Oregon Hemp Bill Appears Dead

The industrial-hemp bill sponsored by Rep. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, apparently has been stubbed out.

After a hearing last week on the measure, House Bill 2933, Prozanksi was optimistic about getting it out of committee for a vote by the full House. The bill would let Oregon farmers grow hemp, a cousin to marijuana that is useless for drug purposes but whose fibers, seeds and oil have a multitude of industrial uses.

Prozanski said Thursday that seven of the nine members of the House Agriculture and Forestry Committee - including Chairman Larry Wells, R-Jefferson - had told him they were willing to send the bill out for a floor vote.

But House Speaker Lynn Snodgrass told Wells not to take up the bill again. Today is the official deadline for House and Senate committees to deal with bills originating in their respective chambers; Snodgrass' action would appear to doom the bill for this session.

Wells, reached Thursday evening, agreed that Prozanski probably had the votes to send the bill to the floor. But, he said, he had previously assured Snodgrass he would hold just the one informational hearing on the bill, and wouldn't bring it up for a committee vote unless she approved.

"I guess they (Prozanski and Snodgrass) had a good discussion, but she was not comfortable with moving ahead," Wells said. "I don't think she wanted her administration being perceived as sympathetic toward the legalization of marijuana. I can't blame her, because when I first heard about this, that's what I thought."

Snodgrass, R-Boring, could not be reached for comment Thursday evening. But Prozanski released copies of a handwritten note, written on the speaker's official letterhead, that he said Snodgrass sent to him Wednesday.

The note reads, in part: "I fall back on my original feelings, am not persuaded to have the bill move forward at this time. I spoke with other members of the committee prior to making this decision."

It concludes: "Keep educating the public. Perhaps future sessions are possible."

Despite today's deadline, Prozanski's bill may not be completely kaput. Measures that pass one chamber can still be amended in the other, and proposals long since given up for dead have been known to reappear in the waning days of the session.

"Nothing's ever dead until the gavel falls," Wells said, "but most of the time you have to have the approval of the speaker or the president of the Senate."

Copyright 1999 The Register-Guard

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