One of the legacies of the drug war is the major problem caused for the CBD industry and for the patients who want to get CBD. During the height of the drug war, there was pressure to allow the cultivation of hemp as a product. Amazingly, we can’t allow the cultivation of hemp because American law enforcement can’t tell the difference between a stalk and a bush.
In very prohibitionist France, hemp was cultivated. In communist China, hemp was cultivated. But we can’t allow this in America, because we couldn’t even talk about hemp cultivation at Monticello – Thomas Jefferson’s estate where he wrote about it, he grew hemp. But we can’t talk about it because that would send the wrong message to children. … How do we deal with this? How do we keep marijuana suppressed while allowing the cultivation of an agricultural staple that was grown all over the world for thousands of years?
You put a 0.3 percent limit on the amount of THC in a plant. Mother Nature never heard of that, to put it mildly. So this is something that was done basically to keep marijuana illegal, to suppress it. Even hemp seed oil, which had only possibly the tiniest traces of THC, never mind having enough to have any effect, the DEA tried very hard to block it and to keep it from being used. When the British-based Body Shop started adding hemp seed oil to some of its topicals, you would have thought that they were making everything in the world radioactive.
Related: Are you a senior looking to try CBD for the first time? Click here for a comprehensive First Time Buyer’s Guide!
The extent of the suppression of cannabis generally had to start with suppressing hemp. This whole business of a limit of 0.3 percent THC is something that was basically put into law to suppress medical marijuana and suppress hemp cultivation generally. There is no scientific basis for this, it is a huge problem for farmers.
The fact is that this whole thing, which would seem to be unrelated to marijuana because there is no THC in hemp, is in fact all about that. It’s all about maintaining prohibition, is all about maintaining the power of the police over your bodies. This is something that as a senior citizen, I really want to address when we talk about other topics, because this is something that literally will kill us. To add to the absurdity of these arbitrary limits on THC, 0.3 percent THC in hemp cultivation with processing it is most likely to go away almost completely. This is, again, something that has no basis in either agricultural or are in medicine or in chemistry. This is all a political tool that is primarily a function of the drug war.
Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.