Bipartisan Bill Aims to Protect Hemp Farmers from Federal Pot Crackdown

Oregon and Kentucky senators have banded together to legalize hemp, after previous calls from the legislators on the attorney general to reassure the industry that it wouldn’t be hurt by Jeff Sessions’ marijuana crackdown.

In a letter to Sessions last summer, Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) were among the senators warning the attorney general that some participants in legal hemp industrial research and production “have either had their personal and business accounts closed at financial institutions or are facing the possibility of losing them… due to the uncertainty of the continued legal status of the industrial hemp industry, and because the funds contained in the accounts are associated with industrial hemp.”