Gatewood's good ideas deserve hearing

 (Continued from home page)

    In fact, I ran into Gatewood at a Lexington Kroger a few weeks ago. Standing by a pyramid of apples, he said of losing another governor’s race that he just hopes those who now are governing our state will take some of his ideas and actually make improvements.
    People may disagree with Galbraith on issues, but most people know he is intelligent and speaks the truth as he sees it. As he said many times during the campaign, he’s a perennial candidate, because Kentucky has perennial problems.
    Indeed it does. Like the rest of the nation, Kentucky’s economy is weak – rebounding slowly, but weak – and our educational level is among the lowest in the nation.
    Over the years, Gatewood has championed two issues that slowly have made some headway into mainstream discourse: Legalizing hemp production; improving high school students’ access to broader training.
    Years ago, Gatewood was labeled solely as a marijuana advocate. He does have a prescription for medical cannabis – but marijuana is not hemp. And hemp is not marijuana. Too often messages become labeled by the public’s view of the messenger, and, as with the case of hemp, many in the public dismiss it as a drug issue because Gatewood talks about it.
    Move on, people. It’s time to look logically at what really is an agri-economic issue.
    The benefits of hemp are well known and obvious. Hemp is a renewable resource for fiber, food and fuel. Hemp would benefit Kentucky’s agriculture economy, providing jobs and revenue. A hemp crop can become part of a broader tax base that sends revenue to Frankfort and local governments without raising anyone’s tax rates. Canadian hemp is imported into the U.S.; how about exporting Kentucky hemp to the U.S.?
    By acting now to legalize hemp production in Kentucky (with necessary federal approval, of course), the commonwealth can get a jump on the market and establish itself as a brand, much like our bourbon. It will take a lot of guts for politicians to do this – but it will be progress.
    Then, maybe we can use some of the hemp revenue to help fund another of Gatewood’s good ideas. While on the campaign trail, the Lexington lawyer called for a $5,000 voucher, or scholarship, for each of Kentucky’s high school students to use at any accredited institution of higher learning. Whether a student wants to be a diesel mechanic or mechanical engineer, the state would provide the money to pay for or help offset educational costs. For the 41,000 Kentucky high school graduates who took the ACT test in 2010, this would amount to roughly $20 million.
    The voucher is a strong idea and not so very expensive for a state with an annual budget of more than $9 billion. These vouchers can be used by the thousands of Kentucky students who do not want to go to college for whatever reason, but who must have some sort of post-high school training in order to be employable.
    Years ago, society made a big push to get every kid in college, and to not push was considered a disservice to the students. A noble idea with unintended consequences. In the years since, we have succeeded not in creating many more educated people, but in diluting the value of a college education, of spending a lot of money on remedial education at the college level for students who aren’t ready or capable of being there, and of perpetuating a perception of a second “class” of citizens who aren’t “smart” enough to go to college. (This pushes aside our Puritan ethic of respecting the work itself.)
    As a society and for a hardy economy, we need people doing all manner of jobs, and we need to encourage – and validate – the students who don’t go to college. That’s what Gatewood’s $5,000 per student would do.
    And lawmakers can dip their toes in this pool without seeming to be soft on higher education: When Bill Request 85 gets to the General Assembly next month in bill form, lawmakers should pass it and create a new, technical high school diploma. Pre-filed by state Rep. Brent Yonts, this measure would create the technical diploma and would certify that those holding that piece of paper have certain skills. Yonts, a Greenville Democrat, said the bill was five years in the making.
    Five years. Not quite as long as Gatewood has been talking about hemp, but long enough. It just goes to show how slowly change can occur, even when that change would have obvious benefits for many people.
    Often, it takes a man outside the circle, like Gatewood, to compel the men inside the circle to crack the status quo. Then, the crack can widen and let in new ideas.


Laura Cullen Glasscock, publisher and editor
glasscock@kentuckygazette.com