This isn't going to come as a shock, but Donald J. Trump has fucked Mitchell McConnell Jr. up the ass once again. Mitch has not enjoyed his previous copulations with Trump but they were profitable. Sure there was some clean up afterwards, but in the end Mitch was richer. That may happen again, but this time, the fucking was on a 6 month delay and McConnell's constituents will take it the hardest.
Leading up to McConnell's reelection, his crowing legislative achievement for the citizens of the Commonwealth of Kentucky was the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018 (or the 2018 Farm Bill for normal people). He strolled across the state extolling the virtues of how Kentucky farmers will be able to reach their former glory. Remember how your Pa made a living raising tobacco? I'm bringing those days back again!
The Kentucky legislature fell in line and passed legislation to make sure KRS was in line for this big beautiful tomorrow. And immediately afterwards it seemed to work. There was a CBD boom. Every strip mall in the state seemed to have a CBD shop. When I went on vacation, it seemed every other state had a CBD shop. My mother-in-law started swearing that CBD was curing her bum knee. McConnell's vision of a replacement for tobacco seemed to be coming true and he had forced it through Congress. He not only owned it, he wanted credit and distribution rights.
Unfortunately, CBD ended up being less valuable than Dollar General olive oil. The fad had faded.
I don't know who did it, but somebody, figured out that the 2018 Farm Bill created a loop hole. Those commie heathen states allowed marijuana but if we switch this little amino acid, then all the products they are selling, we can sell and it ain't marijuana. It's an industrial hemp product. It isn't taxed like marijuana. So it is also profitable in those blue hell holes that allow the devil weed. In fact, two of the biggest distributers of Delta-8 (I will explain what that is in a minute) come from Kentucky.
The 2018 Farm Bill did what it promised. Farms were springing up. Processing plants were being built. And jobs were being added.
But what is Delta-8? Good question.
The Cannabis sativa L. produces a bunch of chemicals (quit your worrying and remember your high school chemistry class (almost) everything is a fucking chemical). Among those is Delta-9. Thousands (maybe hundreds, this is a blog) of years of cultivation bred plants to produce more and more Delta-9. Just like we turned a plant that looked like blade of grass that we hadn't cut into an ear of corn, civilization concentrated Delta-9 into Cannabis sativa L.
Because it got people high. There are many things civilization has spent an enormous amount of energy on in order to get high. European colonization of the Americas for tobacco and sugar. The insane effort that goes into vineyards. The Sackler Family. The point is that humans will figure out how to get a buzz on if the opportunity is there.
So Delta-8. That 2018 Farm Bill narrowed the definition of what is hemp and what is marijuana so that good Kentuckian farmers could grow this industrious product. Problem is, there is a bunch of Delta-9 in industrial hemp, but Delta-9 is what people spent thousands of years developing because it got them high. What to do?
The solution was to say that you can grow Cannabis sativa L. for whatever purpose your entrepreneur mind can come up with as long as the plants and whatever product you make, contain less than 3 tenths of one percent of Delta-9. If it contains more than that, it is the Devil's Weed.
What McConnell didn't consider is that the people he represent are smart and entrepreneur and human, which means it didn't take long for people to realize that Delta-8 also got you high. There just wasn't a lot of it in the plant. It took humans thousands of years of breeding to get high concentrations of Delta-9. But humans now have something that McConnell tends to ignore. Science.
What had took 1000s of years before, people had figured in about 9 months. Just this time they concentrated Delta-8.
And suddenly, those sad CBD shops in the strip malls all across America were able to pay their leases. In fact, they seemed to flourish. You could walk into a well lit store, with lots of glass and professional displays. A friendly associate would welcome you and ask what you were looking for. Oh, this product here will help you sleep, but this one here is better for focus, however this one is great for easing pain. Plus you could purchase the product with your credit card, in packaging that'd be recognizable at the checkout ailse of Walmart and they have a rewards program.
For Kentuckians it seemed the fucking started on April 19, 2021, but the foreplay started the previous August. On February 19th, the General Counsel for the KY Department of Agriculture mailed a letter to all of the farmers and processors of hemp in the Commonwealth of Kentucky that if they were growing or processing hemp to concentrate Delta-8 (the only profitable market) they should know that the federal government now considers it a Schedule 1 drug and therefore so does the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Furthermore, if you engage in such activity, you are jeopardizing your license to grow or process hemp. Just wanted you all to know.
What changed?
The DEA under the DOJ under Bill Barr in August of 2020 introduced this Interim Final Rule which would reinterpret the DEA regulations on how it viewed the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018 (figured we should give its official title here) that would make all Tetrahydrocannabinols that don't occur in natural concentrations in Cannabis sativa L (I should have come up with a shorthand for that plant by now) a Schedule 1 drug. Basically like heroin.
Or basically all the things that are allowing those CBD shops to pay their leases.
The comment period for this ended in October (I lost the link for this, sorry), and as of April 2, 2021, Delta-8 was added to the DEA's Controlled Substance List. Along with all of the other avenues that the farmers and processors thought they could use if Delta-8 was shut down.
Members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to AG Garland and Sec. Vilsack on March 29 basically saying "Whoa, slow your roll," but I ain't been able to find any news articles that have reported on that at all. And I subscribe to a fair number of news organizations.
I am now tired of typing.
At the end of the day, there are hundreds of Kentuckians, and I am sure it is the case all around the country, that are terrified and not able to sleep. Scratching out out a living and now told it is illegal.
There is a whole shit ton of things that are awful in this world and we need to pay attention to them. This is just one that I noticed this morning and it piqued my curiosity and couldn't let it go. Looking into it today, Ms. Bougenies saw it coming here and here. But I will admit, I hadn't read what she was saying until this morning.
