Hemp growers sue government

A group of farmers, a hemp company and a trade organization sued the federal government in Lexington, Ky., to get the 61-year ban on growing hemp lifted, contending that Congress always intended to distinguish it from marijuana.

The lawsuit — filed Friday by six would-be hemp farmers, the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative and the Hemp Co. of America — quotes from congressional debate over the 1937 law that first outlawed marijuana to show that industrial hemp was never supposed to be illegal.