Legalized Industrial Hemp: Window of Legal Opportunity for Craft Alcohol?

The 2018 U.S. Farm Bill allowed for the federal production of industrial hemp, a plant used for CBD, CBG, hemp fiber, hemp seeds, and nearly 20,000 other applications. An incredibly versatile plant, industrial hemp is essentially the same plant as marijuana, with the main difference being the level of THC. THC is the component in marijuana that gets you "high," which when below .3% of the cannabis plant, makes it officially industrial hemp.

Without getting too much into the weed, this plant has been outlawed for many, many decades. However, it is now legal, with marijuana expected not too far behind. What is interesting about this, and why I write about it for this class, is many of the advocates for legalization of this crop were conservatives, who are typically not on the side of drug deregulation and decriminalization. These are likely the people who claim "puritan" reasons for maintaining the tiered system of alcohol (speculation, of course). In hemp's case, this was positioned as a way to help farmers--who can get paid 75x more money per acre growing hemp for CBG than for corn, so yeah, they were pretty happy--and create jobs, especially in rural economies. But these congressmen must know that the most valuable market use for this crop is essentially a mind-altering drug, even if only subtly in some instances.

With that, the last class made me wonder if the winds of American "puritanism" that prohibits other alcohols from being shipped, and other archaic regulations discussed in class, may have a window of opportunity to be changed given the seemingly large "change of heart" with industrial hemp. Who knows, but I would be giving my supreme court lawyer a call right about now if I were a craft brewer.

And through writing this blog, I also discovered hemp wine, which sounds interesting and niche.