Tiffany Kary, Bloomberg.
How Congress stumbled into delivering a buzz
Months after U.S. states scrambled to close a loophole that allowed psychoactive cannabis to be sold in gas stations across the U.S., even where marijuana is illegal, a second loophole is being exploited.
Here it is in a nutshell, according to Jim Higdon, the founder of Cornbread Hemp: The 2018 U.S. farm bill that legalized hemp, introduced by Senator Mitch McConnell, allows hemp-derived CBD to contain up to 0.3% THC by dry weight. Oils and gummies are so dense compared with dry marijuana, however, that you can add enough THC to pack a significant punch without technically violating that rule.
Josh Wurzer, founder of cannabis-testing company SC Labs, said that the 0.3% limit by weight indeed allows some gummies to contain a wallop; a 5-gram gummy, for example, could legally contain 150 milligrams of THC, which is 15 times the amount that California considers a standard dose. However, most of his clients are actually trying to avoid tangling with federal law by having extremely low levels of THC, Wurzer said. ‘That’s why they do the testing in the first place.’
Cornbread Hemp, based in Louisville, Kentucky, is taking advantage of that by shipping gummies with high amounts of THC — the ingredient in marijuana that gets users high — into dozens of…