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Tag: hemp

  • Police, Thieves Keep Confusing Hemp For Marijuana

    Police, Thieves Keep Confusing Hemp For Marijuana

    There are over 50,000 ways to use hemp but chances are incredibly slim that it will get you high.

    To the untrained eye hemp closely resembles marijuana. From its outward, fuzzy appearance to its smell, it could be easy to make this mistake but smoking hemp will more than likely not get you high, seeing as the plant contains less than .03% or less of THC.

    According to Medium, there are over 50,000 ways to use including food, textiles, paper and even buidling materials. Some believe that hemp may also have been one of the first crops. 

    “Weed” Thieves

    While there may be thousands of uses for hemp, the one thing it won’t do is give you a psychotropic experience if you smoke it. Something that a few “weed” thieves in Philly found out after stealing some from a local grower, The Inquirer reports.

    “I thought I was in pot heaven,” said one young man who was caught stealing hemp from a crop owned by Ashleigh Baldwin on Halloween. This wasn’t the first time that somene has “lifted” hemp from Baldwin’s dairy farm.

    “There’s a lot of these dumb 18-year-olds out there doing this,” Baldwin said. The farmer uses the hemp oil from her 50-acre crop to make CBD-infused soda call CBDelight. 

    In 2018, the Trump adminsitration legalized the growing of hemp with the passage of The Farm Bill late last December. According to Fortune, marijuana supporters viewed the bill’s passage as a “an important first step in legalizing marijuana at a federal level.”

    But even though it’s federally legal, many don’t know the difference between the plants including the police.

    Police Continue To Seize Legal Hemp Plants

    Since hemp has been legalized there have been a growing number of seizures of the plant by police who are mistaking it for marijuana and the field tests they use don’t seem to know the difference. New York police received flack for seizing a 106lb hemp crop (which they thought was weed) and celebrating it on Facebook.

    In Idaho, a 6,700 pound shipment of hemp was confiscated by police in January.

     

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Would-Be Pot Thieves Accidentally Steal Pile Of Hemp

    Would-Be Pot Thieves Accidentally Steal Pile Of Hemp

    One of the accused was reported to have been boasting to fellow patrons at a local tavern about the number of plants he had stolen.

    Six Wisconsin men are facing felony charges for stealing or damaging what they believed to be a bumper crop of marijuana plants but were revealed to be industrial-grade hemp.

    Two of the six alleged thieves were caught by employees of a state-licensed hemp-growing operation in Kenosha County and were detained until law enforcement arrived. The other four defendants were either apprehended nearby or arrested after an investigation by the county sheriff’s office.

    Hemp has become a newly prevalent crop in Wisconsin after the passage of a 2017 law that allowed the production and processing of the plant for industrial use as well as the production of CBD oil.

    The Kenosha News detailed a criminal complaint regarding the thefts, which stated that on September 15, the property owner and two employees discovered two of the aforementioned individuals in their field at 3 a.m. The two individuals, who were carrying a suitcase and duffel bag, were held at gunpoint until law enforcement arrived.

    Thieves Hit The Same Crop Twice In One Month

    A third individual, who had reportedly dropped off the other two, was arrested nearby, while the remaining three alleged thieves were arrested after an investigation by the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department for having reportedly stolen plants earlier in the same month, which prompted the property owner to take watch over his crop.

    The latter three defendants had been seen loading a large pile of plants into an SUV parked near the field. According to the complaint, one of the accused thieves was reported to have been boasting to fellow patrons at a local tavern about the number of plants he had stolen.

    The criminal complaint claimed that three of the defendants had taken as many as 30 plants during the first raid on the farm, but in the second incident, only five plants were reported as damaged. 

    According to the property owner, each plant produces one to three pounds of hemp that sells for $300 to $400 per pound.

    “Hemp” and “marijuana” are terms given to varieties of cannabis plants that differ according to the amount of THC, the psychoactive compound that produces a euphoric effect or “high”—by dry weight.

    Plants classified as hemp contain 0.3% or less of THC, while those labeled marijuana contain more than 0.3% THC. Hemp also contains another chemical compound, cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive compound that is reported to have medicinal properties. 

    Previously Illegal Hemp Now Legal to Grow In All 50 States

    The Farm Bill of 2014 marked a turning point in the cultivation of hemp, which had been made illegal by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The Farm Bill officially defined hemp by its THC content, which allowed for increased growth for research and industrial usage.

    The 2018 Farm Bill made hemp legal to grow in all 50 states, which Wisconsin had adopted through the passage of its own act the previous year.

    According to the Kenosha News, Wisconsin currently has more than 1,400 licensed hemp growers and nearly 700 processors, with 39 in Kenosha County alone. Those farms take up 239 acres across the county, and are easy to spot—which made the thefts all the more baffling to Sgt. Christopher Hannah of the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department.

    “If it’s an illegal marijuana operation, it’s not going to be growing along the roadside for everyone to see,” he said. “The person is going to have illegal activity is not going to do it in plain view.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • DEA Needs Device To Distinguish Between Marijuana, Hemp

    DEA Needs Device To Distinguish Between Marijuana, Hemp

    One of the primary differences between hemp and marijuana is the amount of THC in each plant. 

    The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) recently sent out a public notice asking for leads on a device that can differentiate between marijuana and hemp, since hemp was made legal under the 2018 Farm Bill, while marijuana remains banned at the federal level. 

    Hemp and marijuana are both types of cannabis, different special of the same plant. Despite this similarity, the plants have very different effects. Marijuana has a much higher THC content and is used to get high and for medicinal purposes, while hemp has a lower THC content and is used for manufacturing everything from oils to fabrics to CBD products, according to CBD Origin. 

    The 2018 Farm Bill made it legal to grow and manufacture hemp, but because the plants look similar at first glance this has made enforcing marijuana laws difficult for DEA agents. That’s why the agency is looking for a device that can test plants in the field to determine whether they are marijuana or hemp. 

    “It must be portable and rugged enough to be used in non-laboratory environments or ambient conditions. All products shall be the most current and up-to-date model/revision(s) available at the time of delivery.

    Anticipated maximum quantities to be purchased will be based on evaluation results and agency need,” the agency wrote, according to Marijuana Moment. 

    The notice emphasized that federally the THC content level is what distinguishes marijuana from hemp. 

    “[A]ny Cannabis sativa L. plant material with a THC concentration above 0.3% is considered marijuana (AKA marihuana) and is still federally controlled,” the agency wrote. 

    Businesses who are interested in providing a device for testing cannabis plants can put in an application for consideration before March 15. 

    The DEA has been put in a tough position as cannabis laws around the country continue to evolve and the agency is still tasked with enforcing the federal prohibition. In addition to scrambling to differentiate between marijuana and hemp, the agency has also been working to give more approvals for marijuana grown for research purposes. 

    Marijuana Moment reported that the agency plans to increase the amount of marijuana that can be grown for research from 1,000 pounds to more than 5,000 pounds this year, but it has been slow to approve applications from growers. 

    “The DEA increased the production quota for marihuana based solely on increased usage projections for federally approved research projects,” the agency said in December. “The DEA continues to review applications for registration and registers the number of bulk manufacturers of a controlled substance that is necessary to produce an adequate and uninterrupted supply.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Hemp Could Soon Be Legal

    Hemp Could Soon Be Legal

    A bill to legalize hemp has passed the Senate and is moving to the House.

    The U.S. Senate last week green-lit a bill that would legalize growing hemp. 

    Included as part of a massive farm bill, the proposed legislation sailed through the upper chamber 86-11, paving the way to allow industrial growth of the non-psychoactive plant. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) touted the legislation as a farmer-friendly measure. 

    “I have heard from many Kentucky farmers who agree it’s time to remove the federal hurdles and give our state the opportunity to seize its full potential and once again become the national leader for hemp production,” McConnell said. “That is why I strongly advocated for this measure to be included in the Farm Bill.”

    This isn’t the first time McConnell floated hemp legislation; in April he introduced the Hemp Farming Act, which could have legalized the plant, according to Forbes.

    Then in June, he inserted the measure’s key provisions into the 2018 Farm Bill. The move would later spark some squabbling in the committee on whether to remove cannabis derivatives like cannabidiol (CBD), but ultimately pot opponents opted not to demand the change, according to Forbes.

    The consistently anti-cannabis Attorney General Jeff Sessions has signaled that he will not fight the hemp provisions, McConnell told the Associated Press.

    Currently, hemp—a crop derived from the cannabis sativa species—is a Schedule I controlled substance. The new provisions would remove it from that list and allow farmers to get federal crop insurance when they grow it.

    But despite its recent win, the bill still has other hurdles to clear before it passes. The House has a separate farm bill, one that tightens controversial work requirements for food stamps. That is expected to generate some contentious debate as the two chambers reconcile their competing pieces of legislation.

    As of now, farmers in McConnell’s home state are already enjoying the benefits of hemp cultivation, thanks to a pilot program launched in 2014. That year, the state saw 32 acres of hemp planted; this year, officials have approved more than 14,000. 

    “It’s tremendous for us,” eighth-generation tobacco farmer Brian Furnish told the Associated Press. “We can start going after crop insurance and research dollars.”

    View the original article at thefix.com