Checkpoint: Why Are Republicans Banning Hemp of All Things?

“It’s DEFCON1 For Hemp!” proclaims the US Hemp Roundtable on their website.

Last month when the bill to end the government shutdown was put forward, a small amendment was added by Mitch McConnell to essentially ban hemp. This amendment was passed without a hearing and has, since the shutdown ended, come into law with a 1-year grace period before it kicks in.

The bill adds new regulations to hemp growing, slashing the maximum allowable amounts and kinds of THC (the high-inducing family of chemicals) in hemp to unfeasibly low levels.

Mitch McConnell has said that the ban will keep “dangerous products out of the hands of children, while preserving the hemp industry for farmers”. However, even some of his republican colleagues, like the other senator for Kentucky, Rand Paul have called it “the most thoughtless, ignorant proposal”.

But what exactly is hemp?

Hemp is the term used for non-intoxicating cultivars of cannabis, that contain only traces of the psychoactive THC compounds that would, in higher amounts, get you giggling. Hemp itself has a ton of uses, including in making textiles, rope, paper and even construction materials.

So, why the ban?

Well, because American drug policy is in shambles and Mitch McConnel would rather beat an industry with a legislative tire-iron than carefully manage it.

To elaborate…

In the 2018 Farm Bill, hemp with a negligible amount of delta-9 THC became legal to grow, and its derived products to be sold. Since then, the hemp industry has grown a lot bigger, bringing in $1.5 billion in tax revenue, is worth an estimated $28 billion and employs more than 300,000 people. The growth has been driven by demand for industrial products, for cannabidiol (CBD) products and a third market that I’ll explain shortly.

CBD is a chemical in hemp and marijuana which has no narcotic effects, mostly being shown to be effective at reducing seizures, and that many people enjoy for its alleged sleep-aid and calming effects.

However, because the legislation only mentioned limiting the Delta-9 THC variant, a loophole was created. In the ensuing years, businesses sprang up that used the CBD in legal hemp to chemically synthesise Delta-8 THC. This is basically a milder, but still psychoactive form of Delta-9 THC. Thus, a parallel market to marijuana sprang up that used hemp-derived Delta-8 THC to make gummies, oils, brownies and drinks that would get you stoned. However, such products had no federal requirements on testing, quality control, age verification or checks by the FDA. Since such products were hemp-derived they were even legally purchasable in states where marijuana was banned.

But what was McConnell’s answer? Did he look to states like Minnesota or Michigan that began introducing new regulations and folding Delta-8 products into existing checks and balances?

Nope.

McConnell created regulations so crude that, according to the Hemp Grower’s Roundtable, 95% of current hemp products would be classed as schedule 1 drugs, with the remaining 5% of purely THC-Free products rendered “impossible to manufacture due to limits on extraction”. The regulations would devastate industrial hemp production too, including grain farming, throwing it into “disarray”.

This, combined with the fact that McConnell’s state of Kentucky is the third-largest producer of hemp and thus will be clobbered by the ban, shows the former Senate Leader’s profound ability to hurt everyone while solving nothing.

The growth of the Delta-8 market was certainly unregulated, but shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone who has given drug policy more thought than ‘Just Say No.’ 

The strict illegality of marijuana at the federal level, inflexibly defended for decades, has left those who wish to consume or produce it to turn to the black market at worst, or mired in a legal clown-show at best.  Currently, only 11% of Americans believe in outright legal prohibition, yet its current Schedule 1 Status (the same as heroin) shows that the federal government’s drug policy has languished in conservatism for decades.

That conservatism was what led to the creation of state-wide legalization campaigns and partial successes, with 40 states legalizing or decriminalizing Marijuana use to date.

However, federal illegality means issues remain - marijuana producers have trouble using banks, consumption, sale and production is still a federal crime, and shipping across state-lines is still technically trafficking. That’ without mentioning the horrifying human cost, with over 545,000 cannabis arrests in 2019 alone. Marijuana arrests also represent a major point of racial discrimination, with African Americans having similar usage rates to White Americans but facing more than 3.3 times the arrest rate.

With 52.5 million people using the drug at least once a year in 2021, one can’t imagine demand going anywhere. Thus, the rapid growth of producers that found a way to tap into that market with none of the red tape of federal prohibition was predictable if anything. Now, some interest-groups like the U.S Hemp Roundtable are scrambling to come up with new regulations with the help of state and federal politicians, but the fundamental issue remains.

America’s tangle of schedule 1 status, local regulatory bodies, the Delta-8 loophole and the wholesale lack of federal oversight leaves everyone worse off and drives interest in strange workarounds. Some marijuana growers even fear that the sudden end to the Delta-8 market will push some of those new producers and consumers into the black market, fueling exactly the risks of contamination, youth consumption and lack of regulation that McConnel’s hemp law is meant to solve.

What’s needed is obvious, the rescheduling of marijuana, with a well-defined list of its derivatives and products, needs to be drawn up along with the creation of the same kinds of regulatory architecture that have seen alcohol and tobacco become taxed, regulated and safe (quality-wise). This would mean that growers of hemp could continue to grow a textile and industrial crop that uses ¼ the amount of water as cotton, tired mums could enjoy CBD bed-time hot cocoa, and marijuana growers could focus on growing the ‘fun stuff’ to put in appropriately age-restricted joints, brownies and gummies. Should those who view marijuana, hemp or any other form of cannabis sativa as truly the ‘Devil’s Lettuce’, local laws could render their sale illegal in those areas. America already has ‘dry counties’, which are areas where alcohol sales are banned, so we already have a model where concerned communities get their way.

However, the contemporary GOP has barely mellowed on its drug policy since the War on Drugs of the 1980s, and if McConnel’s actions are to be believed, Republican lawmakers remain detached from both good governance and popular opinion.