How We Got Here
If you woke up from a decades-long coma or were dropped onto Earth by aliens, you’d be forgiven for assuming that weed is legal in the United States. It seems like every gas station, corner store, and smoke shop from Miami to Montana is ready to get you some kind of stoned whenever you’d like. Gummies, vapes, pre-rolls, it’s all there with neon weed leaves in the window.
Of course, cannabis is not legal in the United States. Despite plenty of regulated and taxed state-legal weed sales, the plant is still a Schedule I narcotic in the eyes of the federal government. Hemp, on the other hand, is so legal that you can run it through chemical extractions to synthesize minor cannabinoids, turn it into oil and spray it all over gummies, and hemp pre-rolls and pack it into vape carts and sell it anywhere you want.
Delta 8, Delta 10, HHC, THC-O, THCP, and the rest of the hemp weed pretenders have popped up everywhere for one simple reason: people like to get high and they’ll often take the most convenient and cheapest route to that elevated destination. But as we look forward to a time when weed – real weed – will be legal nationwide, we should already be establishing norms for cannabis that push back firmly against the products of hemp bill loopholes, no matter their legal status.
When the 2018 Farm Bill was signed into law it legalized hemp – defined as any cannabis plant or product that tests at levels lower than 0.3% Delta 9 THC – and set the stage for the eruption of the CBD market. It seems like a lifetime ago now, but CBD edibles, mints, salves, ice creams, lattes, and bottled water were everywhere for a couple of years, advertised as a …
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Author: Zach Harris / High Times
