The Cole Memo

In this episode, I speak with Rod Kight about a group of 20 state AGs that signed a letter to Congress “to address the glaring vagueness created in the 2018 Farm Bill that has led to the proliferation of intoxicating hemp products across the nation and challenges to the ability for states and localities to respond to the resulting health and safety crisis.”

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Links mentioned during show

• Article discussed is linked here
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• You can read Rod’s blog, Kight On Cannabis, here

The auto-generated transcript is available below.

in this episode we’ll be joined by Rod Kight an award-winning lawyer Advocate and author who leads his own cannabis practice in North Carolina we’re going to be discussing the hysteria that has been caused by hemp and the recent letter that was signed by a coalition of 20 state attorney generals addressed to Congress this is the Cole memo I’m your host Cole Preston every episode is released in audio video and transcript format to find the transcript audio or video version of any episode please refer to the description of the episode that you’re listening to now within that description you can find a link that will take you to our website which will display the transcript for this episode and the platforms where you can find this episode in audio or video formats if you’re unable to locate the episode description on whichever platform you’re listening from Simply note the episode number and visit the memo.com from there you can use our search functionality to find the corresponding episode and then you’ll be able to access the audio video and transcript version of that episode you might also find any links that we reference during the episode so that you might be able to do your own research if you’re not listening to this episode of the co memo on patreon then you’re you’re listening to this episode later than our patrons to become a patron go to the memo.com patreon it only costs $3 a month and you get immediate access to the episodes of this podcast as they release it’s a great way to support our show our show is brought to you by listeners like you if you’re not able to make a monthly contribution of $3 a month on patreon maybe you could make a one-time month uh contribution of a dollar at theol memo.com support you can make a contribution of your choice one time monthly or yearly at the memo.com support once again our show is brought to you by listeners like you costs a lot to do our show between hosting fees distribution travel equipment and so much more all of your support is appreciated one of the best ways to support our show is absolutely free subscribe to or follow our show leave a positive review from wherever you’re listening to us from favorite this episode give it a thumbs up leave a comment or post a review your engagement and support is appreciated today is March 28th 2024 enjoy this episode of the Cole memo featuring Rod [Music] kite Rod thank you so much for sitting down with me today go ahead and introduce yourself uh to my audience please hey Cole great to be here thanks for having me so my name is Rod kite and I’m a lawyer I represent businesses in the Cannabis industry throughout the United States and the world and I’m happy to be here to talk about all things cannabis and we’re probably going to focus a lot on him today but you know wherever it goes It goes absolutely and uh for our listeners who may not know uh or be aware of your work tell us where we can find you online yeah sure so um probably the main place is is my website canab business.law um and I have a Blog kite on cannabis Ki GH t on cannabis.com uh but if you go to the website my Law Firm website the blog is actually one of the buttons that you can click so yeah come see me there perfect and folks if it makes it easier on you um we’ll have links to that in the podcast description so check that out um yeah I have been familiar with your work for a good while I would say now a little bit over a year um some of my uh friends and I we read a lot about hemp and your name pops up a lot and uh actually I think the first time I heard about you was when I spoke to the Illinois hemp growers association they said oh you got to read this Rod kite’s he’s he’s great so I think that’s when I first heard about you um and I recently saw your name pop back up uh with with your latest article I figure this is a good place maybe we can um dive in sure absolutely maybe we could give people a little bit of a background if if they’ve been living under a rock but then maybe we can dive uh right in here um so Rod take it away um the state AGS they’re kicking up the war on Hy again right they are a lot of folks are I you know I write the these blog articles and and I try to focus on you know giving a some legal and practical information to people about contemporary issues that that pop up um and so this issue is one that came up where um a whole group not quite half the country but I think it was 20 off the top of my head State Attorneys General um signed a letter to Congress and they essentially engaged in what amounts to Old School reformatus um decrying the what they you know considered to be this unregulated you know loophole of intoxicating him canono and wanting to shut it down and you know unfortunately you know AGS as we call them Attorney General have have by and large not been very Heth helpful towards the hemp industry and this is just the latest and it just happens to be at a really critical time right now because we’re looking at a new Farm Bill Farm bills are at least the last two have been historically where hemp has been legalized and defined and so we’re looking at that sometime in the next 12 months additionally we’ve got a lot of legislation that’s being proposed in various States most of it at this point is is very anti-m and in addition to the state AGS we’ve had other different groups that are also sending letters and so it it feels in a lot of ways like there’s a bit of a war on hemp and so my article was just you know a to to notify people that yet here’s another attack on hemp and and it behooves us all to get politically active about this and second to to carve out um a path for for how I see hemp reform taking shape over the next several years and ultimately you know cannabis reform generally and by that I mean the whole thing you know c um hemp marijuana um the whole the whole kitten Kaboodle so so to speak so that’s what the article is about and um I’m I’m glad that you read it and and I I’ve gotten some pretty good feedback about it fortunately we’ll see if that changes anything in terms of what the AGS are going to do or not do but at least it provided a platform I think to try to get some of this information out yeah and I want to take a step back maybe for just a moment um I I’ve been thinking about this lately and and Rod I don’t know if you know the answer to this so I’m you know I’m just going off the top of my head here in the past and maybe I’ll pull up a picture for this I think people when they had hemp in their mind they think of that long like that tall plant that that you don’t smoke and and we’ve almost like colloquially accepted that that is what hemp is but it wasn’t until 2018 that we actually had a legal definition for what hemp is and I guess what I’m trying the point I’m trying to make is that it seems like as you mentioned in your article and it seems like it always comes up in the the debate this was not the intent of the of the farm bill to legalize intoxicating cannabinoids and they always say well you can you know you can do the fiber you can do all that but the intoxicating that was never the intention and I and I just like wonder if look I know there’s nuance and I’d love to get into like what is the definition of intoxicating you know intoxication and stuff right but really when it comes down to it I guess what I’m the point I’m trying to make is sometimes people describe hemp as cannabis’s cousin and just speaking to scientists it’s like no it is in the same exact genus and species is cannabis there’s there’s really little to no difference um in the plan itself it is not a different plan right yeah yeah well I’m really glad that you brought this up because this really gets to the fundamentals I mean there is from a Botanical standpoint there’s no such thing as hemp there’s no such thing as marijuana it’s it’s all just cannabis right and we have a legal distinction and you know what I think we have a lot of resistance to is this idea of what hemp is or really what hemp should be and it gets to that point about oh no no no hemp is fiber it’s grain it’s industrial uses and so on and so forth it’s not about consumable products and particularly not consumable products that are in ating and that’s just that’s just wrong and it’s based on a misconception of what hemp is and I can track you know this legally this is not just me talking so you know the Cannabis itself um was first um removed from the Controlled Substances um list and legalized in the form of industrial hemp with the 2014 farm bill and so um it was pretty Monumental um Congress in that Farm Bill said well we’re going to we’re going to carve out an exception to the illegal status of marijuana for something we’re going to call industrial hemp and it was a pretty basic Plain Jane definition and it also was pretty restrictive it it really was up to the states and they you know had to have a this special kind of program I won’t go into the details about that now um but but that sort of ushered in um the beginnings of what we see is the hemp um you know sector the hemp industry the hyp movement but what I think um is really important is we got to 2018 a lot of people traced that back to the beginning of this but it was actually 2014 but what was important in 2018 is that the definition of hemp was changed pretty dramatically first of all they dropped industrial from the definition Al from the the word they they renamed it hemp and secondly they went in and they didn’t just say the you know cannabis with all of its parts they said cannabis and all its parts including its cannabinoids extracts derivatives isomer salts of isomers I mean it went into a lot of a lot of detail on a chemical level um about what that means and so it’s absolutely and completely clear that this whole industrial use thing with you know just being about tall stocky plants with you know with fiber for fiber and seeds is just completely wrong now just to be U totally clear the fiber seeds all these other uses for him are phenomenal and I I think I truly think the canvas plant I’m one of those True Believers that thinks it can really solve a lot of problems but to today and and right now in this moment in time we’re really talking about you know cannabis and the intoxicating properties so to speak and the and the ingestion and use of canabo um you know from hemp so that’s where our focus is going to be today but anyway um it’s called a loophole people say you know this was not the intent whatever and and they’re all just um well they’re all just wrong you know just to to get right to the point about that there’s no evidence to support anything it’s just this idea of what hemp is or what it should be not actually what it is legally defined as yeah and I’m trying to think of other examples where it’s like okay I I feel like to say that they didn’t intend them let’s start here I feel like to say that they did not intend this um absolves them of what the actual process actually involves it’s not I always make the joke it’s not like Mitch McConnell wrote the farm bill by candlelight you know on his farm it was written by other people and I just wonder I’ve always made the joke like I wonder if before everybody signed it and sent it to you know president Trump if they were like this is about to happen everybody shut up like we’re gonna get this through I think there were some people like that I mean this whole intent thing I’ve actually got a few responses to that because this has always brought them you know thrown up oh it’s not the intent well well a we have no evidence about the intent or or or lack of intent first of all um it’s just not there I’m pretty confident that Mitch McConnell did not intend to legalize you know thca flower and D9 Beverages and all that you whatever but he’s one guy right um you know there are plenty of people that that are cannabis friendly in Congress that can’t get any kind of positive movement on anything you know the banking or that kind of stuff and so I think a lot of them probably thought that very thing oh this is really a good chance let’s keep let’s let this this go so I think that happened and then you know just as a matter of of legal um interpretation you what you learn as a first year law student when you’re reading a statute is that if this if the terminology the wording of the statute is clear then the intent of the lawmaking body in this case Congress is totally irrelevant you know you just have to assume that if it was clear that that’s what they intended the only time this intent thing even comes up is if there’s some ambiguity in the statute itself and that’s that’s not there I mean the statute is super clear about what it says so this whole intent thing is is just a big fat red herring it’s just people that that are either prohibitionists about cannabis or they don’t understand the opportunity we have here or they have some other Financial incentive to try to put down you know him yeah and I know that you may not have much to add to this point because because you’re not from Illinois but you know one could argue that the intent of our cannabis law in Illinois was to to end arrests altogether but they continue in the state of Illinois for oftentimes like simple things like like just possession of cannabis so it that’s kind of where I can think of like the other side of the argument it’s like you know sometimes people have an intent with law and it falls short of that you know what I mean so it’s like yeah that’s the double-edged sword that’s exactly right you know you know lawmaking body creates a law maybe the people who who wanted it to be a certain thing you know it gets interpreted a different way than they anticipated or you know there’s the old um you know sort of um statement or the or the the idea if you like sausage don’t or or laws don’t watch them get made you know what what ultimately happens is someone puts out a bill and if it’s if it’s anything with any substance all sorts of different groups are in there tweaking it and so what you come out with sometimes is a bit of a Frankenstein at the you know at least it’s um it might not have the the intended effect but again when when it’s clear it’s clear and that’s the deal yeah did you have um other thought you said you kind of had a few thoughts there with intent and I know I jumped in with that did you have other thoughts you wanted to add um just no no thanks I just you know this I think I just want to cover the the fact that you know this the statutory reading um the fact that there are plenty of people in Congress that probably thought this was you know this was a good thing and and maybe just this idea that that it’s not like the 2018 Farm Bill definition of him just popped up out of out of nowhere we had a 2014 farm bill um and it was expanded upon in the wake of canono being made available and consumed by public so it’s again everything points to the to the fact that um the intent if there was an intent that we can point to it was to do exactly what’s happening right now which is to have all of these hemp products um the Deltas and and so on and so forth including CBD and all these other things that we see on the market yeah I was never aware of this I like I I had a loose awareness of of the farm bill being introduced in 2014 I think because Illinois observes USDA rules on this so I I I’ve heard and I’ve seen references to the 2014 farm bill but I never really understood the difference or what had changed between 2014 and 2018 and now knowing that I agree that really strengthens the argument against the idea that this was not the intent again I just want to say because I know there’s maybe like a cannabis industry lawyer right now watching that uh um is thinking Mitch McConnell like you just said Mitch MC did not intend for people to yeah sure right but again it’s not like Mitch McConnell or or many of the other people that like sponsored the bill that were lead sponsors wrote any of the words in the bill that’s not really how legislation works as I understand unfortunately I mean these people don’t write their own bills other people write them for them so that’s exactly right exactly right very interesting um look the part that I particularly found interesting if I didn’t make it obvious enough was the dropping of the industrial because I always hear that as the argument this this was just industrial it was never meant to be consumables that’s what they always say yeah so why do they drop the industrial from the term you know right exactly right yeah and I’m just kind of get to Brass tax here um I’d love to maybe talk about the nuances of intoxication but I’m just curious why are we not seeing an open Embrace of this this is the answer it seems it I think it’s the answer and I think it um I think it’s a few things so I think first of all it’s it’s going to be difficult we’ve have a have a century almost of of a lot of propaganda about cannabis and you know for a lot of different reasons but it’s just there’s reer Madness it’s been in our culture has been inundated with it and it’s just I think it’s it’s difficult to shake off unfortunately um there are always going to be people that think that intoxication is bad or at least certain forms of it are bad um certain people that just think that cannabis is sort of this the you know the devil’s weed so I think that’s part of it we’ll always have this sort of segment um I think another piece of it is um you know the fact that what I talked about earlier people have an idea in their mind about the way something is or should be and for a really long time we’ve had this idea a of H being something over here this industrial piece but also with respect to the legalization of marijuana you know the liberalization of cannabis we’ve thought oh what’s going to happen is we’re going to have state after state after State go through a medical thing and then a wreck thing and then we’re going to reach this this you know this this point in time where the dominoes are going to fall we’re going to deschedule it and that’s that and you know that may end up being the way it goes but certainly progress has been really slow um again we’re we can’t even get you know a decent banking bill through Congress you know we we’re trying to get you know marijuana D you know from schedule one to schedule three and apparently the DEA is holding things up and it’s this big to-do just that little incremental piece and so but I think that that’s the way people see it and what they don’t see is that hemp itself has legalized cannabis in in an enormous way and normalized it and that this is sort of I used to call it the backd doorway but it’s just a parallel path to this cannabis reform that we’ve all been seeking um and people just are not catching on yet I mean some are some are definitely catching on and it’s more every day um so I think that’s a big issue is just it’s it’s just you know shifting a perspective and then finally just like in anything there are entrenched interests involved here you know there are entrenched financial interest and we can all sort of point to what those are there’s there’s a few of them but um but there are people who who this the way that hemp is coming in is going to disrupt their financial piece and and they’re going to resist it and that’s I mean I don’t like that it’s at least rational but but that’s the you know that’s the issue so that’s my view on why you know why we have a lot push back from people who are very pro- cannabis supposedly at least right push back against hemp when hemp seems to be really the cleanest and most straightforward path to to True cannabis reform right now yeah I one person I think uh I think it was box Brown that said it try to give credit where credit is due he’s a good uh makes a cannabis comic strip that I might Show an example of here in a moment um they said the the answer to the Cannabis issue is hemp know and I was just like just treat it like hemp I thought that was an interesting way of saying it yeah I love that I mean you know just the the sole distinction is the the concentration of Delta 9 THC which which if you know anything about the plant the plant itself doesn’t produce a lot of Delta 9 anyway you know 3% is not a huge barrier um certainly all the hemp products you know all the Cannabis products that you want can be made doing that um including flour um and so it’s not a huge barrier and and and I see you know one possibility through hemp is that we go through you know we get through another farm bill with with the same definition um keep these AGS and all this influence from changing state law and at the next farm bill you know five six years down the road from there excuse me um you know at that point cannabis is so ubiquitous and normalized in the form of hemp that descheduling marijuana just seems like an a sure of course we’ll have to do that I mean that’s just stupid that we still have that on it really I think it’s really HP is Paving this pathway and and I think we just need to get through one more farm bill um and prevent you know some of these States from from shutting it down and I think we’ll be I think we’ll be in the clear absolutely absolutely uh I want to get back to the subject of of uh the financial interests and stuff but I found the the comic uh strip that I was referring to and I feel like if you would have showed this to like I always like to use these people as an example chich and Cha they’d be like is this good enough for now like if you showed them this be like look is this good enough for now like you can put this amount of THC in a gummy just don’t you know don’t exceed it and then you can sell these all over the United States is that okay they’d be like yeah we’ll take what we can get I feel like they would Embrace that you know it’s interesting to think of it that way you know yep yep I I I I completely agree and a lot of people are beginning to get that and so I used to I make it a point never to identify the specific Financial interests I’m talking about one is I don’t I just don’t want to deal with that I don’t sure they know who they are we know who they are but the other thing is you this perception that I’m talking about um is beginning to shift and some of those larger financial interest behind the scenes are are pivoting into hemp you know some are doing it openly some are considering it the back door some are trying to figure out oh wait a second this is really the opportunity how do we sort of I don’t know pedaling is the right word but how do we pivot in such a way that we can Embrace this without sort of losing this financial peace that we have or at least you know doing it the right way so I I I have this you know maybe I’m just too much of an optimist but I have this optimistic view that even some of the the financial interests that we have you know are kind of wagging our finger at are fingers at are actually going to come around and embrace him as well I certainly hope so and that’s kind of what I yeah I was uh definitely not looking for you to name any names or or anything like that but it is interesting to see you know um some some of the bigger Brands uh some brands that you can find in dispensaries who typically and I’m about to display some Brands I’m not saying that the the brands I’m about to display have ever talked down about hemp but typically Brands you will find in a dispensary they will say like oh this gas station hemp you know you you don’t get the weed at the gas station you you get it at the dispensary well now these are just a few Brands I’m displaying on my screen right now that can be found technically both in a dispensary and a gas station and I think that’s okay actually one of the things that I showed um a listener recently was a video of me walking into a gas station in Southern Illinois and there were like pre-rolled joints and gummies and Vapes next to the to the boner pills I’ll just kind of be blunt about it and I was like you know weird location but it’s it’s kind of cool that like I could go in get a Coca-Cola candy bar and a joint and they were like yeah but I don’t know that I would trust any of those Brands and I said okay hear me out I get you I’ve never seen those Brands either I don’t know that I can trust them but what if it was a brand you could trust and I’ll just insert brand here right what if it was a brand and then that got their gears turning they’re like oh yeah that wouldn’t be that bad it had to get they had to get over the idea of it being like a sketchy option right it’s like okay this idea I’m so glad you brought up the convenience store thing because a lot of times people’s like you know the the the drop the mic argument they use about hemp is it’s sold in convenience stores well let’s back let’s let’s analyze that let’s let’s sort of break it down um convenience stores are highly regulated they have Decades of dealing with regulators and being compliant with selling all sorts of products from alcohol to Tobacco to the boner pills you bring up to other sub compounds like Crum and and and so on and so forth that you know frankly if there was a group of an established retail um sector that that would be proper to handle cannabis products it seems like convenience stores are the right ones now I don’t want to annoy my other clients who who are other retail sectors I’m for all sorts of retail segments I mean there’s and I use the example and I always hate it when people bring up the whole alcohol example but it just seems the one that’s the easiest to go to to make um comparisons but like you know I if want to go and buy a um you know a let’s say let’s say a beer or or let’s say a bottle of wine that makes it and there’s all sorts of options I can be part of a wine club where I go online and order it by Ecom I can uh I can go to a restaurant and get it I can go to a nice wine shop and look at all the ones and talk to the people I can go to the grocery store um or I can swing by on my way home and oh you know my wife calls and hey can you pick up a bottle of wine you know we’re going to have some pasta tonight boom I swing by the convenience store and pick up a cheap bottle of wine there’s a place for all of these types of products and so you think you go back to the Cannabis sector as long as they’re as they’re safe and I want to address that in a minute you talked about Brands and stuff as long as they’re safe then what’s the problem here you know and the adults we’re going to go through I’ve got a three pillared kind of a a proposed regulatory approach here but assuming that they’re safe and they’re not being sold to miners then why can’t they be sold at convenience stores and groc stores and Health and Wellness Stores and Ecom and so on and so forth that doesn’t make any sense to me that we have to pin them up in this tiny little thing called a dispensary that has all this crazy regulatory burden over it does it doesn’t make any sense and to get to your point about the safety piece convenience stores you know we’ve kind of got the best of the best and the worst of the worst you know we certainly there’s some slum unregulated terrible products that are being sold in some convenience stores and that needs that needs a change absolutely by the same token I know personally because I represent some of them some of the highest quality hemp products cannabis products period that exist in the world are also sold through convenience stores and I have personally toured those facilities and gone over all of their Sops and so you this idea that they’re all terrible is just wrong it’s just wrong yeah um I wanted to give you more space on that I I like that you brought brought up like it’s not that they can’t be sold in both stores and I agree with that you know if you more comfortable going to a dispensary or if it’s more convenient you for you to go to a retail store uh but let’s not pretend like cannabis has not been sold for ages without strict regulations you know what I mean like good point I’m not saying you can’t learn things I’m not saying we can’t get better but I’m just like let’s start off with the recognition that I remember it used to be a joke that Willie Nelson said uh the only person he’s ever seen got hurt from Cannabis was when a ba a bail of it fell on his buddy so that’s that’s about right yeah that’s funny but I mean truly you know no one has ever this whole thing no one’s ever died um I’m sure there are people out there like oh but but I’ll show you this example and all the ones examples that people pull there’s all there’s always some issue that’s possibly some other issue but but the bottom line is you know we do need regulated products I mean I it’s a good thing to have have the right amount of Regulation again to go back to the wine example or to use maybe a maybe a supplement example let’s say I wanted to go and get some St John’s Ward or some you know vitamin C or or whatever I I don’t want to think about well is this product have all sorts of weird contaminants in it no I don’t want to think about that I doesn’t I can choose the different brands and the dosing amounts and the blah blah blah but I don’t want to be worried about that and so it’s really important that cannabis and cannabis products that are sold to the consumers um are safe in that respect and and so that’s that’s fundamental and I don’t think anyone um in the anyone who’s legitimate you know doesn’t have a have a concern with that um you know it’s only the people that are the Fly by Night folks um who who would oppose that so right and like you say it’s you know more than well it goes hand inand with what you were just saying just to add to I guess what you were saying like it’s this idea of you know if something did go wrong we would want to know like we would want to know like chain of custody who receiv these batches so that you could do a recall like we do with any other consumable good that’s exactly right that’s exactly right it’s interesting um well I know we’re bouncing around here but one of the the topics that we’ve been kind of going around is this idea of intoxication and I don’t know about around the the United States but at least in Illinois the way the conversation always comes up it’s about um they talk about safety a lot they they reference this story with high schoolers who apparently purchased these products in Chicago and they and they say that you know these students were poisoned um just briefly on intoxication you know I I don’t know the stat right now I’m looking in 2017 I’ve got some data of you know caffeinated energy drink consumption among adolesence and potential hazards consequate you know associated with their you use um and you know at least from what I’ve heard energy drinks send a lot more kids to the high to the hospital than I mean at least now compared to these hemp products and it’s just like like you say it starts to seem like it’s a a a coordinated effort a concerted focus when it’s like but what really is the issue right so I mean we’ve dug into that and and we don’t want anyone to be hurt it’s not you know that that’s an ideal situation for any product is that no one gets hurt from it period but there’s all sorts of people getting hurt in way more you know way more than with other products and a lot of normal sort of household type products than with than with cannabis and and hemp products and to even drill down a little bit further a lot of times the harm is just that you know people felt dizzy or their heart was racing or they you know they were you know they were anxious and needed to go to the emergency room and then they just needed to kind of hydrate and chill out for a minute and then or not a minute you know maybe a couple hours and then go home again no one wants that kind of outcome but we’re not talking by and large about anything that’s the sort of life threatening at least not with respect to to the canono products themselves now you know if there’s some contaminated products that’s a different conversation it’s an important conversation like we had earlier and and to get to the intoxication thing I the conversation about intox toxication needs to change you know I I think everything is focused on intoxication and that’s problematic for a couple of reasons one is that um it’s it’s impossible certainly from a a legal standpoint to define intoxication you know how do how do we Define that you know I it’s it sounds easy it’s one of those things that everyone can can sort of kind of knows what it is but to Define it in a way that helps you to regulate it is is it’s I call it a Fool’s errand it’s just not going to happen it’s going to create unintended conse quences um the other issue is you know we seem to have some sort of a weird fetish and fear as a culture of of cannabis intoxication I mean the United States in the world is fueled by intoxication I mean you know Alcohol Tobacco and nicotine coffee you just an array of prescription pills sugar I mean you just go you know katum and Cava and I mean the list goes on and on but for some reason cannabis which has been consumed for thousands of years more than any of this stuff is somehow a terrible form of intoxication I I it just blows my mind that that’s the case so it’s just this weird cultural piece about it but I think ultimately you know we we take that out and let’s get down to the to the nuts and bolts about this as long as miners are not allowed to to purchase it and of course miners will always get to it miners drink beer and I mean I I had a fake ID when I was in high school I mean you know but as long as as as a system we are not um promoting it and we have a way to age gate for minor uh not to have these products secondly that we the products are regulated for safety purposes oh thanks that’s great um so that there we have quality control to go back to my point earlier about if I’m buying St John’s Ward or vitamin D or vitamin C or whatever I I don’t want to think about is this safe I you know we have that and then third if we have proper labeling and marketing so that we know what we’re ingesting hey guess what this has x amount of THC in it you know you’re going to feel high um you know so you know what to expect then why do we care about intoxication why don’t we let adults make a decision for themselves about what they ingest and whether we call it hemp whether we call it marijuana or just cannabis that to me is the regulatory system that we should push forward and people will immediately say oh yeah but but but there are the devils in the details to be clear this is an overall sort of an umbrella type of a thing and on every one of those you know people reasonable people can um can disagree for example um restricting access by minors to use sort of an easy one what is that age is it 21 or is it 18 you know as as a US culture we’ve sort of defined the age of someone being a minor as being younger than 21 I live part-time in Mexico we travel to Europe a lot there it’s more of an 18 so you know again reasonable people can disagree about that um but but we can all agree that we should shouldn’t be selling these products to miners at least not without parental um consent and I think to even drill down a little bit further there are going to be some people that that push back well what about CBD products what about what about what about well you know what again we can we can say well with parental consent maybe that’s okay um but if your whole if your Market is underage people then maybe you’ve just got the wrong Market I mean if your bottom line depends on people under the age of 18 buying your products well maybe you need to shift the way that you do things so I don’t have a problem with making just a a blanket this is the age of majority um and so we could go through each of these but you know every one of these sort of broad pillars has some underlying things you know what you know what what is GMP for a cannabis product you know or we going to have different categories of cannabis prodct okay maybe you know and I don’t want to get you know into the Weeds about about the regulatory piece you know what is their labeling and should that be a national thing or a state thing blah blah blah but all of those arguments once we frame it in this way can be um can be hammered out and and we can figure it out without just going off the rails on this crazy you know intoxication ride and trying to figure out how to regulate by intoxication it’s just not going to work yeah and I wanted to ask you know I’ve heard that there and feel free to address this I heard that there might be some valid concerns on like maybe the solvents that people use or the processes in which they create their product that would be addressed probably by this right by point B that’s exactly right I mean some processes might not be appropriate but more than that I think we need to make sure that there’s no residual byproducts you know sometimes you know Delta 8 is something that most people know nowadays and I like to use it as an example um I think there’s this idea that delta8 is somehow dangerous and bad the Delta molecule itself is is not it’s been studied uh clinically for decades it’s also from a scientific perspective it is a stable molecule and a stable compound uh but but the process of making it um you know there’s there’s different ways to do it and you can have some additional types of compounds and molecules that are also produced in addition to delta8 uh some of them may or may not be toxic you know how do you remove those so that you have the the more purified delta8 additionally some of the solvents to your point um a lot of them are are acids and things like that if they’re not cleaned up they’re in there and that’s a toxic piece as well so that process is really important and I think you’re exactly right you know that is one of the things that would be that the experts in these types of things would come in and say this is the proper process to make sure that these products are safe these are the Sops that you need to comply with to produce this type of product okay great um you know that I think that’s that’s the important piece yeah um sometimes just kind of on the same vein sometimes people point out the idea or the use of the word synthesis or synthetic cannabinoids and they get a a bad taste in their mouth and my question is like what’s your take on that I guess like how do you get somebody to not get sew or lack of better words worked up about that well I I can I can use a direct example so you know other than people who are are drinking coffee in the morning but consuming caffeine through energy drinks or or or sodas or things like that guess what you drank synthetic caffeine you consumed synthetic um and you know in fact the I did a little of a dive into this whole caffeine issue synthetic caffeine which is widespread you know most of the people watching this have probably consumed synthetic caffeine in the past week maybe today um is is highly unregulated the process that’s used is highly toxic and there’s not a whole lot of oversight into how you know how it gets made it gets into our our our channels um it’s it’s primarily produced in China you know China produces good products and it produces terrible products I’m not it’s not like I’m not pointing at China but it’s primarily produced outside the US um and that’s a synthetic product that we consume regularly um again provided that the molecule itself is the same and has the same interactions with our body as the natural product it doesn’t really matter I mean the plant itself synthesizes these compounds you know the plant starts with CBG and then goes through this Cascade of different cannabinoids that is synthesis it’s just a natural synthesis so I guess the way I fall on it is I think that we’re we’ve kind of become um consumed with this idea that synthetic equals bad um I’m not saying synthetic always equals good I’m just saying that the fact of something being synthetic does not necessarily mean that it’s bad right and to your point um I just want to make this very clear because it kind of goes back to a point that we made earlier some people will say or have the impression that only how am I trying to say this so the the can cannabinoid products or the hemp products that you would find in a gas station they are some people might say they’re all synthetic which we can use an easy example like thca to prove that that’s that’s not correct but again to your point of it not being that big of a deal I have had operators on this show tell me because they’re allowed to in multiple States they use hemp derived canabo in their regulated products yeah I actually had I know exactly what you’re talking about and i’ I had I was on a um a panel recently and I was kind of talking about some of the things that we’re talking about with you know the hemp being the path towards reform and you can have all the same products but they’re hemp and they’re federally legal and blah blah blah and then someone else on the panel after I finished my piece said oh but by the way you know I’m not we’re might not making a judgment about this but you should be aware that the hemp products are synthetic and if that’s important to you and I wait a no no no no no no no no first of all not all hemp products are are synthetic and and also and exactly to your point qu some of the products on the regulated you know that that’s you know in marijuana some of the marijuana products are also synthetic so good bad or otherwise it’s happening across the Cannabis Spectrum I want to try to refine that just a bit in the let’s say in the state regulated system so for example in Illinois if just we’ve covered this on the show in the past folks infused products in Illinois in dispensaries can be infused with with hemp derived cannabinoids so actually the first place I ever tried Delta 8 I always like to say this was in an Illinois dispensary I didn’t I heard about it before 200 before it would became a big you know what it is today um and to just to further underscore our point I had a Testing Lab from the state of Illinois on my show and I said hey do the companies tell you when they’re using hemp direct cannabinoids he said well they don’t but like I said but can you tell and he said no and it’s that’s exactly exactly that’s the point that’s the point I’m trying to make yep yeah I mean sometimes there are there are different you know sort of isomers and small deviations that can occur as a result of of maybe improper you know types of synthesis again the process should be a good one um but right if we’re ultimately talking about the same molecule it’s the same molecule you know that’s that’s the deal so well I’m glad I’m really glad to hear that you’re having this array of different folks on your show and that you’re you know getting this information out because there’s just boatloads and boatloads of of misinformation that’s out there and misunderstanding about cannabis generally and H specifically yeah and I think a um a point that I want to make on the show that I think is very important is you know for folks that really love the cannabis plant we should also recognize that what this farm bill has done has basically made seeds legal they used to always have to be sold as Novelties and now that’s that’s a really good point yeah I’m fortunate to represent present some some of the the best and um biggest seed banks in in the world and the the farm bill opened that up you know and the DEA confirmed it in a in a letter and so you know we’re now able to to get these seeds out there and it’s it’s fantastic again it’s just normalizing a plant that should have never been um abnormal in our culture yeah well I want to close with speculation if you’re all right with that what do you think uh the future looks like I’ll speculate anytime man yeah yeah you know the future is I think ultimately we are moving towards broad cannabis reform I feel positive about that knock on wood uh I think what that looks like we don’t know yet I’m I’m I’m I’m putting out there that hemp is the way and hemp is the path um but I think there’s going to be some you know some rocky road to get there in terms of sort of the near term I think we’re going to continue to see a state-by-state Battleground you know where some states will you know kind of open up and hemp is is really you know um you know embraced and we’re going to see the opposite where hemp is you know shut off and all sorts of battles at the farm bill level I I think I’m I’m optimistic that we’re just going to see the same thing you know the in our industry um this is the farm bill the farm bill and hemp and what’s going to happen but you know stepping back the farm bill itself is almost a thousand page document it it dictates agricultural policy for the entire United States for the next five years I mean there are a l lot of heated issues in there and hemp for the for Congress is not really one of them and that’s I’m really thankful for that uh and so I think we’re unlikely to see any changes one thing I want to I want to note to the audience that’s out there there has been um Talk of maybe bumping the THC level to 1% and the knee-jerk reaction for a lot of people is oh that’s great that’s wonderful uh it might not be and that is it’s it’s only wonderful if it’s Delta 9 THC moving at 1% don’t just accept that as wonderful because it may be THC at 1% now there’s still a lot of hemp products and in in cannabis you know in the form of hemp products that can be made with 1% um but it will absolutely cut off um some products and in fact the most sort of the biggest and and you know most controversial product out there right now is thca hemp flow and a 1% THC cap would would would kill that um so you know look into this and and and support things blindly but anyway I don’t want to get off on a tangent I do feel hopefully optimistic about the next farm bill but it’s going to require the listeners out there to let their lawmakers know that this is important it’s a it’s a$ 28 billion doll annual um you know sector of the economy and growing and it can only continue to grow if our lawmakers you know don’t step in the way so let your lawmakers know that this is important to you yeah well said and to make sure that I’m understanding your point and and so that the listeners are too you’re saying you know maybe 1% Delta 99 THC would be okay one 1% uh THC is a little vague and it could basically leave room to them saying like like the decarb formula sorry I’m trying to be kind of to the point about this um is that your concern there yeah I I think that if if the the language is you know right now it’s no more than 3% Delta 9 THC um I think if that’s changed to no more than 1% THC I think that right I think that’s there’s at least an interpretation that that means total THC the the post decarbox silation THC so ideally we’d have 1% Delta 9 THC that would I mean we would be almost this far from just completely you know complete legalization I mean that’s almost direct legalization level um and I don’t anticipate that we’re going to get there this year I think Rand Paul don’t quote me on this but I think Rand Paul may actually have a bill to raise it to 1% Delta 9 I mean that would be phenomenal um but again I’d rather have it stay the same at 3% Delta 9 than to get 1% total THC yeah yeah um and I guess just to put a finer point on speculation and then I realized I missed a question about local bands that I might just circle around to before we close um to your point if it feels like there there are so many big brands in this like I guess I’m kind of wondering do you feel like the cat’s out of the bag on this one like there’s no putting it back in I definitely feel like the cats out of the back the genus out of the bottle you know and there there’s some big brands that are out there um and loud and proud but behind the scenes there are a whole lot more you know my office is getting calls I’ve I’ve talked to colleagues and and other other folks um that there’s a huge you know um shift that’s happening like a major tectonic type of a shift that’s happening in the Cannabis industry and I think we’re going to see a whole lot more big brands on the market this time next year yeah and uh like I said I wanted to Circle back really quick to a local question that I had and it’s it’s more of a legal one so I apologize if if it puts our listeners to sleep but I’m just curious if I I’m testing kind of my knowledge and just trying to understand honestly if this is how these bands work I recently had somebody on uh from Tennessee talking about the Tennessee hemp band that might go into effect I guess in June or something like that um and what I didn’t realize about like I didn’t realize it till I got them on air and they told me this they said oh the hemp ban only applies to us because we’re in Tennessee but tennesseans can still buy these products online and have them shipped to Tennessee There’s no nothing stopping that and I guess my question was I thought I maybe heard that something like that was happening in another state I don’t know if it’s Florida um is that is this their way of getting around the dormant Commerce Clause is my question maybe yeah that’s a good that’s a good question so I think the best way to answer that is that states are doing all sorts of crazy things um and you know rather than kind of dialing in on one specific state or or putting everyone to sleep with dormant Commerce claws what we see is State officials who are who are concerned about these so-called you know intoxicating canono from H are trying out different ways and one way is they just ban them outright another way is they put you know milligram Caps or they they don’t allow chemically altered or synthetic compounds or or this or this or this but then what happens sometimes is that states will say well you know you can’t um you can produce them in the state but you can’t sell them to consumers in the state now you said about Tennessee it was the opposite I’m you know again it’s it’s sort of an evolving thing and so that may be the case it also might be a misstatement of of how things are are happening too so I don’t want to you know I don’t want to confirm or deny that sure um but but the bottom line is that you know one of the the problems and the difficulties about the hemp industry is having to navig all of these crazy rules and regulations that not only are differ from state to state um but sometimes are um are vague and difficult to even comprehend in and of themselves so I think that’s the lesson is that you know we have this industry that’s that’s robust in growing despite these types of obstacles if we could remove some of these obstacles and get some more consistency the industry could just take off yeah well um one note I think I wanted to end on that I meant to to mentioned earlier but I think it’s just an interesting note to to to close on maybe um you mentioned you know that vested interests probably are a lot you know maybe they can be uh pointed to for these crackdowns and such certainly um the state of Illinois I think is a a unique case in which our head regulator has actually said um and I’m Loosely quoting that these intoxicating compounds are direct competitors to our social Equity licenses so she added almost added a layer so it was not only just a direct competitor to our lenes but to our social Equity licenses really playing on the heartstrings they are well I mean I think that that that shows you how much um you know how concerned they are that about about him so I mean let’s start by saying um the the the war on drugs and particularly the war on on cannabis has disproportionately affected um people of color and and impoverished people and and everything else and we need to rectify that social Equity is fantastic yeah uh to to pull out from that what we’re seeing is a lot of Sid stepping social Equity you know social Equity applicants and and and and license holders maybe sort of being um partnered up with big companies and is that social Equity maybe it is maybe it’s not what does social equity mean blah blah blah but the what I would say is you know what is social Equity but allowing everyone to compete on a Level Playing Field and again you know hemp allows that uh there was a Maryland Federal Court decision that that put a real fine point on this that Maryland had passed a very Draconian terrible hemp bill that was kind of a giveaway to the license system and the license system was terrible um and it went into great detail to talk about um monopolistic interests and social equity and so I what I like to see is you know sure we can try to dial in the perfect social Equity program with these marijuana licenses sometimes they work sometimes they don’t but if if we can create a Level Playing Field where it’s not a big burden to open up a hemp business whether you’re a grower or a wholesaler or manufacturer or a dispensary or some combination I see dispensary retailer um and then everyone can participate well that’s a lot of equity right there you know um so anyway I hope that was responsive to your to your question but I think your your point was that this regulator is like oh wait a second you know we all believe in Social equity which we do and so the hry somehow you know putting down the social Equity piece and that’s that’s just a red herring and that that’s why I was kind of surprised to not see them R State AG listed on this this uh document you ultimately shared and wrote about again folks this will be linked in the podcast description because I was in the room when this this regulator said you know 95 she said 95% of our problems would be solved if this hemp loophole was closed um and she was saying that they were going to speak to the AG to see what can be done um and so what can we do right right right right um but I was surprised to not see our AG on this on this list so yeah kudos to the AGS that didn’t sign it you know I like to think that maybe they thought about it and disagreed you know sometimes maybe it didn’t get to them in time or they were too busy or whatever and I’m sure there’s some AGS that actually are pro hemp um but I think a lot of it it’s just knee-jerk reaction you know they they’re misinformed underformed um subject to the propaganda that that a lot of people are putting out there but um it’s just a knee-jerk reaction oh my gosh kids are are buying you know um toxic in intoxicating canabo at grocery stores we got to put a ban on this of course that sounds terrible uh is that happening uh not to the scale that that that um it’s being broadcast is happening but there there are easy fixes and for anyone who believes in Social equity in cannabis reform in the rights of of people to use products adults to use products that they believe are right for them and who believes in small business in the American way just to put a this is all true on on on it um hemp is hemp is where it’s at you know that’s and that’s a fact yeah yeah and I should have also mentioned this earlier um I have what I think is going to be a very unique interview I will be releasing soon with a high schooler that went to a hospital for ingesting hemp compounds and I will just teas it by saying that um I asked to your point that you made earlier and this is what I why I should have brought it up earlier I asked uh them do you think you should have gone to the hospital and they’re like look I was really high but I did not want to go to the hospital the school made me go to the hospital I just wanted to go home and like eat snacks and like and I think that’s my point it’s like this person was not like I’m dying I’m dying you know were they uncomfortably High sure you know and should they have been no um you know so there are definitely some points in that interview that maybe people that wanted to make an argument against hemp can make for example they say that yeah they have an easier time of purchasing the hemp products because they do sell them to people under 21 which is unfortunate to hear but again that’s why your proposals are good so that we can prevent these things exactly right um and and actually in fact one of the things they told me was I asked you know cannabis is legal here Illinois have you as you or your friends are you able to get legal weed no that’s one of the hardest things to get mhm which is interesting because when I was a kid it was one of the easiest thing not legal weed but weed right weed weed yeah yeah my guess is for that that that student probably you know Black Market weed is probably pretty easy to get as well so yeah it just all needs to be you know cannabis and available to adults and that’s that so Bingo well said well hey Rod I had a lot of fun going all over the place with with you today um thank you for riding the wave with me thank you for man Cole you asked great questions and you’re clearly knowledgeable and I really appreciate it it’s been it’s been nice to to have this conversation with you yeah and I’d love to have you on again uh in the future I doubt this is the last time there’s gonna that hemp’s gonna be in the news I’m sure that uh it’s gonna continue puffing so yep I think so well um well listen thank you again and I hope you have a great afternoon and I look forward to um talking in the future absolutely well folks uh I hope you found as much value in this conversation as I did we’ll see you in the next episode of the Cole memo take care everybody bye