> They were taking very low % hemp that is supposed to be for textiles and extracting the little THC there was into low quality vapes.

This is not at all what was happening. These aren't some special strains or cultivars where there is a remnant of THC that is getting squeezed out from a large quantity of plants to make a small quantity of product - they are same strains and cultivars being used by the legal dispensaries. It is a matter of timing and process - harvest and undercure the flower and it will not have converted enough THCa to Delta9 THC to hit the legal limit. In fact, many legal operations follow similar timing on harvesting and similar processing - the flower in your local dispensary is still mostly THCa, and a good chunk of it is likely under the limit for D9 THC as well.

Much if it is effectively the exact same thing under a different label.

> When we do have all that infrastructure for legal THC regulation, why allow people to sidestep all that?

I do agree here. There's no need for the unregulated market when a proper legal market exists.

oh, I didn't know that. That's even more nefarious than I thought. Thanks for the info!

I'm not sure I understand how this is particularly nefarious. It complies with the law as written, and results in a significantly better product for those choosing to consume it.

>I'm not sure I understand how this is particularly nefarious. It complies with the law as written, and results in a significantly better product for those choosing to consume it.

Perhaps "nefarious" is too strong a term, but the intent (at least in states that have legal cannabis) AFAICT, is to avoid the regulations around testing for adulterants, potency, etc.

In most states with legalized cannabis, testing for a variety of harmful ingredients and the potency of specific products is required for those taking part in the legalized cannabis trade.

Those growing, packaging and distributing "hemp" products are not subject to such testing regulations.

That may not be nefarious, but avoiding such regulation increases the likelihood of harmful additives (chemical pesticides and other adulterants) and unknown potencies. This would likely increase the chances that unscrupulous vendors will sell (knowingly or unknowingly) harmful/dangerous products.

And given that the products are essentially the same, that gives those who don't have to pay for testing or go through the marketplaces defined by state laws, giving those folks an advantage over those who follow state law.

What's more, folks who avoid extant law through this loophole, are not incentivized to make safe, tested products.

So maybe not "nefarious," but certainly anti-consumer with perverse incentives to create and sell harmful products.

> Perhaps "nefarious" is too strong a term, but the intent (at least in states that have legal cannabis) AFAICT, is to avoid the regulations around testing for adulterants, potency, etc.

My (perhaps incorrect) understanding is that the majority of the sales are happening in the 26 states without recreational marijuana, however, and that many consumers in the recreational states are still choosing to go with the dispensary product vs. head shop/liquor store/etc.

As someone in a non-rec state, as much as I would prefer the dispensary option with stricter regulations, it's still much more regulated than "the dude whose house i show up with and venmo him some money and get a bag that came from god knows where"

>My (perhaps incorrect) understanding is that the majority of the sales are happening in the 26 states without recreational marijuana, however, and that many consumers in the recreational states are still choosing to go with the dispensary product vs. head shop/liquor store/etc.

I don't know if that's the case, but it wouldn't surprise me at all.

I'm not sure what you mean WRT "hemp" being more "regulated" than the black market. Even though I live in a (now) legalized state, there's still a thriving black market, both for folks who have been growing for decades who maintain a positive reputation among distributors/wholesalers, and those who purchase out-of-state product (that's tested and sold legally in those other states) without tax or records, and can then undercut the legal dispensaries.

I'm not familiar enough with the "hemp" growers/sellers, but IIUC, since it's not supposed to be used as a mind-altering substance, the testing and purity regulations may not apply.

All that said, things are a mess WRT to cannabis in the US. Some states are doing it well, others are not. And the Federal government, while not irrelevant, has not made progress in this area -- and that includes the "hemp" loophole which (and I could be mistaken here) isn't regulated at all.

Hopefully sometime in the future the states and the federal governments will get it right. Which is often how these types of issues are addressed in the US -- study the issue carefully, choose the path that is least effective and most harmful, then iterate, trying less bad and less harmful "solutions" as you go along.

Presumably we'll get there eventually.

> I'm not sure what you mean WRT "hemp" being more "regulated" than the black market.

Just basic laws around farming. For example, lead arsenate is banned in the US, and I trust the hemp farmers to not be using it as much as I trust any similar operation, but someone illegally growing stuff? They're already breaking the law. And who knows where it was grown to begin with?

And in general, there are companies behind all of this. There are names. Legal recourse if shit goes wrong. Who am I going to sue if I find out that the shit Bob has been selling me has been full of harmful pesticides or if the oil was full of some harmful additive, etc.?

Fair enough.

Legal recourse is definitely an upside of not dealing with a black market. I agree.

I'm not familiar with the laws around hemp growing and/or the Federal loophole, but I hope you're right about at least minimal regulation (and legal recourse for) of non-consumable products, especially if they're being consumed (can you sue the makers of clothing or rope if you get sick eating or smoking their products?).

As I said, hopefully we'll eventually get to a sane policy regarding cannabis.

If it was a textile-style-hemp farmer getting the last few bucks out of their crop via a loophole, that I can understand. Not great, but I can rationalize it.

Someone growing the same plant that is regulated by California but decides they don't need testing or licenses is just plain anti-social. You can't not know you're doing something wrong in that case.

Most of the sales are in states where marijuana has not been legalized, from my understanding.

I'm more concerned with ending an absurd prohibition, personally.

I don't understand how this has anything to do with federal hemp law, under federal law marijuana doesn't have any testing requirements either as it's just plain illegal. So what does California have to gain in testing by dumping hemp into the marijuana bucket at a federal level, neither of which improves the testing requirements in California? California could simply require hemp to be tested, but making hemp federally illegal does nothing on that point.

The only answer I can think of is that hemp grown outside of California was competing with california 'legal' weed, the testing angle is non-sensical since this change in law moves hemp from 'kind of required to be tested (but none of the DEA testing implemented, so it's done privately and sometimes not at all), but poorly' to 'illegal' and marijuana still at 'illegal'.

In general this kind of excuse is used by incumbents to pass laws to thwart competition.

You have some regulatory framework which has already been created by captured regulators, so it has a couple of rules that it ought to have (always the ones pointed to in order to justify it) and then others that exist merely to exclude competitors or make sure fixed costs are high enough that only large incumbents can meet them.

The latter set of rules are unreasonable so the market finds a way around them. The incumbents then call this a "loophole" and insist that the competitors be forced into the entire framework rather than just the subset of reasonable rules they'd be able to satisfy without being destroyed. Which destroys them, as intended.