Five years ago, Congress used the farm bill to legalize hemp production, creating a booming industry but leaving gaping legal loopholes around interstate commerce and derivative cannabis products.
Now, advocates in the cannabis industry and lawmakers are hoping to make things right in the next iteration of the bill, officially called the Agriculture Improvement Act, which must be passed every five years.
“Hemp was the big new thing in the previous farm bill,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who pushed for legalization on behalf of Kentucky farmers interested in growing the lucrative crop, said last month in Louisville.
“So far, it’s not worked out like we had hoped. It’s had a lot of challenges related to the difficulty of getting guidance out of the Food and Drug Administration,” McConnell added.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) appears to agree. In January, the agency’s Principal Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock announced the agency’s conclusion that the FDA needs a new path to properly regulate and manage cannabidiol (CBD) products.
“The FDA’s existing foods and dietary supplement authorities provide only limited tools for managing many of the risks associated with CBD products,” she said in a statement.
CBD made from hemp (a class of the cannabis sativa plant) was effectively legalized in the 2018 farm bill, though guidelines vary by state due to differing controlled substance laws.
This change under the farm bill marked the first time that the federal government differentiated hemp from other cannabis products banned under the Controlled Substances Act and regulated by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
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