Today, President Donald Trump signed the 2018 Farm Bill, thereby removing hemp from the Controlled Substances List and making it clear that the federal government considers industrial hemp to be a legal substance. But only one criteria determines what makes a plant hemp and not its still-illegal cousin marijuana: whether or not the plant has less than 0.3 percent THC.<\/p>\n
Today, there is a growing consensus among\u00a0hemp<\/a>\u00a0advocates that the 0.3 percent limit for\u00a0THC<\/a>\u00a0content is holding back the industry and isn\u2019t based on hard science. And the person credited with arriving at this limit himself agrees.<\/p>\n \u201cA 0.3 percent level is very conservative,\u201d says Dr. Ernest Small, the man who set forth the 0.3 percent level in a\u00a01976 paper<\/a>\u00a0published in the Netherlands-based scientific journal\u00a0Taxon<\/i>\u00a0called \u201cA Practical and Natural Taxonomy for Cannabis.\u201d<\/p>\n Since 1976 many countries, the U.S. included, have adopted this THC designation. The European Union initially established a 0.5 percent THC limit in 1984, changed it to 0.3 percent THC in 1987, and then lowered it to 0.2 percent in 1998. Canada adopted the 0.3 percent limit in 1998.<\/p>\n But in that original paper, Dr. Small actually acknowledged the 0.3 percent line was arbitrary, writing: \u201cIt will be noted that we arbitrarily adopt a concentration of 0.3 percent Delta-9-THC (dry weight basis) in young, vigorous leaves of relatively mature plants as a guide to discriminating two classes of plants.\u201d<\/p>\n And four decades later, Dr. Small stresses that the 0.3 percent THC designation for hemp has negative implications for biodiversity.<\/p>\n \u201c0.3 is proving a little problematical for those who wish to produce some cultivars,\u201d Dr. Small told Cannabis Now. \u201cIt\u2019s an especially stringent criterion [for] those who want to produce\u00a0CBD<\/a>. Most of the varieties selected for that have in excess of 0.3, which is kind of inconvenient.\u201d<\/p>\n Attorney Patrick Goggin of\u00a0Hoban Law Group<\/a>, who has experience in litigation concerning the difference between hemp and marijuana, says that he believes the 0.3 percent THC limit is not a suitable legal definition for hemp.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems like it is pretty much pulled out of air,\u201d Goggin says. \u201cWe ought to be looking to science to determine an appropriate threshold.\u201d<\/p>\n Goggin notes that the European Union lowered their THC limit in hemp to 0.2 percent in 1999 because of pressure from French producers who sought to retain their market share as such major producers as Hungary moved to join the EU.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no science,\u201d Goggin says. \u201cIt was based on some group\u2019s effort to get a more competitive advantage. It was capitalist.\u201d<\/p>\n Goggin served as co-counsel in HIA v DEA<\/em>,<\/i>\u00a0in which the Hemp Industries Association argued that no-THC parts of the cannabis plant, including stalk and sterilized seed, are exempt from the Controlled Substances Act. In a 2004 ruling,\u00a0the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed<\/a>, shooting down proposed DEA rules specifically controlling these products. The Ninth Circuit said in its opinion that rescheduling of cannabis should be broached.<\/p>\n Goggin was also co-counsel in\u00a0HIA v DEA III<\/a>,\u00a0<\/i>which challenged the DEA\u2019s Marijuana Extract Rule for failing to make a carve-out for CBD derived from industrial hemp. The HIA sought to establish a legal distinction between hemp-derived and marijuana-derived CBD. The petition was denied on procedural grounds, but the Nineth Circuit issued an \u201cunpublished order\u201d finding that the Controlled Substances Act is pre-empted in this matter by the Industrial Hemp Research Amendment of the 2014 Farm Bill. Such unpublished orders do not actually establish case law, but are held to have \u201cpersuasive authority.\u201d So the case was a moral if not a technical win.<\/p>\n The last legal hemp crop in the United States was grown in 1958 in Wisconsin<\/a>. That was before the 1971 Controlled Substances Act, and under the old Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 (which established prohibitive taxes for cannabis), there was a more lenient taxation rate for industrial hemp farmers. The distinction was then based on farming methods (tall hemp densely planted in rows) and end-use, rather than any actual limit on the THC level. Still, the tax was high enough for farmers to abandon the crop, especially in the age of synthetic fibers.<\/p>\n Eric Steenstra of advocacy group\u00a0Vote Hemp<\/a>\u00a0similarly argues that the \u201cpractical effect of the 0.3 percent standard is it limits the types of genetics that can be used.\u201d<\/p>\n Food and drug researcher Jace Callaway has been growing his\u00a0FINOLA brand<\/a>\u00a0hemp in Kuopio, Finland, since 1995. Before that he worked at the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Mississippi. In the same building, the School of Pharmacy was doing what Callaway calls its \u201ccop-related\u201d cannabis research \u2014 the only cultivation then approved by the DEA, and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).<\/p>\n Callaway spoke to Cannabis Now in November by phone from Winnipeg, where he was attending the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance annual conference. FINOLA is widely grown in Canada, as well as across Europe. Derived from an \u201cescaped cultivar\u201d (that is, one gone feral after a period of agricultural use) probably of Russian origin, FINOLA is registered with the Geneva-based International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV).<\/p>\n While FINOLA generally falls below the 0.2 percent THC threshold in Europe, Callaway noted that it isn\u2019t straightforward to determine which hemp plants will stay below the THC threshold and which could grow into the legal definition of marijuana.<\/p>\n \u201cAny hemp variety can be pushed over that limit,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a question of how it\u2019s grown \u2014 light, fertilization, harvest time \u2014 and how it\u2019s sampled. That is, what part of the plant \u2014 whole plant or just bud \u2014 and how the sample is analyzed, and how competent the lab is.\u201d<\/p>\n Goggin agreed, saying, \u201cRaising [the THC limit for hemp] opens up new cultivars and strains that aren\u2019t able to get down to 0.3. so it gives more flexibility to farmers. We are trying to recover our seed stock, because we didn\u2019t grow it from 1958 to 2015. We need cultivars and seed that are adapted to the region they are growing in \u2014 for soil and climate and sun exposure.\u201d<\/p>\n Reached by phone in November at his office in Ottawa, Dr. Small had this to say when asked how he felt as his idea was taken up by the policy world: \u201cInitially, quite flattered. Because we in the business of taxonomy try to propose classifications useful to society. Our work was adopted as a criterion to prevent what I\u2019ll call abuse of the euphoric possibilities of the cannabis plant.\u201d<\/p>\n But Dr. Small continued: \u201cA 0.3 percent level is very conservative, and my skepticism today is if we were to adopt a criterion for non-abusive use of the plant \u2014 e.g. for oilseed, an important product \u2014 I\u2019d suggest 1 percent as a more reasonable criterion. Because that\u2019s the level you need for a euphoric effect.\u201d<\/p>\n He also noted, however, that the federal government hasn\u2019t been reasonable when it comes to the cannabis plant. For example, he cited the paradox that there\u2019s little legal scrutiny over the growth of ornamental opium poppies, without testing the poppy\u2019s potency.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no such limit in legislation or regulations for ornamental opium,\u201d Dr. Small says. \u201cThis all reflects a certain inconsistency, ignorance and irrationality of we as human beings. But fear-mongering that becomes established in society and legislation is hard to change.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/b>\u00a0do you think the 0.3 percent THC line makes sense when considering the difference between hemp and marijuana?<\/p>\n The post The Arbitrary Legal Line That Separates Hemp & Marijuana<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Today, President Donald Trump signed the 2018 Farm Bill, thereby removing hemp from the Controlled Substances List and making it clear that the federal government considers industrial hemp to be a legal substance. But only one criteria determines what makes a plant hemp and not its still-illegal cousin marijuana: whetherContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3097,6726,50,136,6855,296,90,6856,420],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31598"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31599,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31598\/revisions\/31599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Contested Border Between Hemp and Marijuana<\/h4>\n
What Hemp Farmers Say: Raise the Limit For More Genetic Diversity<\/h4>\n
Dr. Ernest Small Speaks on His Legacy<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: The Arbitrary Legal Line That Separates Hemp & Marijuana<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"