Even though its being sold in stores as oil, lotion, or even candy form, hemp is currently on the controlled substances list in Florida. But as Blaise Gainey reports advocates are requesting the state remove the substance from the list.
Wednesday, Cannabis Attorney Michael Minardi filed an administrative lawsuit with the state requesting Attorney General Ashley Moody remove the plant from the Florida controlled substances list. Cannabis Minardi says the petition aligns with a change the federal government made in December to allow hemp.
Minardi claims, “The federal farm bill gives states the right to create programs to be able to regulate the production, sale, processing of hemp.”
Although The 2018 Federal Farm Bill legalized hemp in the United States it left it to states to decide whether to grow & how to regulate. Throughout Florida, law enforcement officers have confiscated and seized hemp in the leaf form.
"It really makes it so that it’s in line with the federal law, and so that law enforcement doesn’t have the excuse to be able to say well because this test for THC this is now cannabis and not hemp," Minardi says.
Minardi is talking about the lab tests that law enforcement run to find the potency of a substance. In order to be classified as hemp the substance cannot have over .3 Delta 9 THC, the compound that causes euphoria. But that can only be seen after lab work is done.
Minardi agrees makes law enforcements job a lot harder, “They’re dealing with a very difficult issue right now in the difference of these two plants; and especially when you’re dealing with hemp flower it looks very much like the cannabis flower." Minardi continued saying, "I’d really like to get them to understand hemp should be a replacement for cigarettes and tobacco, and not a replacement for people wanting to get high.”
Currently there are no quick ways an officer can test for CBD levels in a plant to see if it is or isn’t hemp.