Tom Wilmes
Kentucky Cannabis Company maintains a cultivation facility on Military Pike and a Bluegrass Hemp Oil retail store on Reynolds Road.
Despite the pungent scent of cannabis in the air and the robust stalks filling the greenhouses at the Kentucky Cannabis Company’s facility on Military Pike, owners Bill and Adriane Polyniak and Dave Hendrick say it’s been a tough homecoming for hemp cultivation in Kentucky.
Kentucky Cannabis Company was one of the original six pilot projects awarded when the state legalized limited industrial hemp production in 2014, and their group was the first to legally possess hemp the same year, Bill Polyniak said. In addition, through the company’s retail arm, Bluegrass Hemp Oil (BHO), they were the first in the state to bring a purchasable hemp CBD product to market.
Hemp was once a staple crop of Kentucky agriculture, until it was deemed illegal in the 1930s because of its superficial similarity to marijuana. Hendrick and the Polyniaks have been working alongside other hemp advocates to bring it back.
But it hasn’t been easy.
Tom Wilmes
Kentucky Cannabis Company, founded by Dave Hendrick and Adriane and Bill Polyniak, was one of the original six pilot projects awarded by the state in 2014.
“You know that saying about being the first guy over the hill, with all the arrows in your back?” Bill Polyniak said when asked how it feels to be standing at the forefront of the return of hemp farming to the Bluegrass State.
“By doing this right and changing these laws, we’ve got 77,000 small Kentucky farms here that can really start to prosper, especially out in Eastern Kentucky.” — co-founder Bill Polyniak
But new interest in the plant’s possible therapeutic benefits, and indications that the federal government may soon make it legal, have given new vigor to the cause. Kentucky’s small farmers and hemp-based businesses may be well positioned to benefit, and possibly even to lead the charge, in what some market forecasters predict could grow into a multibillion-dollar industry in less than five years. “By doing this right and changing these laws, we’ve got 77,000 small Kentucky farms here that can really start to prosper, especially out in Eastern Kentucky,” Bill Polyniak said.
The other cannabinoid
In the years since its launch, Kentucky Cannabis Company has been working to develop benchmark growing techniques and optimal genetic varieties for American hemp plants that are rich in cannabidiol, or CBD. CBD is a naturally occurring compound extracted from the flower buds of cannabis plants, but it doesn’t carry the mind-altering psychoactive effects of its more commonly known cannabinoid cousin, THC, so people can’t get high from using it.
Interest in CBD has been on the rise, with increasing claims of its usefulness to treat a wide range of conditions, from anxiety and insomnia to chronic pain management and epilepsy.
At BHO’s retail store on Reynolds Road, customers can purchase the company’s full-spectrum Genesis Blend CBD oils in two different concentrations, along with CBD capsules, a vaping formulation, bath soaks and lip balm. A bevy of CBD-infused consumer products, from beverages to skincare items, have begun to appear on the market across the country, even as the hemp plant’s legality on the national level remains uncertain.
But the much-anticipated 2018 Farm Bill, which has been endorsed by Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell and is currently awaiting congressional approval, would legalize industrial hemp, thus enabling the legal sale of hemp-derived CBD in all 50 states. Some industry experts have predicted this could bring a flood of new investment into the industry, as industrial hemp and its derivative products will no longer be classified as a controlled substance under federal law. It would also lift a significant stigma for companies like hers, Adriane Polyniak said.
Having outgrown its former administrative offices, the Kentucky Cannabis Company will move its corporate offices, lab and packaging department to a larger facility on Patchen Drive in November. While most locally based business owners who understand the product have been supportive, Bill Polyniak said, gaining traction with companies that have corporate management based out of state has been a different story. “It’s [difficult] getting companies to do business with you when you are in hemp or cannabis, getting banks to take your money when you are farming a federally illegal crop,” Adriane Polyniak added. “Small things that normal businesses don’t have to deal with, unfortunately we are having to go through.”
Local businesses get on board
At Lexington’s Broomwagon, customers can now request a serving of BHO’s CBD oil in their beverages, including smoothies, lattes and milkshakes. Co-owner Adam Drye credits his business partner, Tiffany Morrow, an early advocate of the benefits of CBD, with bringing the new offering to the northside bicycle shop and café earlier this year. “It just made sense, in terms of our vision of Kentucky’s future, that we would be part of the movement,” Drye said. “The sales have been spectacular.”
The shop’s staff was trained in advance by the BHO team so they could educate their customers, Drye said. And many Broomwagon employees have found applications for CBD in their own lives—including Drye, who uses it for his insomnia, he said. Drye said BHO’s professionalism, their knowledge-based approach and their high-quality standards have helped to allay many of the preconceived notions that surround cannabis-based products.
“That prejudice is something the entire industry still has to compete with,” Drye said.
A family matter
For the Polyniaks, the effort to bring a high-quality CBD oil to the market was driven more by family necessity than corporate ambition. Their son, Colten, was diagnosed with idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE) at age 3. “A short time thereafter, he went from having one grand mal seizure to several hundred a week,” Bill Polyniak said. “The only solution was a dangerous cocktail of pharmaceuticals.” After studying the available research, the Polyniaks decided to start their son on a daily regimen of CBD oil to treat his condition, and he has responded well, they said. “That’s the reason why we got on this path,” Bill Polyniak said.
Tom Wilmes
Bill Polyniak holds up a laminated $10 bill with hemp production imagery during a tour of KCC’s facility.
In June, for the first time, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of a CBD drug, Epidiolex, in the treatment of two rare forms of epilepsy. The change in hemp’s legal status is expected to clear the path for more needed research into CBD’s potential uses. In the meantime, however, the Polyniaks and Hendrick have still had to contend with the challenge of current hemp restrictions, and what they view as arbitrarily low limits on the level of permissible THC in their plants.
To pass muster as industrial hemp, plants in Kentucky’s pilot program can have no more than .3 percent THC, a long-held standard that’s not seen as a true threshold for psychoactive potency. THC content can vary based on factors such as growing conditions and harvest time, and plants that exceed the .3 mark must be destroyed—an expensive blow for start-up entrepreneurs in a fledgling hemp industry, Bill Polyniak added.
Tom Wilmes
To pass muster as industrial hemp, plants in Kentucky’s pilot program can have no more than .3 percent THC.
Some proponents of raising that THC limit to 1 percent or more have been making headway in other states, he said, and he hopes future legislation will move Kentucky and the nation in that direction.
“The whole lynchpin is the .3 narrative,” he said. “Everybody says we want analytics and science. … We can’t promote a good honest industry based on lies.”