One of the most frustrating things about legislation is that precision is so difficult to achieve.
Especially when dealing with inept lawmakers who continually legislate their powers away to un-elected boards. Because they barely do the heavy lifting, rarely do they even read a bill, much less fully think out the repercussions of the language they use, they don’t understand what the fallout would be to the rules they create.
Or, do they leave things subjective so that they can be their own activist and allow for subjective applications of the law?
So when reading the DEA’s Interim Final Rules (IFR), I can’t help but believe that the lack of precision in several key aspects to hemp classification is wholly purposeful.
When you take something like hemp flower, and that hemp has a THC content of 0.3%, and you concentrate those cannabinoids through extraction, you will have MORE than 0.3% THC in that extract.
I am also willing to bet that the inept (trying to be charitable here…) lawyers writing these rules for the DEA are fully aware of this mathematical law.
So why would they purposefully leave out the extraction process for this amazing concentrated plant matter?
I will assign some malice here…they want it to be EXTREMELY difficult for the industry to grow and develop so that they have as many targets to go after as possible to warrant their annual budget.
The Hegelian Dialectic basically boils down to creating a problem, controlling the reaction, and coming to a predetermined solution that benefits the problem makers.
Once a hemp plant is extracted, it is normal for the levels of THC to spike to several percentage points. For simplicity sake, you remove half of the biomass during extraction, your concentration levels will double.
With such a crude extract (in fact, it is called CBD crude) at a 50% efficacy, a hemp plant that had 0.3% THC will now have 0.6% THC.
That material will then be further refined, and having an extract with up to 3% THC isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
And with the lazy guidelines for the rule changes, even the crude extract will be considered a controlled substance, as they are not accounting for the extraction process.
There are ways to mitigate THC during extraction, but then what happens with the pure 75-99%+ THC that you are removing?
And when you combine the hemp extract back into a product, this will naturally reduce the percentage of THC, normally to well below the arbitrary 0.3% levels dictated to us.
This is why I am thankful for some of the hemp trade associations out there taking these oversteps on in court.
Highlights A hemp trade association and a hemp company have filed a petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit challenging the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Interim Final Rule (IFR). The D.C. Circuit petition challenges the IFR on the basis that: 1) the DEA did not follow the appropriate notice and comment procedures, 2) the DEA does not have authority under the Farm Bill to issue the IFR, and 3) the DEA’s acting administrator lacks authority to issue the IFR. The DEA is accepting comments on its hemp IFR until Oct. 20, 2020 . A hemp trade association and a hemp company have filed a petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit challenging the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Interim Final Rule (IFR). The DEA published its IFR on Aug. 21, 2020, to implement the Agriculture Improvement […]
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