Patrick Goggin is the California counsel for the
Hemp Industries Association (HIA) and
Vote Hemp, the HIA’s lobbying arm.
According to the Wikipedia entry for
“hemp“:
“Hemp is the common name for plants belonging to the genus
Cannabis, although the term is often used to refer only to
Cannabis strains cultivated for industrial (non-drug).”
According to its web site, the Hemp Industries Association “is a non-profit trade group representing hemp companies, researchers and supporters. We are at the forefront of the drive for fair and equal treatment of industrial hemp. Since 1992, the HIA has been dedicated to education, industry development, and the accelerated expansion of hemp world market supply and demand.”
According to its web site, Vote Hemp “is a non-profit organization dedicated to the acceptance of and free market for industrial hemp. Industrial hemp is non-psychoactive low-THC varieties of the cannabis sativa plant. Currently, it is illegal for U.S. farmers to grow industrial hemp because it is improperly classified as a ‘drug’ under the Controlled Substances Act. Since changes in law require shifts in thinking and this requires education in the facts, our primary goal is the education of legislators and regulators, farmers and businesses, students and other concerned citizens.”
Mr. Goggin spoke this afternoon with
California Politics Today reporter Marc Strassman about California Assembly Bill 684 (AB 684), the “California Industrial Hemp Farming Act.“
You can listen to that conversation with Hemp Industries Association and Vote Hemp California counsel Patrick Goggin about industrial hemp and why he thinks it makes sense to legalize its cultivation in California, in the
Marijuana Channel below, even though hemp, which is defined in AB 684 as
Cannabis sativa with “no more than three-tenths of 1 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) contained in the dried flowering tops,” is, strictly speaking and, explicitly under the terms of AB 686, not “marijuana,” just a close vegetative relative of it.
