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Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

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381–390 of 583 posts

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#381
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal weed senators were voting for it because their constituents include people growing legal weed. The hemp product market competes with these constituents. The anti-weed senators were voting for it because they are anti-weed.

Honest question but how is hemp competing with weed? Are these different plants?

Hemp is classified as below .3% THC (compared to old-school weed strains at 15% and modern levels at mid 30%s). Hemp is male and female, and trash in potency, but THC and other products derived from it are fair game in some jurisdictions, or a grey area.

It is certainly a different market than legal, high potency THC, as well as medical.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Senators in California, my state, voted for the ban. Neither has explained why.

Newsom recently banned hemp-based THC at the state level anyway, so there's no real change in California. https://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/us-states/california/n... They were taking very low % hemp that is supposed to be for textiles and extracting the little THC there was into low quality vapes. Because they didn't need the state growers licenses to grow hemp, there was no mechanism to test for pesticides and s…

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'.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same plant, but hemp refers to the leaves and plant matter that isn't the THC-rich flower buds.

They are the same species, but it's a Brussel-sprouts vs Broccoli type situation where they started as the same plant but have been selectively bred for different purposes

The THCa/Delta8 stuff is not brussel-sprouts vs. broccoli. They difference is in timing around harvest and process. They're growing many of the exact same cultivars as what is sold in a proper dispensary (and indeed, much of what is sold in dispensaries would actually qualify because they actually have very low levels of Delta9 in them)

You can effectively just under-cure the exact same plant and get something that comes in under the limit.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#385
post #319
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree, I think time has proven that the filibuster (or some process like it) is necessary as a stabilizing effect on democracy. Making legislation easier to block than pass makes it so that small swings in representation, say 51-49 to 49-51 can't produce massive swings in policy. The minority party being able to, with effort, stop certain pieces of legislation they find abhorrent by raising the bar to it pass…

The Senate is already an antidemocratic brake/stabilizer. Adding a brake to it is stultifying. > so that small swings in representation, say 51-49 to 49-51 can't produce massive swings in policy Exactly, and this is bad. Voters should all know that every vote matters. The current setup creates the false impression that both parties would fundamentally steer the ship the same way ("uniparty"). The path to a government…

> The result will be a much more responsive, dynamic system where Congress cares more about what we voters think.

Or an overwhelming switch the other direction, just as chaotic and unpopular, continuing to swing back and forth every four years.

Who knows, maybe the overreach of the current party in power (even though "won the last national elections" meaning less than 50% of the cast vote, but that's another discussion) will cause a swing the other direction so hard that the opposition party gains a supermajority in congress. Things will be more stable in that case, if not universally popular, because well-crafted legislation is a good bit harder to reverse than executive orders.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#386
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What "urban concerns" and "rural concerns" are we talking about, specifically?

One in my state is solar panel legislation. You can't install solar panels in AZ without a permit and building plans and roof plans. That's all well and good in the city, but here in bumfuck nowhere I built a house with no building plans or roof plans. Why exactly did the majority of city dwellers pass this law without even considering people like me in bumfuck nowhere, who have as much or higher utility for solar pa…

> The answer is they didn't even think about us, they just did it.

Asserted without evidence.

Many parts of the USA until sometime in the 1980s had no building codes. Now many of them do (some still go without). Society has made a slow and steady move towards saying, in effect "whatever and wherever you build, we want to be certain that it meets a set of minimum design and construction standards, and we justify this with both public safety (fire, for example) and the interests of anyone who may acquire what you built in the future".

You can say, if you like, that this is bullshit. But don't try to claim that they didn't even think about you.

p.s. I live in rural New Mexico and installed my own solar panels, under license from the state.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#388
post #380

Even the legal weed state senators were voting for this. It is mostly about shifting profits from mom and pop, low regulation hemp industry to wealthy corporations that own dispensaries that have gargantuan regulatory costs that gatekeep out most the competition. This ensures profits are captured by the wealthy rather than small family type setups. Wealthy former hemp companies will shift to the "legal" weed market,…

> It is mostly about shifting profits from mom and pop, low regulation hemp industry to wealthy corporations that own dispensaries that have gargantuan regulatory costs that gatekeep out most the competition. That’s a big assertion that needs evidence. I’m strongly in favor of legalization but not deregulation. It was a pretty big loophole that allowed what’s essentially weed to sidestep the regulation their competit…

Yet Kratom is legal, yt is recommending to me some product called "meth" (not joking) and there are a million new research drugs coming out every decade?

It's just old-school think of the kids and not in my territory. We don't know how to regulate and handle this because our politicians and more and more our citizens don't understand what is being voted on or has been happening in their own states for 7 years.

Have you used these products? It's a shame, the quality that I was getting just within the past 3 months was incredible and it is market not afraid to try new stuff.

I'm sad, flower from OR, NC, OK, IN, and others will never legally hit my lungs. Back to the cartels? Or perhaps I should overpay by $200 with the comfort of having 0 clue where it comes from, again?

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#389
Where'd all this abolish the senate nonsense come from recently? I get people have been complaining about 'flyover' states for a while now, but the Republicans also have the majority in the House at the moment.

At least wait until the House doesn't represent the current majority party in the Senate (like it almost certainly will again eventually) to make that argument.

I'm mildly worried that it's just an attempt to speed up major change the next time a party has a super majority, by planting the seeds early...

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a very idealistic idea. The reality is that some people / land area are simply far more important than others. It's not to say that the individual themselves is more meaningful as a matter of state, but there positioning, role in society etc simply carries more raw value than others. The US is huge and you have a major divide from the producers and the benefiters, the most critical components of the US…

> most critical components of the US don't require large populations centers Yes, but large cities still produce the most value if we're talking in economic terms. For food production especially. Most logistical operation also operates in large cities. >You absolutely have to offer some level of appeasement that outsizes their population representation to the people who support everyone else. Well, yes. That was the…

But we aren't talking in economic terms. We are talking in political terms. The economy is an offshoot of the functioning political system. Contextually they are different things although logically intertwined, but resources and their management / allocation is what gives rise to the idea of governance and that governance implements the economic system etc. Without the resources there isn't really anything to govern. The infrastructure and logistics in a city are generally geared toward supporting that city, not the rural areas.

And I mean, obviously the current situation is not this way because we have a very functioning system, most rural people don't even use the food and resources that are extracted around them anyway as we import and move things around at an unprecedented scale. But we are talking about what is important to a functioning large scale country and economy at the basic level. You literally can not support the cities without the rural output, even if the larger value, monetarily, is created in the urban area.

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