Legal action taken by the Hemp Industries Association (HIA) put Hemp in the News this week.
The HIA has put forth a request to the court to obtain an order against the Drug Enforcement Administration’s actions of disrespecting the court’s authority pertaining to a 2004 ruling about industrial hemp.
The February 6, 2004 ruling excluded hemp stalk, fibre, sterilized seed and seed oil from being classified as Schedule I controlled substances.
It’s true that industrial hemp is related to marijuana – they are both species of Cannabis sativa – but industrial hemp differs in many ways. The main difference is that hemp is grown for industrial use as opposed to recreational drug use. Hemp contains very small amounts of THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana that gives the high, and hemp is used to make a variety of products such as paper, textiles, food and fuel. The HIA’s request is one of many motions that have happened to defend the status of industrial hemp.
The DEA and the North Dakota Department of Agriculture recently stopped a North Dakota hemp company, Healthy Oilseeds LLC, from shipping its hemp food products, due to industrial hemp’s classification as a Schedule I controlled substance. DEA spokesperson Russ Baer stated that the only legal hemp products are those that “are not used, or intended for use, for human consumption.”
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