A deadline for the US federal legislature to pass a bill that was expected to remove hemp and low-THC strains of cannabis from the federal list of narcotics lapsed on 30th September, leaving American hemp farmers in regulatory uncertainty.
Language reclassifying all cannabis below a 0.3% dry weight THC threshold, taking it off of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)’s Schedule 1 list, and putting it in the “agricultural commodity” category, was expected to be part of the larger 2018 Farm Bill, the Congressional reformulation of US agriculture policy which happens about every five years.
This definition would have included both high-CBD, low-THC strains of cannabis that can be used to produce CBD as well as strains of the related hemp plant grown for industrial purposes such as fibres and seeds. In turn this would have made the production and export of CBD from low-THC cannabis varieties legal at the federal level.
