Protecting Hemp Farmers From Federal Raids

The American agricultural hemp industry is emerging

In my home state of Vermont, farmers enrolled in the University of Vermont's Hemp Research Program are growing hemp as part of a field and economic research program into hemp's benefit to Vermont. A new craft beer company called Green Empire Brewing is sourcing agricultural hemp grown domestically in lieu of more cost-intensive hops. I have sampled this hemp beer and it tastes delicious with no psychoactive effects.

U.S. News published an article about the role hemp is playing on developing new craft beer recipes.

Do you agree as I do that we, as a people, must define a reasonable legal definition for agricultural hemp based on sound science not an international standard or federal decree founded on arbitrary lines, yet recognized by a minority of anti-cannabis western nations which control the majority of the international hemp trade?

Any "international standard" legally defining hemp was adopted by a minority of commercially powerful trade partners controlling a significant portion of global hemp trade, and most if not all trade partners, are nations which adopted and enforced marijuana prohibition within their own borders at the time hemp was legally defined. Some nations like the U.S., worked over the past 46 years to export marijuana prohibition to other nations through treaty, which skewed then infected the policy judgments of international trade partners when deliberating a legal definition for hemp.

There are 195 sovereign nation states worldwide. What percentage of the 195 nations recognizes a 0.3% THC standard legally defining hemp from marijuana? Which few nations get the legal right to decide and impose an "international standard?" If any argument made for or against nullifying federal hemp law had to appeal to what's common or an "international standard," we wouldn't be having a discussion about nullifying federal recreational and medical marijuana codes in America state-by-state because supporters of marijuana prohibition can just say - " well, marijuana prohibition is common or based on an 'international standard' so prohibition is here to stay."

What if the standard definition separating hemp from marijuana is wrong?

I believe the Executive Order instructing the Justice Department to effectively leave states like Vermont and Colorado alone to define their own marijuana policies, accommodates agricultural hemp, as hemp and marijuana are the same species of cannabis, with hemp and hemp farming having uncontested positive social and economic implications. Since the passing of the 2014 Farm Bill defining hemp under federal code as below 0.3% THC, some of America’s hemp farmers have been raided, have had their crops seized and destroyed over a minority segment of their cannabis hemp crop testing slightly above this arbitrary legal limit – yet still not containing enough THC to provide recreational value according to cannabis scientists.

The federal distinction separating hemp from marijuana as 0.3% THC is based on research done in 1970’s by a scientist in Canada named Ernest Small who published his findings in a book called The Species Problem in Cannabis. Small’s research was limited to common industrial uses for hemp in that era, uses confined by the prohibition climate and scientific understanding of the era. Small never designed his research for regulatory purposes and acknowledges his conclusion was arbitrary and that it was not uncommon to detect high amounts of THC in agricultural hemp strains, dispelling the myth that industrial hemp contains below 0.3% THC:

Dana Larson, author of The Illustrated History of Cannabis in Canada, acknowledges major problems with Ernest Small’s research:

[1] “…there was not any natural point at which the cannabinoid content could be used to distinguish strains of hemp and marijuana, but despite this he [Small] ‘drew an arbitrary line on the continuum of cannabis types, and decided that 0.3 percent THC in a sifted batch of cannabis flowers was the difference between hemp and marijuana.’”

[2] “Small clearly noted that among the hundreds of strains he experimented with, ‘plants cultivated for fibre [sic], oil and birdseed frequently had moderate or high amounts of THC’… thus the worldwide 0.3 percent THC standard divider between marijuana and hemp is not based on which strains have the most agricultural benefit, nor is it based on an analysis of the THC level required for psychoactivity. It’s based on an arbitrary decision of a Canadian scientist growing cannabis in Ottawa.”

So the researcher whose research unwittingly became the basis for hemp’s current legal definition around the world acknowledges his research was not scientific. None the less, governments worldwide decided to found hemp laws upon Small’s arbitrary research causing legal troubles for farmers. Just ask tribal leaders of the Menominee people whose members grew over 30,000 hemp plants whose crop was seized and destroyed after some plants allegedly tested slightly above 0.3% THC. The Menominee tribe would have benefited from a state statute which provides a more informed definition of hemp guided not by prohibition era logic but by contemporary science and contemporary industrial value. It is practically impossible for federal law enforcers to enforce federal cannabis codes without the assistance of state and local governments, meaning the Menominee tribe would have kept their hemp crop had state statute better defined domestically cultivated hemp informed by contemporary science and contemporary industrial value.

Hemp is cannabis sativa. Marijuana is cannabis sativa. Science is blind to political distinctions between hemp from marijuana

The difference between 0.29% THC "hemp" and 0.31% THC “marijuana” makes about as much of a difference between two human beings having a variance in body hormone levels. Can having lower or higher levels of estrogen or testosterone in your human body change the definition of your being human? Any distinction between hemp and marijuana is purely political, rooted in racism and xenophobia, limited by prohibition-era science funding which produced misinformation that misguided policy and law worldwide.

States are now presented with a moral opportunity to correct the arbitrary and capricious logic behind the definition for hemp. I believe our elected Representatives serving the State Legislatures would not willfully expose America's farmers to any legal hazard for possessing outlier cannabis plants testing a couple tenths of a percent above 0.3% THC. By better defining hemp under state statute, not only will our elected Representatives in State Legislatures ensure hemp crop remains non-psychoactive and available as biomass and food, for beneficial terpenes, flavinoids and cannabinoids used in wellness products, but the Legislature will ensuring state and municipal law enforcement resources are reserved for stopping the flow of heroin into our communities, and for solving genuine crimes having genuine victims like assault, murder, fraud, rape, and robbery.

Policing Cannabis Genetics® and THC

We can better protect our farmers by passing statues that defining non-GMO hemp as containing below 1% THC and do away with the arbitrary 0.3% THC limit which seems practically obtainable for genetically modified seed. This 0.7% THC span between the 0.3% federal definition and a 1% state definition for hemp would act as a protective buffer against any natural variation in the level of THC for any given hemp strain. Variation in seed genetics may produce uneven distribution in crop THC-A levels which genetic engineering would best rectify. It’s not uncommon for selectively breed, non-GMO hemp seeds sold to farmers that when grown, express some genetic variation in THC-A levels. Non-GMO hemp farmers would operating at greater legal risk than hemp farmers growing GMO seed, and require added protection of a state statute defining hemp.

Cannabis deserves to be regulated more like alcohol not like enriched uranium. THC intoxication is the direct result of the level of active-THC in the blood stream not THC-A in the plant, much like how drunkenness is the direct result of alcohol in the blood stream not a percentage of alcohol by volume (ABV %) in a bottle of liquor. Our alcohol impairment laws protect the public by tasking law enforcement with assessing alcohol levels in the blood stream as a measure of responsible adult use, not by assessing alcohol by volume (ABV %) in a bottle of alcohol sitting in a liquor cabinet shelf as a measure of responsible adult use. Testing THC % of a cannabis plant as a measure of risk to public safety makes as much sense as testing (ABV %) in a bottle of scotch on store shelf or in a liquor cabinet, when the focus should be on actual impairment.

Care to add to this conversation? If you do want to add to this conversation, believe I’m wrong, or you have other ideas, suggestions or comments, please post them in the comment section below.