19 July 2024

Go Long on Fig Newtons

In the 2018 farm bill, Congress legalized the growing of hemp, basically marijuana with a, "delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol [THC] concentration of not more than 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis."

However, it does not control the level of cannabidiol (CBD), which is non intoxicating, nor does it control the level of delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol, which is intoxicating, though delta-8 is generally only present in small quantities.

However, it is relativelystraightforward to convert CBD to delta-8 THC.

So technically, you can grow hemp (legal) and extract delta-8, but you can also market supplements containing the delta-9 molecule at less than 0.3% in the formulation.

………

Hemp-based intoxicants aren’t limited to delta-8 THC. The Farm Bill also appears to authorize  the creation of hemp-based delta-9 THC products as long as the total delta-9 content is 0.3 percent or less of the product’s dry weight. This turns out to be easy to do. Carolindica, for instance, sells a 10-gram gummy that contains 30 milligrams of hemp-derived delta-9 THC, which is exactly 0.3 percent of the gummy’s total weight. The Florida-based company Crispy Blunts sells a cookie that weighs 22 grams and contains 50 milligrams of delta-9 THC. At 0.23 percent by weight, that’s well under the Farm Bill’s threshold, but the total THC content is five to 10 times as high as the legal per-serving limit in many of the states that have legalized recreational-marijuana edibles.

Oops.

It will be interesting to see what happens in court.

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