When marijuana was made illegal in 1937, hemp was unwittingly lumped together with it under the impression that they were the same herb. However, over the course of time, science was able to prove that marijuana and hemp are in completely different leagues, which paved the way for lawmakers to sign the 2018 Farm Bill into law.
This Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 covers a range of subjects, but its most prominent inclusion is the removal of hemp from the country’s list of controlled substances. But although the law should have made hemp acceptable on all levels, some states’ marijuana laws overlap with this freedom, and that includes New Hampshire.
When the government signed the 2018 Farm Bill into law, it essentially cleared the slate for hemp. That means that the herb is fully legal, with no limitations on the amount of hemp flower that a person can possess at any given time. In essence, it’s about as legal as coffee beans or ice cream.
But even then, some lawmakers and law enforcement agents recommend that individuals restrict their use of raw hemp flower to their own, private property. The reason for that is because hemp bears close resemblance to its psychoactive cousin, marijuana.
Both hemp and marijuana come from the cannabis sativa plant. But the thing that makes them different is the amount of tetrahydrocannbinol that they contain. This compound – also called THC – is what causes the feeling of a high that you get when you smoke marijuana.
In hemp, THC levels can’t exceed 0.3% in order to meet the government’s regulations. Anything more than that means that the herb is marijuana and not hemp. And while that makes it easy to understand how the 2018 Farm Bill came to pass, this is also the reason why hemp legality has posed a problem for law enforcement.
There’s nothing else that differentiates hemp from marijuana, so officers have no way to tell whether a person is in violation of marijuana law or not. That said, you might want to keep your raw hemp flower at home for the meantime until law enforcement agencies are able to provide a better way of telling the two herbs apart on the field.
Left and right, you’re bound to find a wealth of hemp-infused food choices regardless what state you live in. Available in gasoline stations, convenience stores, farmer’s markets and more, hemp-infused edibles make up a huge chunk of the market. For most online brands, edibles constitute a majority of sales.
But despite being pretty widespread – even more so than raw flower – edibles aren’t exactly legal. The FDA has been clear on their stance that hemp extracts are not approved as food additives.
That said, all of the various products using hemp extract like oils, tinctures, capsules, gummies and more aren’t actually legal for sale or use. Nonetheless, law enforcement doesn’t seem keen on trying to implement the regulation. So people can still freely purchase and sell hemp edibles without any penalties.
While hemp is a legal agricultural commodity, it helps to remember that it comes from the same plant as marijuana. And the only way to make sure you grow hemp instead of marijuana would be to adapt certain cultivation techniques that lower the expression of THC.
In the hands of an inexperienced farmer, it’s highly likely that a cannabis plant might turn out to produce marijuana instead. And because recreational marijuana is illegal in the state of New Hampshire, it’s not legal for locals to grow their own hemp.
New Hampshire might not have the most lenient marijuana laws, but their legislation allows citizens to fully enjoy marijuana albeit with a few restrictions. Aside from growing your own hemp or using raw hemp flower in public, everything else is a free-for-all, so locals in New Hampshire might not have too much to complain about when it comes to enjoying the hemp.
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