Police seize 7000 lbs of hemp, insist its marijuana - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/02/06/us/hemp-marijuana-idaho-trnd/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F But the Idaho State Police says it did right by state law, and technically, it did. The routine inspection, the field drug test, the canine test were all done by the book. Tests like the one conducted on the hemp Palamarchuck was transporting cannot tell the difference between hemp and marijuana. The Idaho State Police says their analyses, and canine units, can only test for the presence of THC -- not the concentration. The agency has since sent a sample of the hemp seized to a lab to test how much THC it contains. Idaho state law defines marijuana as "all parts of the plant of the genus cannabis, regardless of species" -- and that any "evidence" of THC "shall create a presumption that such material is 'marijuana' as defined and prohibited herein." But Big Sky Scientific attorney Elijah Watkins says that federal law, and the Constitution, supersede Idaho's law another example of where dodgy field tests are held up as a gold standard. This is probably part of a much much larger problem because the feds gave the states virtually no warning or grace period to adjust their laws, (great governing there!) and there's probably dozens of cases where this has happened elsewhere as a result.

Saw some people talking about it on another forum, it will probably fall under the free commerce clause of the constitution. Idaho can't stop shipments of things that are legal federally and legal in the states it's being shipped between.

.43% vs .30% legal max measured THC content 🙄 Have to wonder what method they used to sample the hemp to determine that it was over the legal limit. Such an easy thing to abuse. Sad that the truck driver is going to have his life ruined over this bullshit.

Oh no it’s evil green leafy substances. Better use the most heavy handed approach we have over a “possible” legal technicality!

Every day I find new reasons to hate this goddamn state.

ya I hope the company is representing the trucker because he was just doing a job, if there's any technical question over whether its legal in Idaho vs Oregon they should be charging the company for sending it not the commercial driver for trucking it.

Sure would be nice to see U.S. Marshals knock on the door of the prosecutor's office to tell them "no."

i don't understand the difference between hemp and weed, could anyone explain what it is? i did a quick google search but i didnt understand much. is hemp legal and weed not in the state of Idaho?

Hemp and weed both come from the same plant Cannabis Sativa, and they are different strains of it. The major difference is that hemp is closer to the natural state of the plant with low (<30%) THC yields which make it good for spinning into fibers and all kinds of commerical products. Hemp also has higher concentrations of CBD which is used in medical applications. The usage of hemp for this goes back 10000 years or more. Weed is the dried out buds from cannabis sativa strains which have been bred selectively to increase its THC yield and lower the CBD content, making them better for recreational smoking. You could probably still make clothes out of raw weed strains but it has much more value as recreational material. So given the context and our long history with Hemp as industrial material it is logical that Idaho would allow its use, as it is a widespread industrial material. The only way to really differentiate it from recreative weed strains is the THC content. So the law probably forbids the use of Cannabis Sativa strains with higher than x % of THC content.

Expanding on this great post - we encounter all sorts of problems when we artificially impose these sorts of distinctions. There is a clear differences between a 15% THC strain and hemp, but individual variation within hemp as a species can certainly result in excess of THC per the legal limit. Consider that for farmers harvesting Cannabis as hemp, careful selection of seed stock must be performed to avoid contamination with pollen from recreational stock. When sampling for chemical assay the method used for statistical analysis, sample size, etc will all have a significant bearing on the THC content recorded. Do we account for the single outlier that is clearly a recreational cross? Is the reported value an average of several plants, or were several samples taken before a single value in excess of the limit was found? (I am assuming you misplaced a zero in this post, 30% would be close to the max THC content of any strain ever produced iirc. 0.3% would be our legal definition here.)

Which sort of shows how hastily written this and many of the GOP's other policy priorities have been. They didn't even give states much time to adjust their own laws as most state legislatures don't meet until January and didn't meet since this was passed.

You'd have to practically gas yourself to get high on any of that.

from the article the business buys the highest cbd content hemp then further refines it thanks to the loophole that makes hemp derived cbd legal