Oregon Stops Distributing Hemp Licenses
Oregon has put its hemp licensing to a rest for now due to a wide variety of difficult policy issues that were brought up during the program’s pilot year. On Tuesday, Oregon Department of Agriculture officials said that their choice does not affect those that are already licensed to cultivate hemp in the state. The decision has already begun and will come to a complete end at the end of hemp’s growing season. Officials want to solve the issues in time for next year’s hemp season, according to Lindsay Eng, who keeps track of Oregon’s hemp program.
Eng said the choice to stop distributing licenses has no connection to the concerns of marijuana growers who do not want hemp planted around their farms. Cannabis producers claim that hemp production around their farms leaves a risk for cross-pollination and may ruin the quality of their crops. According to Eng, the agency needs to start up a new law that lowers the amount of time it takes to get a hemp license from three years to one. All of these changes will be put into effect in 2016.
“We just didn’t feel it was prudent to continue issuing new three-year licenses when so much might change,” she said.
Eng says that the hemp dictum, written in 2009, is “very short and very general.” Furthermore, it does not specify the growing practices of farmers currently licensed to grow the crop. The dictum foresaw an industrial crop produced for fiber and seed, yet, some licensed farmers want to cultivate the plant for cannabidiol (CBD) – a part of the cannabis plant that’s grown after for its medicinal benefits.
“We need statutory clarity on what the Legislature would like us to do and how they would like us to regulate it,” Eng said.
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