Many are aware that WAFBA/NOCO, the organizers of the Southeast Hemp Expo cancelled their event in Tennessee. The reasons are somewhat unclear and there has been mixed messaging regarding the real reason for the cancellation.
It seems some speakers at the WAFBA and NOCO Hemp Conventions have determined that an explosion and contraction of psychoactive hemp derived value added products are the culprit. While they claim they’re not adverse to these products and don’t want them banned, they don’t seem concerned with the outcome of the federal farm bill doing it for them.
Many operating in the industry fail to realize their products and supply chains cater to Specialty Retail Consumers and Distributors that supply their retail partners with end products to sell to the end-users.
If your product is made from hemp, it will be sold at a specialty retail outlet, both online and in brick and mortars. The fact that it is psychoactive or not, changes little beyond where it is sold. Tractor Supply or your local CBD shop and Vape Shops, Vitamin shop, Tanning Salon, Cosmetic outlets. They are all existing in a specialty retail segment, and your industry is just a segment of a specialized retail category.
It is this unwillingness or inability to recognize the true obscurity and disruptive nature of the plant and operators monetizing products from it, this is what leads everyone to draw swords to one another.
The solution to this matter is a Federal Excise tax on Delta 8 THC and other cannabinoids that are deemed “psychoactive.”
This is a real solution in an increasing Federal Deficit. The solution is certainly not putting thousands of out of business and destroy a million jobs to suit a narrative that is inconvenient to some.
You can make bread with wheat, or you can make Vodka. “Wheat does not get you drunk” would be a failed mantra. Food is taxed differently than spirits. Furthermore, a reasonable taxation scheme is needed. Colorado or California is far from a proper model to structure taxation and regulatory schemes around. Their models encouraged overproduction and resulted in the illicit export of much of the yields to the markets they now claim Delta 8 THC has disrupted.
The undeniable truth is that Hemp Derived Delta 8 has disrupted the “Medical Marijuana” tax structures, the bonds supported by them, and ultimately the black market. Cannabinoids have hit critical mass with the help of Delta 8 THC, now the machinations of many will take hold.
The inconvenient truth is that the Federal Farm bill is all that stands in the way of wholesale monopolization of all cannabinoids via the FDA. It appears that industrial and even some value added manufactures in “health segments” are fine with this occurring, as long as it doesn’t interrupt their federal, state, or otherwise subsidized contracts for “alternatives” that they’ve secured as a result of the Farm Bill.
The unity begins when it is realized every segment makes different products for different consumers from the same plant. Limiting the consumer’s ability to access our products safely is damaging to all, no matter if it’s hemp plastic, or a Delta 8 Hard Seltzer.
There seems to be a willingness to virtue signal on the environmental potential without acknowledging the overwhelming amount of humans that enjoy access to Delta 8 THC and what mental health impacts that has in daily lives of adults. If the consumers didn’t enjoy it, it would have collapsed like the demand for CBD, which was vastly oversold in it capabilities.
Until the segments of the industry that can be considered “non-psychoactive” begin supporting real solutions on a federal level, there will be no unity, there will only be confusion. The obvious solution is to tax it, reasonably, not to attempt to put the cat back in the bag because it arrived earlier than Federal Cannabis regulations could be brokered by Public Health, Tobacco, Cannabis, Food and Beverage, and Pharma lobbyists.
It’s important to note that disassociating one industry segment from another is what destroyed the Advocacy efforts in the Nicotine Vaping or ENDS industry which faced exhausting attacks by Public Health and Media. “Hemp advocacy” is running the risk of being steamrolled by the same type of financial instruments that commanded those powers to attack vaping, and in short order.
Do we remember how Hemp was banned originally? What is being done to vest consumers to act against this or fund actions against this?
If we cannot organize and unify consumers to fund efforts to influence narrative around policy, there will be no unity in industry. To say that “the consumer doesn’t care” is merely a projection of your own convictions.