Congress federally legalized hemp when it approved the 2018 Farm Bill, making the use of hemp as well as its production legal. Legislators who supported the legalization of this industrial crop expected that it would be used for textiles and nonintoxicating supplements such as shelled hemp seeds and CBD oil.
What they didn’t realize, however, was that with some tweaking, hemp could also induce highs when consumed.
Currently, individuals in different parts of the country can get high on THC derived from hemp without breaking the law. These hemp-based intoxicants are every bit as strong as compounds derived from cannabis available in legal states. Individuals who have tried intoxicating compounds from both marijuana and hemp admit that their effects are identical.
To understand how we got here, we looked at basic information on these plants.
Marijuana and hemp are both plants of the genus Cannabis, which are further classified into the species sativa, and indica. Cannabinoids are chemical compounds obtained from Cannabis sativa, with researchers having identified roughly 100 cannabinoids that occur naturally.
Cannabinoids are classified into two categories: those that induce a high and those that don’t.
Hemp contains limited amounts of delta-9 THC and large amounts of CBD. On the other hand, marijuana has high levels of delta-9 THC. THC is one of the two primary compounds found in marijuana, the other being CBD. Unlike THC, CBD doesn’t induce a high when ingested.
In 1937, Congress banned both hemp and marijuana when it approved the Marihuana Tax Act. When this law was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1969, Congress enacted the Controlled Substances Act the following year, effectively outlawing marijuana, hemp and other substances such as psychedelics.
In the 1980s, Jack Herer, a cannabis enthusiast, published a book that discussed how hemp could replace timber and plastic in various applications without causing any harm to the environment and with fewer costs. This began a movement that, decades later, led to the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill.
The bill defines hemp as a Cannabis sativa plant and any part of it with a delta-9 THC concentration of 0.3% on a dry weight basis. While this looks straight forward, it appears that Congress wasn’t up-to-date on cannabinoid research.
As it turns out, one chemist had found a way to obtain delta-9 THC from CBD oil and another intoxicating cannabinoid dubbed delta-8 THC. With the farm bill’s definition in mind, it appeared that it wasn’t illegal to synthesize delta-8 THC from CBD, as long as the process began with a plant that had no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC.
This take was endorsed in 2022 in a ruling issued by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. From this, one may not be far off to surmise that Congress may have accidentally legalized cannabis nationwide. However, marijuana entities such as Verano Holdings Corp. (CSE: VRNO) (OTCQX: VRNOF) are likely to conduct their operations in accordance with state laws since they are less likely to be subject to controversy and conjecture.
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