Current federal law considers cannabis hemp, not marijuana, as long as it does not contain more than 0.3% THC. Uncle Sam says marijuana plants with a higher THC content than 0.3 percent are illegal. The 2014 Agricultural Act (also known as the Farm Bill) defined industrial hemp for the first time in American history. It also distinguished it from marijuana legally. Section 7606 of the Agricultural Act enshrines the ‘0.3% THC or less” qualification for hemp. It was renewed by Congress when the 2018 Farm Bill was approved.
The 2018 Farm Bill did not mention resin. A cynic might call it the ‘Keep Marijuana Illegal Bill.’ This is an impractical, arbitrary, and euphoriaphobic relic from reefer madness. It lacks scientific support but is the latest lynchpin in cannabis prohibition. This dishonest, anachronistic policy impedes medical discovery and prevents patients from accessing valuable therapeutic options, such as CBN Oil Malta herbal extracts that contain different combinations of CBD or THC.
The Farm Bill, despite its flaws, is a significant step forward. The Farm Bill now allows American farmers to grow hemp on their domestic soils as a commercial crop. The enormous public demand for CBD prompted this long-overdue development.
The Farm Bill passed on December 20, 2018, removed hemp but not cannabis from the list. The Farm Bill explicitly excluded hemp products, including CBD-derived hemp, from the scope of CSA. However, it did not exclude the FDA from its purview. FDA maintains that CBD-derived hemp is not a good food supplement or a medication approved for use off-label.
CBD oil from cannabis plants containing more than 0.3 percent THC is still a federal Schedule 1 substance. Given that the CBD molecule in both illegal and legal cannabis-derived CBD oils is the same, it’s unclear how regulators will distinguish between them.
Organically grown CBD-rich, high-resin cannabis is the best source of CBD oil. It’s not low-resin industrial hemp. Why? Why? Because more CBD can be extracted from the plant’s resin. For many reasons, low-resin industrial hemp grown for seed oil or fiber is not a good source of CBD.
High-resin CBD-rich cannabis has a higher amount of cannabidiol than industrial hemp. Therefore, growing a lot of industrial hemps is necessary to extract small amounts of CBD. This increases the risk of contamination because hemp is a bio-accumulator, meaning that the plant naturally draws toxic substances from the soil. This is great for phyto-remedial uses but not so much for making ingestible medical oil products. The good stuff and the toxic substances will be concentrated in hemp or cannabis oil.
The co-product of hemp grown for another purpose, such as CBD oil, is often called a byproduct or co-product. A farmer can make more money by selling their hemp biomass to a company that extracts CBD from it.