The sketchy world of psychoactive hemp products
I just read an article on The Guardian about how the author traded their alcohol habit for THC seltzers.
The drinks in question are pretty much all made from hemp-derived THC. They’re legal because of a loophole in a lot of states, even ones without medical/recreational use:
Marijuana is still a controlled substance under federal law in the US, although some states have legalized it for recreational and/or medicinal purposes. But under the 2018 Farm Bill, any cannabis plant with less than 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight is considered hemp and is no longer a controlled substance.
I’ve been a stoner as long as I can remember (cough cough), but it’s wild to me that nowadays you can have two identical products and one is sold strictly for medical use where the other is sold just for funsies.
But over the last couple of years, with the Farm Bill, it’s gotten even weirder.
Some of the hemp-derived stuff is almost as bad as spice was back in the day, or salvia before that.
Okay maybe not that bad, but bad in its own way. If you think about it, this stuff is really just another designer drug. Yeah, it’s made from hemp that contains almost no THC, but it’s processed to hell and back to create a sketchy product that’ll often get you just as high, or higher, than some of the best medicinal weed. And the places that sell it don’t pay much more than minimum wage, so most of their employees are kids fresh out of high school or people my age who don’t really get paid to care.
One time I stopped by a local shop after work because the dispensaries all close before I get back into town. So I asked the girl at the counter if she could recommend any good delta 8 or 10 vapes, and she ended up selling me a customer favorite that had recently came out.
I got home, ripped the thing five or six times and caught a decent buzz. Then it just kept getting stronger and stronger, to the point I had to awkwardly call off work the next day lmao!
It was a hemp-derived THCP pen. It can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to kick in, and you’re violently high for as long as two full days. I’ve never even had edibles that strong! Literally one hit can get you way too high and it’ll be 24-48 hours before you start to come down.
On the product manufacturers website, they say it can last 4-6 hours, but on their own packaging it has a warning that says to stop after the first hit because it “provides relief for up to 48 hours” or something like that. Really wish I would’ve saved the box to post a pic of it.
Depending on who you ask, it can last for days, may not do anything at all, or maybe something in between.
That’s the kind of shit that makes me hate legal loopholes like this, especially in ‘merica where everything has to be the best maximum-strength bang for your buck.
I kept that fucking thing in my nightstand for probably three or four months without touching it before I finally just threw it away. There are zero scenarios where anyone should be that baked for that long. Maybe the literal apocalypse, but that’s it.
The Farm Bill, whether intentional or not, created a pretty shady industry that bends rules as a business model.
Whether birthing a THC product industry was an intention of the Farm Bill is unclear. “Some independent attorneys argue it was,” says Hilary Bricken, a lawyer who specializes in cannabis. “Others say absolutely not: the bill was meant to promote things like textiles, not consumer-facing drugs. But ultimately, it’s enforcement, or the lack of it, that’s allowed this market to develop the way it has.”
At the end of the day, it really is just a cannabis product that hits a little different than its more naturally cultivated cousin. Probably. But there’s so much less oversight and regulations compared to the actual cannabis industry. It’s always important to do plenty of research before using weird shit like this.
Just like spice in the 2010’s, it seems like a new (insanely stronger) version is coming out every couple of months and being marketed as harmless legal hemp products. I’m not trying to be a stickler, and my teenage self would kick me in the throat for saying this, but I think there need to be a lot more regulations and obvious warning labels for some of this stuff. Definitely needs more extensive testing and research before just turning it loose on the public, too. Half of it is shit quality that won’t do anything but give you a sore throat and a headache, while the other half is almost like taking a hit of LSD.