Gatewood Galbraith is a mixed bag.
He is a former marine, an accomplished criminal defense attorney, an author, a radio personality, an activist for many worthwhile causes, and a Kentucky cultural icon. But overall, Galbraith is best known as a renegade politician and a champion of medical marijuana and industrial hemp. As such, he is consistently portrayed as a radical.
Such marginalization from the powers-that-be, does not, however, bother Galbraith in the least. He actually seems to enjoy the notoriety that goes along with rattling the cages of mainstream America.
Despite the many condescending naysayers he has encountered in the political arena over the years, Galbraith has endured with dignity and assurance. And, importantly, Galbraith's positions, especially as they pertain to industrial hemp, are becoming increasingly popular.
Most educated people readily grasp the fact that hemp can be differentiated from marijuana in the field and that this non-intoxicating crop holds enormous potential for the sustainability of both the Kentucky farmer and planet Earth itself. Moreover, even casual observers can detect that the reasons for continuing the proscription against hemp are just plain ignorant.
It is telling that Father John Rausch, a Glenmary priest who acts as director of justice and peace ministries for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lexington, agrees wholeheartedly with Galbraith in this realm.
When the two were jointly interviewed (by yours truly) about environmental justice for local AM radio station WMJR, Rausch acknowledged the promise of hemp as a viable alternative to tobacco for family farms.
Both men pointed to the economic and environmental benefits that such a versatile plant would bring to the state. They re-iterated that hemp could be used to make paper, fuel, clothing, food, plastics and more. Accordingly, Galbraith and Rausch sense that it can help reduce the world's gluttonous dependence on petroleum, toxic chemicals and forest by-products.
Galbraith, ever the colorful conversationalist, attributed the long-standing governmental hemp ban to the efforts of "the petrochemical military-industrial trans-national corporate fascist elite son-of-a-bitches who don't want us to join the 30-some other countries that are taking advantage of this amazing resource.
Rausch agreed that the wealth and power of the petrochemical