CBD legal situation in the US

CBD is now legal in the US, and you can easily find and order the best legal CBD buds online at several specialized CBD shops!

But what is the legal situation in the different States and what kind of CBD product are legal? Today, our CBD experts tell you more about CBD in the US and the CBD trading system.

Hemp

Despite the new agricultural policy inaugurated by the Farm Bill, the import of seeds and derived products, especially from neighboring Canada, is still strong. Not to mention the expansion of the Canadian market to the south (for example, Future Farm Technologies of Vancouver recently bought land in Maine to plant hemp to extract CBD). This market does not know the restrictions on the cannabis trade (medical and recreational).

Still, it will depend on the evolution of agricultural legislation on the subject, the removal of the federal ban on hemp and the global logic of supply and demand. To cite a positive case, the Bastcore company of Omaha (Nebraska) uses US hemp for biomass and apparel with sustainable ecological impact.

Medical cannabis

For this sector, reference should be made to what has been said in the previous item (‘Industrial system’), considering that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a federal body dependent on the Department of Health that oversees the discipline on food and products pharmaceuticals, has never approved the marketing of medicinal products derived from cannabis, except for three synthetic products: Marinol (1985, 1992 for anorexic patients who have AIDS), Cesamet (1985) and Syndros (2016).

Marijuana

The constellation of pharmaceutical companies, holding companies and recreational weed startups must comply, for their commercial activity, with the laws of each State, which specifically regulate the methods of issuing licenses, the conditions of sale of the products and their composition chemistry, according to the quantitative limits of authorized ‘recreational’ possession and consumption.

In the Californian example (last case of legalization completed, followed by Vermont), the licenses for the sale of recreational cannabis in drugstores – freely taxed by California according to the type of product – are issued by the Bureau of Cannabis Control, which grants authorizations lasting between 4 months and one year, while 2 other state agencies are responsible for issuing plant cultivation and treatment licenses. The sale, transport (by any means), or shipment outside the State’s borders that has legalized its consumption constitutes a federal offense.

The federal system

After a century of prohibition and repression, the United States relaunched the production of industrial hemp during the presidency of Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, at the national level, with significant examples and under the impetus of the referendum of November 8, 2016, unprecedented legalization of cannabis consumption not only for medical-therapeutic but also ‘recreational’ use – not to mention the success of ‘light’ products and cannabis derivatives in various sectors (cosmetics, para pharmaceuticals, food). But what does the federal law say?

Any use of ‘cannabis’ (including industrial hemp) is prohibited under a law dating back to Nixon (1970), which places the plant on the table of dangerous drugs.

The legislation on the control of substances

Controlled Substances Act (CSA) is part of the Federal Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of October 27, 1970. Title II concerns the «federal policy on drugs through the regularization of manufacturing, import, the possession, use and distribution of certain substances, including cannabis.»

The CSA provides 5 tables that break down drugs according to the following criteria: potential for abuse, medical applications in the United States, level of safety and risk of addiction.

According to this federal law, the THC contained in cannabis falls – insertion and modifications are a prerogative of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) – in Table I: here, marijuana is together with heroin, LSD, ecstasy and peyote.

To date, even the medicinal use is not accepted, contrary to what happens in the States which, by legalizing it, authorize its medical and recreational use according to national tables: North Carolina, for example, places it – except for Marinol – among the “relatively low dangerous” substances (federal law, Table VI).

Table I includes substances with a high potential for abuse, whose medical use is not generally accepted in the USA and has an insufficient safety standard (under medical supervision). The DEA classifies cannabis as a “dangerous substance” (like the drugs listed above).

Hemp producers are represented by the Hemp Industries Association (HIA), founded in 1994, engaged in the “import, manufacture, research and development of industrial hemp and its products”.

For a provision that authorizes the cultivation of hemp on a practical level, it is necessary to arrive at 2014: on February 7, the Agricultural Act, known as the Farm Bill (7 USC 5940), a package of five-year laws on agriculture that contains (Section 7606) the provision of ‘pilot projects’ aimed at relaunching a sector of no longer only historical importance.

In 2016, a series of ministerial guidelines for interpreting the law was drawn up, which passed the initiative to individual States through the National Departments of Agriculture and research institutes: among the first, Kentucky and Colorado (where 1000 ha of hemp was planted in 2014 alone).

On May 29, 2014, 2 amendments were approved that prevent interventions by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) capable of blocking hemp cultivation in the states where these programs are active (such as withholding a batch of certified imported seeds).

Finally, the Hemp Farming Act, filed in the House of Representatives in 2018, was approved and hemp became, by federal law, ‘commodity agricultural’ and will not suffer the limits, government interference and differences of discipline existing between one State and another.

So, you can now legally buy the best CBD products online in the US at Justbob.net!