JACKSON — Mississippi lawmakers on Friday swiftly approved a multimillion dollar incentive package for what state and company officials call a first-in-the-world project to convert timber products to a crude oil substitute.
They also voted during the one-day special session to outlaw the sale or possession of synthetic marijuana that”s been sold in convenience stores and smoke shops under several names, including Spice, K2, Demon, Voodoo, Genie and Zohai. Several other states have already banned the fake pot.
Republican Gov. Haley Barbour called the special session and asked lawmakers to ban the herbal concoction and approve the biofuels funding.
In an incentive package negotiated by the state”s economic development agency, Mississippi will provide a $75 million loan to KiOR, a Pasadena, Texas-based company that has been testing its biomass production process in Texas for a year and a half.
“The process of converting biomass into a crude oil substitute is especially suited for Mississippi, with our abundant supply of KiOR”s most needed raw product: wood,” Barbour said in a news release Friday. “It will increase the value of our raw wood products, and it fits hand-in-glove with our drive to expand our base of high-tech jobs.”
The privately held KiOR is pledging to invest $500 million of its own money to build its first three processing plants in timber-rich areas of Mississippi, where wood chips and other biomass would be turned into fuel.
“It”s an unbelievable process,” said Finance Committee Chairman Dean Kirby, R-Pearl, told his Senate colleagues Friday.
KiOR CEO Fred Cannon said Thursday that the company is negotiating with two oil companies to refine its product.
The bond bill that passed the House and Senate on Friday included $45 million for the loan to KiOR; $30 million was already available from the state. Friday”s bill also included $4 million for worker training, $1 million for biofuels research at Mississippi State University and $1 million for biofuels research at Alcorn State University.
A few lawmakers were skeptical about the KiOR project. Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood, said voters are still upset about a state-backed beef processing plant that failed several years ago.
“I don”t want to get burned again. I want to be absolutely sure,” Jordan said.
Kirby responded: “I feel very confident with this.”
KiOR has said its first plants would be in the northern Mississippi city of Columbus, in Newton County in the central part of the state and in an area around Franklin County in the economically struggling southwestern corner. The first plant could open by the end of 2011.
KiOR pledged to eventually build two more plants in Mississippi.
In discussing the synthetic marijuana ban, Marshall Fisher, executive director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, told lawmakers that plainclothes MBN officers bought several packets of the products Friday morning from a Jackson convenience store, where a clerk displayed different brands and explained which would provide the most powerful high. Fisher handed out several samples for senators to examine.
“This one says ”100 percent high.” You can see where it would be attractive to young folks,” Fisher said.
The sale or possession of synthetic marijuana would become illegal when Barbour signs the bill into law, which he pledged to do. Penalties would be similar to those for the sale or possession of marijuana, with possession of certain amounts as felonies. Stores will be banned from selling synthetic marijuana when the bill becomes law, but retailers would have until Oct. 1 to return the products to distributors or to dispose of them in a legal way — by turning it over to law enforcement, for example.
Tracy Donovan Smith, a Louisiana-based lobbyist, tried to persuade lawmakers that banning synthetic marijuana would hurt Mississippi businesses. He said he was working for an informal association of retail shops that supported a ban only on sales to people younger than 21.
“They”re saying that it”s harmful, but there”s not one study that proves it”s harmful. Cigarettes have killed hundreds of thousand of people every year. Alcohol kills people,” Smith said. “But we”re not banning cigarettes and we”re not banning alcohol.”
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