Pubdate: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 Source: Glenwood Springs Post Independent (CO) Copyright: 2013 Glenwood Springs Post Independent Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/ys97xJAX Website: http://www.postindependent.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/821 Author: Carl Mc Williams CONSIDER A HEMP VALUE-ADDED INDUSTRY HERE This letter is written to the Garfield County commissioners and the mayors and trustees of our local governments, who may be confused about the difference between marijuana and hemp and who do not fully grasp the significant economic development and livable wage jobs creation opportunities that industrial hemp offers to the citizens of Garfield County. With the November passage of Amendment 64, the voters of Colorado amended Article 18 of the Colorado Constitution to de-criminalize marijuana and establish statewide excise tax revenues on the sale of cannabis, and to allow for the statewide cultivation and commercialization of industrial hemp. The amendment declares that industrial hemp must be regulated separately from marijuana, and requires the Colorado General Assembly to "enact legislation governing the cultivation, processing, and the sale of industrial hemp." Accordingly, a value-added agriculture economy may be defined as: 1. The science, art or practice of cultivating the soil with seed and harvesting the resulting crops (raw materials). 2. The manipulation of the harvested crops, by capital and labor, into value-added products. 3. The marketing and transportation of the resulting value added products into the marketplace of commerce. Wealth is created when capital and labor combine to add value to the harvested crops, and that wealth is the engine of the value-added agriculture economy. For instance, hemp fibers are excellent sources for paper such as newsprint. A Garfield County farmer plants hemp seed and 110 days later harvests the 10-foot-tall hemp plants and then transports the fiber to a locally owned paper mill, where the hemp fiber is manipulated, by capital and local labor, into value-added industrial newsprint, and that newsprint is then sold to Colorado newspapers. Thus the advertisers of the newspapers are the actual buyers of the farmer's hemp and actually pay the wages of the local county laborers. That said, as Amendment 64 becomes part of Colorado commerce, please don't lump hemp together with marijuana. The best analogy I can give is the "Parable of the Wheat and the Tares." The wheat is the hemp and the tares are marijuana. Carl Mc Williams Silt - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom