A marijuana trade group is urging the U.S. Congress to regulate intoxicating hemp compounds separately from non-psychoactive seed- and fiber-derived byproducts, calling for a more restrictive definition of industrial hemp in the next Farm Bill.
The U.S. Cannabis Council (USCC) wants lawmakers to prohibit hemp products intended for human or animal consumption that contain “detectable quantities of total THC,” suggesting “products containing intoxicants which are derived from the Cannabis sativa L. plant cannot be defined as ‘hemp’” in the Farm Bill currently being drafted.
The next Farm Bill – originally the 2023 Farm Bill but which has been repeatedly pushed back and may not be ready until 2025 – is an opportunity to sharpen up the definition of hemp after the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized industrial hemp federally, failed to anticipate a market for intoxicating downstream products that has developed in the intervening years.
A marijuana trade group is urging the U.S. Congress to regulate intoxicating hemp compounds separately from non-psychoactive seed- and fiber-derived byproducts, calling for a more restrictive definition of industrial hemp in the next Farm Bill.
The U.S. Cannabis Council (USCC) wants lawmakers to prohibit hemp products intended for human or animal consumption that contain “detectable quantities of total THC,” suggesting “products containing intoxicants which are derived from the Cannabis sativa L. plant cannot be defined as ‘hemp’” in the Farm Bill currently being drafted.
The next Farm Bill – originally the 2023 Farm Bill but which has been repeatedly pushed back and may not be ready until 2025 – is an opportunity to sharpen up the definition of hemp after the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized industrial hemp federally, failed to anticipate a market for intoxicating downstream products that has developed in the intervening years.
After the market for over-the-counter CBD extract health aids boomed and then busted beginning in 2019, companies left holding backlog CBD stocks started selling them to the dodgy producers of the psychoactive compounds, with delta-8 THC being the most popular of the substances used in gummies and other snacks.
An entirely new sector made up of products containing the synthetic, intoxicating hemp compounds rapidly developed among producers, distributors and retailers. The products, packaged to mimic popular brand-name snacks to make them attractive to youth, quickly spread unregulated through gas stations, convenience stores, bodegas, hemp and CBD shops, and other retail outlets.
Read more at Hemp Today