various ailments.
AB 45 would allow CBD to be used in food, beverages, dietary supplements and pet products, while ensuring customer safety, including labeling standards that provide essential information to consumers.
If the bill is approved, it would add new product lines to the marketplace that would also be subject to sales tax for the community.
In Imperial County there are almost 500,000 acres of farmable land, so the potential new industry could create jobs and spur economic development in the community, especially with the COVID-19 impacts of the past year.
In the letter to Aguiar-Curry, the county told her the bill would stimulate California’s economy by expanding the market for hemp, bring in new jobs and new tax revenue and create a regulatory structure to ensure consumer safety.
The letter of support lists five things the bill could accomplish, including using hemp in food, beverages, dietary supplements and pet products; improving consumer safety, and establishing CBD consumer testing that mirrors the requirements for cannabis testing.
It would also apply existing requirements of the Sherman Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act to all hemp CBD consumer products and add abundant new product lines to the mar
ketplace.
California would not be the first state to allow hemp to be used in food products.
So far, 28 states have adopted laws that allow hemp to be used in food,
beverages and dietary supplements.
Companies in the hemp industry when deciding where to open are looking first at states that want their business, and those companies already doing
business in the state could choose to move to another state where it is allowed if the bill fails, the letter said.
It added the bill would establish the most intensive testing program in the county, and the testing would mandate that the hemp complies with the federal cap limit of 0.3 THC.
“As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy in Imperial County has been profoundly distressed,” the letter reads. “Tax revenues are expected to decrease over the next few years; many jobs have disappeared, and the ability of the state to rebuild itself in a timely fashion is uncertain.”
However, this proposed bill would represent a major source of new state and local revenues that can be realized quickly, the letter added.
NEW YORK (AP) — Enrollment in Roman Catholic schools in the United States dropped 6.4% from the previous academic year amid the pandemic and economic stresses — the largest single-year decline in at least five decades, Catholic education officials reported Monday.
Among the factors were the closure or consolidation of more than 200 schools and the difficulty for many parents of paying tuition fees that average more than $5,000 for grades K-8 and more than $10,000 for secondary schools, according to the National Catholic Educational Association.
John Reyes, the NCEA’s executive director for operational vitality, said the pandemic has been an “accelerant” for longstanding challenges facing Catholic education.
Between the 2019-2020 school year and the current year, nationwide enrollment dropped by 110,000 to about 1.6 million students. Back in the 1960s, enrollment was more than 5 million.
With the recent wave of closures, there are now 5,981 Catholic schools in the United States, compared with more than 11,000 in 1970.
Reyes said they disproportionately impacted urban communities where significant numbers of Black children, including many from non-Catholic families, attended Catholic schools.
Indeed, some of the largest enrollment losses were in big-city dioceses, including 12.3% in Los Angeles, 11.1% in New York and 8.2% in Chicago.
The only big-city dioceses that saw significant increases were in Western cities with large Hispanic populations: up 5.5% in Las Vegas, 4.6% in Denver and 2.4% in Phoenix.
Elementary and middle schools were harder hit with a collective enrollment decline of 8.1%, compared with a 2.5% decline for secondary schools. Pre-kindergarten programs saw the steepest drop, 26.6%
“Declines in enrollment at the primary grade levels may lead to a delayed but significant impact on secondary school enrollment within the next five to 10 years, proving potentially disastrous for secondary school viability,” the NCEA said in an analysis of the new data.
Reyes said tuition revenues do not fully cover the cost of Catholic schools’ operations, and yet they are still burdensome to many families. He said one-third of families with children in elementary school apply for financial assistance, and 47% of families with children in secondary school.
Reductions in professional staff — teachers and administrators — were more modest than the enrollment drop, with a 2.3% decline from the previous year. That enabled the nationwide Catholic system to maintain a student-teacher ratio of 11 to 1, substantially lower than in most public schools.
Reyes said one reason for the relatively modest reduction in staff size was the use of funds from the federal Paycheck Protection Program in the spring of 2020. Without additional outside support going forward, he added, there is potential for severe staffing reductions as well as continued enrollment declines.
“I can’t say that a bounceback is guaranteed” when the pandemic ends, Reyes said.
Often last year when plans for closures were announced, parents and alumni launched campaigns — mostly unsuccessful — seeking to keep those schools open. Even in some cases where dioceses had financial resources available, school officials responded that long-term enrollment trends and sometimes a need for costly renovations made it unfeasible.