Mitch McConnell is all about hemp, Forbes contributor Tom Angell, wrote in a July 2 article. The Republican Senate majority leader has already successfully legalized the plant through last year's Farm Bill, pushed for hemp crop insurance provisions in disaster aid legislation and passed a resolution commemorating Hemp History Week last month.
And now he's personally leading the U.S. agriculture secretary on a tour of hemp facilities in his home state of Kentucky. Sonny Perdue, who heads the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), accompanied McConnell on a visit to the Commonwealth Extracts facility in Louisville on Tuesday, where the officials got a chance to see hemp-derived CBD products up close. Accompanying McConnell and Perdue on the tour — which also stopped at the University of Kentucky's hemp farm — was state Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles.
The majority leader, for his part, said that the growth of the hemp industry "reminds me of where tobacco was when I went to the Senate." Contrasting declining workforce numbers in Kentucky's tobacco industry, he said that "there are a lot of young farmers and processors here who are excited about [hemp], and we're glad to be in the lead."
