This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, May 13, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The push to end federal regulation of cannabis essentially has two sides.

One is the legalization and decriminalization of marijuana

in many states.

The other is industrial hemp, which, because of its powerful resemblance to marijuana,

is every bit as illegal under federal law.

James Comer is the Commissioner of Agriculture in Kentucky.

He argues it's time to get the feds out of the way of states

and out of the business of regulating plants altogether.

Well, hemp became illegal before World War II,

I guess because it was in the same plant family as marijuana and people were afraid that hemp

was like marijuana you could smoke it and get high it was a drug but what we

learned many years since with technology is that hemp is a totally

different plant than marijuana.

They're in the same plant family, but the difference, one of the main differences between a hemp plant and a marijuana plant is a hemp plant has no THC and the THC is the agent that's found in the leaves of marijuana.

That's what gives you a high.

Marijuana plants have between 15% and 40% THC.

Hempt plants only have trace amounts, or 0.3% THC.

Just about every type of plant

has some trace amounts of THC.

So hemp has no reason to be banned from the standpoint of it being a drug.

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