What is hemp? Can it get you high?

Like marijuana, hemp comes from the cannabis plant. But unlike marijuana, hemp isn’t going to get you high. According to the feds, hemp must contain less than 0.3 percent Delta-9-THC concentration. While CBD — a compound thought to have significant medical benefits — can be (and is) extracted from both plants, the two plants otherwise have very different uses.

difference between hemp and cannabis

Until recently, the federal government lumped hemp in with the other cannabis plant — marijuana — meaning it was illegal to grow in the States. That meant that to get hemp for your green building materials, or hemp hearts for your smoothie, an importer had to be involved. (Europe, meanwhile, has long enjoyed a legal hemp industry.)

The 2014 Farm Bill allowed hemp to be cultivated by universities and state departments of agriculture for certain uses. But that didn’t just make it OK to start growing hemp.

“The law has to be set up in the state,” Sinning notes, “and [the state’s] Department of Ag has to set up the rules according to the Farm Bill.”

So when the federal door opened, states started passing needed legislation to allow for hemp grows in their states. A majority of states, including Colorado, have now passed laws regarding industrial hemp, and a majority now allow for the cultivation of hemp for commercial, research or pilot purposes.

In Colorado, naturally, the story is a little more complicated. Back in 2012, Sinning explains, Coloradans passed Amendment 64. The law is most famous for legalizing recreational marijuana in Colorado, but it also allowed for growing hemp. Responding to the new law, our state Legislature enacted a law that created two licenses for hemp growers: one for research and development (think universities) and one for commercial growers. Sinning points out that there’s actually some overlap in those two definitions, since the commercial sector often does the bulk of the research and development of a product. (It was Volvo, not universities, for instance, that popularized the modern seatbelt.)

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