The appropriations bill prohibits hemp products from having more than .4 milligrams of total THC per container and ban these products for “personal or household use”
For 35 years, Charles and Linda Gill have run a family farm in Bowdoinham. While initially focused on cut flowers and herbs, they shifted to growing hemp after regulated production was legalized. The hemp-derived products they produce, such as topicals for muscle pain and gummies to assist with sleep, are each accompanied with a handwritten note from Linda when sold at farmers markets, wholesale or shipped across the country.
“We are not in the business of these intoxicating hemp products on the market, which are the ones that are screwing it up for everybody,” Charles Gill said. “They’re abusing the system.”
Charles Gill is referring to companies exploiting a loophole in the 2018 Farm Bill that legalized hemp production, which he thinks should be closed, as do many other hemp farmers in Maine. But they say the way the federal government has proposed to do so would not just prevent exploitation — it would decimate the industry.
“All our current products would be banned,” Charles Gill said. “It would pretty much put us out of business.”
A provision tucked into the deal to reopen the federal government drastically lowers the allowable threshold for legal THC products. [President Donald Trump signed the bill, which recriminalizes hemp THC products, on Wednesday.]
While hemp and marijuana both come from cannabis, hemp contains less THC, which is the compound that makes people high. Since the 2018 bill, it has been legal to sell hemp-derived THC products as long as they contain less than 0.3% THC by dry weight. This made it possible to take legal amounts of THC from hemp and turn it into intoxicating substances — the loophole that there is growing pressure to address.
The language in the appropriations bill prohibits hemp products from having more than .4 milligrams of total THC per container and ban these products for “personal or household use.”
According to a summary of the bill put together by the staff of Senate Appropriations Chair U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, the language would prevent “the unregulated sale of intoxicating hemp-based or hemp-derived products, including Delta-8, from being sold online, in gas stations, and corner stores, while preserving non-intoxicating CBD and industrial hemp products.”
The new limits would also override Maine law, which limits THC to three milligrams per serving.
There is widespread understanding in Maine, and across the country, that regulations are needed for intoxicating hemp products, which are frequently designed to mimic the design of popular snacks, candies and sodas, making them attractive to children.
In contrast to cannabis products, hemp-derived THC products still remain largely unregulated, though earlier this year Maine passed a law that includes packaging requirements for intoxicating products that can now only be sold to people over the age of 21.
Lizzy Hayes, an organic hemp farmer in Cornville who worked on that legislation, said, “that’s more common sense” than how the federal government could alternatively regulate these products.
Hayes, whose farm Panorama Seeds doesn’t produce hemp for intoxicating products, said under the proposed limits “that would mean that a whole package of CBD oil, which you wouldn’t be able to produce under these rules anyway, would never be an effective therapeutic dose.”
Pointing to established and preliminary findings about CBD’s beneficial effects, Hayes said the passage of the federal changes would hurt Mainers who have come to rely on the products.
Charles Gill similarly drew a distinction between intoxicating products and the type of products he sells.
“If you ate a whole jar of vanilla extract, you’d get drunk too, but that’s not the intent,” he said. “My worry is that if they say that [essentially] no THC can be in CBD products, it becomes a very different product.”
Nyeela Hueholt of Rooted Heart Remedies, a registered hemp farm in Buxton, said Congress should focus on how some companies are exploiting the current limits rather than the limits themselves.
“The chemical processing to change a non-psychoactive constituent into a psychoactive constituent — that being illegal would be understandable,” Huebolt said. “But to put us all under this umbrella… to go back just because some people are abusing it, doesn’t make any sense.”
As the federal government considers the provision, the state is also grappling with regulations on hemp, medical cannabis and recreational cannabis, the latter of which has greater restrictions and high taxes.
In the state budget passed this year, the cannabis sales tax was increased — from 10% to 14% — a change that will take effect on January 1.
When the Maine Legislature returns shortly after, lawmakers will again consider a proposal from last session that would add testing and tracking requirements for medical cannabis, which isn’t required to be tested for contaminants and potency like adult-use cannabis.
This article was republished from the Maine Morning Star under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. You can read the original version here.
