9 ms·

A Hidden Origin Story of the CBD Craze

118 points by Hooke 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
aardvark291 6y ago
TIL that CBD was kind of "invented" around 2011.
aardvark291 6y ago
» Unrelated to the brouhaha on the West Coast, tobacco farmers in Kentucky were seeking a new cash crop. In 2011, James Comer won the race for Kentucky state agriculture commissioner by promising to legalize industrial hemp. “That raised a lot of eyebrows, including in McConnell’s office,” Eric Steenstra, a hemp lobbyist, told me. “They saw the winds were shifting.” Along with Representative Jared Polis, now the governor of Colorado, Mr. McConnell included a hemp pilot program in the 2014 farm bill — for “research.” In the legislation, hemp was defined as cannabis containing less than 0.3 percent THC — an arbitrary threshold, not a scientific distinction: Nothing in the Farm Bill, in case law, or in the Controlled Substances Act seemed to say anything about CBD. So entrepreneurs interpreted this research-oriented pilot program as the de facto legalization of cannabidiol. The Drug Enforcement Administration disagreed, but couldn’t stop the tidal wave of CBD production. In 2018, over 60 percent of the hemp crop in Kentucky was grown for CBD. Then, long after the country was already flooded with CBD products both dubious and legitimate, Mr. McConnell inserted language into the 2018 Farm Bill explicitly making hemp federally legal.«
- refurb 6y ago
  It's actually pretty amazing how quickly this happened. Prior to the new legislation, "cannabis" was illegal, that is, the plant, regardless of THC content. Schedule 1 narcotic according to the DEA. Then this farm bill passes, without a lot of fanfare (about cannabis) and poof, it's legal across all 50 states (as long as it's less than 0.3% THC). What's interesting to me is how the DEA is losing influence. They not only tried to stop this legislation, but also kratom (they were making it schedule 1 as well). Due to public outcry, the DEA backed down and we're in this weird limbo where kratom remains legal federally, even though the DEA doesn't want it to be. I'm guessing over the next 20-30 years, we'll see a lot of changes with regards to the war on drugs. It started with marijuana, but it won't stop there.
  - redisman 6y ago
    This is definitely one of the spaces where the internet has made the status quo unacceptable to the majority of at least the US public. It’s very hard to fight one of humanity’s basic urges with disinformation in a open society with the internet.
    - anewdirection 6y ago
      And yet adult contact is down overall, sex workers cannot communicate online anymore, and covid is seen as a 'nothingburger' by half the people I meet reguardless of political leanings. Never underestimate a good disinfo wave. Hell, even Biden is singing the old 'we don't know if it is safe, better keep it illegal' refrain.
nickysielicki 6y ago
The article doesn't talk about this, but the most mind blowing thing about the "CBD craze" to me is that hemp flower is now legal in all 50 states, and despite what people will tell you ("you can't get high off hemp; it doesn't have THC; it doesn't have enough THC to get you high") it definitely can get you high. It won't get you high in the same way that Modern Engineered Marijuana (TM) will (read: it won't make you go crazy), but marijuana of the 1970's is basically legal everywhere, and you will get stoned if you smoke it. Flower is typically tested for compliance against the psychoactive delta9-THC in most states (not in all states though), which ignores the THCA content. But THCA is converted to delta9-THC when heated/"decarboxylated", which is a pretty big loophole. These communities [1][2] are buying ounces of weed through the mail. A better example is probably this 17 gram edible [3]. At 0.3% d9-THC, that's a ~5mg dose of psychoactive THC per package. You can buy these all over the US in states like Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky... Places not exactly known to be "weed friendly". See this map [4]. Pot has basically been legalized everywhere and people just don't know about it yet. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/hempflowers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/hempflowers/ [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/CBDhempBuds/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CBDhempBuds/ [3]: https://lunchboxalchemycbd.com/products/full-spectrum-hemp-squibs-100mg-each-10-servings?variant=31701050556496 https://lunchboxalchemycbd.com/products/full-spectrum-hemp-s... [4]: https://lunchboxalchemy.com/cbd-retailers-cbd-squib/ https://lunchboxalchemy.com/cbd-retailers-cbd-squib/
- bhewes 6y ago
  Except we have had medical marijuana for over a year in Oklahoma.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Sure, but you need to jump through a bunch of hoops to get a medical marijuana license? You can order CBD off the internet.
  - sneak 6y ago
    Possession or sale of, or receiving cross-state-lines payment for marijuana is a federal felony in all 50 US states, including of course Oklahoma. The same is not true for hemp.
cannaceo 6y ago
It's rare that I read an article that has the names of so many people I've worked with over the years. Samantha Miller is one of the pioneering cannabis scientists in Northern California and for a long time was the only resource in the area. I still test with her lab to this day. Lawrence Ringo introduced me to a lot of my supply chain before his passing. The network of farmers he worked with were largely not able to make the transition to the recreational cannabis industry. Mel Frank cultivated cannabis in the next room over from my first manufacturing lab. Super nice guy with a real love of the plant. Reading articles like this make me miss the old days of cannabis when there was more passion for the plant.
- Animats 6y ago
  The network of farmers he worked with were largely not able to make the transition to the recreational cannabis industry. Yes, the industry has been taken over by people who don't actually use the stuff. That says something.
  - huonpine 6y ago
    Its definitely hard to be motivated by money when your using cannabis.
    - bagacrap 6y ago
      or by anything else for that matter
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
casefields 6y ago
Mirror: http://archive.md/ur9wT http://archive.md/ur9wT
coderintherye 6y ago
There's actually a big "hidden" story in CBD Hemp flower right now that has gotten surprisingly little attention. The 2018 Farm bill legalized < 0.3% delta-9 THC which basically legalized all hemp flower strains that are currently popular to grow. However, 2020 USDA regulations and various state regulations are changing that to TOTAL THC which includes THCA, which is typically at 0.4-0.6% for all popular strains. The market is about to get seriously hurt for 2020 if this comes to fully pass and a lot of farmers are confused about the new regulations.
mmaunder 6y ago
In South Africa we’ve been treating cancer patients with hemp oil for 2 decades.
- zabana 6y ago
  Interesting ! How well does it work ?
  - ycombinete 6y ago
    As a South African, I recently watched a family friend die after 10 years of breast cancer growth, which could have been quite easily been curbed with modern medicine. They opted for naturopathic treatment instead, relying on CBD oil, amongst other things. I’m sure, like all medicines, CBD oil is highly effective, when used for the right ailment. In this case it might even have prolonged a life, and might have been an amazing co-medicine alongside more brutal modern treatments like chemo. But it definitely did not cure or even stop the progress of the cancer.
- nicofcurti 6y ago
  To be fair medicinal marijuana has been widely used in a lot of countries for longer than that
Wraith420 6y ago
Excuse me, I buy Pounds of Federally Legal flower through TheHempSheet's discount coupons.

118 points by Hooke 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

aardvark291 6y ago

TIL that CBD was kind of "invented" around 2011.

aardvark291 6y ago

» Unrelated to the brouhaha on the West Coast, tobacco farmers in Kentucky were seeking a new cash crop. In 2011, James Comer won the race for Kentucky state agriculture commissioner by promising to legalize industrial hemp. “That raised a lot of eyebrows, including in McConnell’s office,” Eric Steenstra, a hemp lobbyist, told me. “They saw the winds were shifting.” Along with Representative Jared Polis, now the governor of Colorado, Mr. McConnell included a hemp pilot program in the 2014 farm bill — for “research.” In the legislation, hemp was defined as cannabis containing less than 0.3 percent THC — an arbitrary threshold, not a scientific distinction: Nothing in the Farm Bill, in case law, or in the Controlled Substances Act seemed to say anything about CBD. So entrepreneurs interpreted this research-oriented pilot program as the de facto legalization of cannabidiol. The Drug Enforcement Administration disagreed, but couldn’t stop the tidal wave of CBD production. In 2018, over 60 percent of the hemp crop in Kentucky was grown for CBD. Then, long after the country was already flooded with CBD products both dubious and legitimate, Mr. McConnell inserted language into the 2018 Farm Bill explicitly making hemp federally legal.«

refurb 6y ago
It's actually pretty amazing how quickly this happened. Prior to the new legislation, "cannabis" was illegal, that is, the plant, regardless of THC content. Schedule 1 narcotic according to the DEA. Then this farm bill passes, without a lot of fanfare (about cannabis) and poof, it's legal across all 50 states (as long as it's less than 0.3% THC). What's interesting to me is how the DEA is losing influence. They not only tried to stop this legislation, but also kratom (they were making it schedule 1 as well). Due to public outcry, the DEA backed down and we're in this weird limbo where kratom remains legal federally, even though the DEA doesn't want it to be. I'm guessing over the next 20-30 years, we'll see a lot of changes with regards to the war on drugs. It started with marijuana, but it won't stop there.
- redisman 6y ago
  This is definitely one of the spaces where the internet has made the status quo unacceptable to the majority of at least the US public. It’s very hard to fight one of humanity’s basic urges with disinformation in a open society with the internet.
  - anewdirection 6y ago
    And yet adult contact is down overall, sex workers cannot communicate online anymore, and covid is seen as a 'nothingburger' by half the people I meet reguardless of political leanings. Never underestimate a good disinfo wave. Hell, even Biden is singing the old 'we don't know if it is safe, better keep it illegal' refrain.

nickysielicki 6y ago

The article doesn't talk about this, but the most mind blowing thing about the "CBD craze" to me is that hemp flower is now legal in all 50 states, and despite what people will tell you ("you can't get high off hemp; it doesn't have THC; it doesn't have enough THC to get you high") it definitely can get you high. It won't get you high in the same way that Modern Engineered Marijuana (TM) will (read: it won't make you go crazy), but marijuana of the 1970's is basically legal everywhere, and you will get stoned if you smoke it. Flower is typically tested for compliance against the psychoactive delta9-THC in most states (not in all states though), which ignores the THCA content. But THCA is converted to delta9-THC when heated/"decarboxylated", which is a pretty big loophole. These communities [1][2] are buying ounces of weed through the mail. A better example is probably this 17 gram edible [3]. At 0.3% d9-THC, that's a ~5mg dose of psychoactive THC per package. You can buy these all over the US in states like Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky... Places not exactly known to be "weed friendly". See this map [4]. Pot has basically been legalized everywhere and people just don't know about it yet. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/hempflowers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/hempflowers/ [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/CBDhempBuds/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CBDhempBuds/ [3]: https://lunchboxalchemycbd.com/products/full-spectrum-hemp-squibs-100mg-each-10-servings?variant=31701050556496 https://lunchboxalchemycbd.com/products/full-spectrum-hemp-s... [4]: https://lunchboxalchemy.com/cbd-retailers-cbd-squib/ https://lunchboxalchemy.com/cbd-retailers-cbd-squib/

bhewes 6y ago
Except we have had medical marijuana for over a year in Oklahoma.
- refurb 6y ago
  Sure, but you need to jump through a bunch of hoops to get a medical marijuana license? You can order CBD off the internet.
- sneak 6y ago
  Possession or sale of, or receiving cross-state-lines payment for marijuana is a federal felony in all 50 US states, including of course Oklahoma. The same is not true for hemp.

cannaceo 6y ago

It's rare that I read an article that has the names of so many people I've worked with over the years. Samantha Miller is one of the pioneering cannabis scientists in Northern California and for a long time was the only resource in the area. I still test with her lab to this day. Lawrence Ringo introduced me to a lot of my supply chain before his passing. The network of farmers he worked with were largely not able to make the transition to the recreational cannabis industry. Mel Frank cultivated cannabis in the next room over from my first manufacturing lab. Super nice guy with a real love of the plant. Reading articles like this make me miss the old days of cannabis when there was more passion for the plant.

Animats 6y ago
The network of farmers he worked with were largely not able to make the transition to the recreational cannabis industry. Yes, the industry has been taken over by people who don't actually use the stuff. That says something.
- huonpine 6y ago
  Its definitely hard to be motivated by money when your using cannabis.
  - bagacrap 6y ago
    or by anything else for that matter

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

casefields 6y ago

Mirror: http://archive.md/ur9wT http://archive.md/ur9wT

coderintherye 6y ago

There's actually a big "hidden" story in CBD Hemp flower right now that has gotten surprisingly little attention. The 2018 Farm bill legalized < 0.3% delta-9 THC which basically legalized all hemp flower strains that are currently popular to grow. However, 2020 USDA regulations and various state regulations are changing that to TOTAL THC which includes THCA, which is typically at 0.4-0.6% for all popular strains. The market is about to get seriously hurt for 2020 if this comes to fully pass and a lot of farmers are confused about the new regulations.

mmaunder 6y ago

In South Africa we’ve been treating cancer patients with hemp oil for 2 decades.

zabana 6y ago
Interesting ! How well does it work ?
- ycombinete 6y ago
  As a South African, I recently watched a family friend die after 10 years of breast cancer growth, which could have been quite easily been curbed with modern medicine. They opted for naturopathic treatment instead, relying on CBD oil, amongst other things. I’m sure, like all medicines, CBD oil is highly effective, when used for the right ailment. In this case it might even have prolonged a life, and might have been an amazing co-medicine alongside more brutal modern treatments like chemo. But it definitely did not cure or even stop the progress of the cancer.
nicofcurti 6y ago
To be fair medicinal marijuana has been widely used in a lot of countries for longer than that

Wraith420 6y ago

Excuse me, I buy Pounds of Federally Legal flower through TheHempSheet's discount coupons.