Judge: CBD company must forfeit hemp shipment to Idaho State Police

KTVB7: CBD and hemp have issues to work out, especially in states like Iowa where the police say hemp is the same thing as marijuana absent new legislation in 2020 to protect shipments from similar seizures. Essentially, the police and the hemp company are in a civil suit in court to figure this out and both sides have filed for summary judgment meaning their arguments would be ruled on as to the merits of whether they were legally correct or not. CBD advocates who have attacked me for years now because I listened to the marijuana expert lawyers at multiple advocacy organizations who said that this ruling was inevitable will be disappointed. Without new legislation, CBD and hemp as a market will continue to face legal hurdles. Hemp and marijuana are legally indistinguishable. Yelling on Facebook that some secret lawyer you won’t let anyone talk to directly wrongly told you that this would not happen will not stop this from happening in Iowa. To protect CBD sellers and market players, you are going to have to face reality and pass legislation. Not my problem  you won’t face reality. It is my problem that you are this foolish, because you make everyone else look stupid.

Here’s a key quote from the article. I’ll post the 33 page memorandum later, once I’ve read it myself. Note I’m not yelling on Facebook. These discussions take more than a tweet to resolve.

Watkins, representing Big Sky Scientific, has previously argued in this case that the transportation of hemp across Idaho is legal because of the 2014 Farm Bill. The hemp was being moved from Oregon to Colorado, which both have pilot hemp-growing programs allowed under that bill. The Idaho State Police position in the case has been that hemp grown under the authority of that bill was never meant for general interstate commerce and thus could not be moved across Idaho.

Medema agreed with the Idaho State Police’s stance. The 2014 Farm Bill, he wrote, invited states to set up pilot programs for higher education institutions and departments of agriculture to cultivate the crop “for the purpose of studying how the plant might be grown and marketed.”

Big Sky’s attorney argued that the Oregon farmer’s sale of the hemp to Big Sky Scientific could be considered research into the marketing of the plant, according to Medema’s ruling.

 

RELATED: Oregon bans CBD-infused alcohol

RELATED: ‘CBD has the potential to harm you’ FDA warns in new report

 

“That argument is absurd on its face, but it is also refuted by (the farmer’s) testimony,” Medema wrote. “The only reasonable inference to draw from his declaration is that he wasn’t growing the crop to do research, he was trying to make money. That factual finding alone is sufficient to conclude his crop was not grown in accordance with the 2014 Farm Bill.”

 

Prosecutors have argued the 2014 and 2018 farm bills required states to set up hemp-growing programs and approve them with the federal government. They argued Oregon had not done that, and Medema pointed out in his memorandum that Oregon had removed hemp from its list of controlled substances in 2009, long before the federal government did. Thus, the state conducted the process independently, long before the passage of the two farm bills.

 

“Even today, Oregon law precludes its Department of Agriculture from seizing those crops found to contain a THC concentration in excess of federal law if the average THC concentration is below Oregon’s threshold,” Medema wrote.

 

However, Medema wrote he understood why some prosecutors believe the 2018 Federal Farm Bill was a “defacto legalization of marijuana at the federal level.” The bill removed industrial hemp from the list of controlled substances. It’s impossible to tell the delta-9 THC content of a plant until it’s been grown, harvested, cut and dried, he wrote.

 

“It is now simply impractical for law enforcement agencies to tell ‘hemp’ from ‘marijuana’ as those terms are defined in the federal statutes,” he wrote.

KTVB 7: Judge: CBD company must forfeit hemp shipment to Idaho State Police

So no, the Farm Bill does not legalize general commerce. It’s not a damn loophole. I wish it were. I was offered stupid amounts of money to sell CBD from three major companies. Turns out my platform and access to sick people who are poor and needy was advantageous to people looking to make a quick buck. One admitted to me on the phone they were lying about the law to consumers, another company ended up threatening to sue me if I exposed them for ditching a CBD salesperson in Carroll Iowa and running away instead of fulfilling the company promise to defend prosecutions with their own legal team — it’s been frustrating. This legal ruling is no relief, but yet again, I’m disappointed in people’s inability to disagree with each other on this issue like civil servants, and also in CBD marketeers opportunistic rush to do something that I believe, and could admittedly be wrong, that history will look back on overall as a benefit to marijuana legalization, with mistakes.

Most movements have them, and I’m not perfect. Legislation for CBD is being talked about in the media in 2020. If the people want it, they will get it. You always get the government you deserve.