In January, after years of pleas to the Food and Drug Administration to create regulations for CBD, the agency essentially said, “this is too hard for us,” and kicked the issue over to Congress.
In the ensuing months, chaos has continued to rule the CBD business, with legitimate vendors competing against fly-by-night, often fraudulent operators. Meanwhile, the market for often-dicey and potentially dangerous CBD-derived cannabis products that (unlike regular CBD) get you high continues to grow.
And now there is yet more fallout. Last week, an official with the Drug Enforcement Administration revealed that the agency was planning to propose new rules that would effectively ban delta-8 THC products and impose rules on the CBD market that could hurt legitimate vendors.
In other words, the FDA’s evasion of its responsibilities has led the DEA to decide that the federal government should monitor the CBD and hemp markets not through normal business regulations, but through the criminal code.
Delta-8 THC is derived most often from hemp by converting CBD chemically into a substance that can get you high. (The kind of THC we’re most familiar with is delta-9, which remains illegal federally and in many states.) Although several states have legislated against products made from delta-8 and other synthesized derivatives of the hemp plant, it’s easily obtainable by most people over the Internet or otherwise. The products came on the market after the passage of the Farm Bill…