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Feds Award More Than Half A Million Dollars To Analyze Hemp-Derived Products That Are Growing In Popularity

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A pair of newly announced government grants totaling more than half a million dollars will fund research into hemp, marijuana and processes to differentiate the two forms of the cannabis plant from one another.

One grant, of $300,000 to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will fund the agency’s evaluation of the chemical composition of commercially available hemp-derived vape products, part of an effort to better understand their makeup and the accuracy of product labels.

The award, of $216,763, is going to Sam Houston State University in Texas to develop analytical methods to distinguish between hemp and marijuana vape products.

Both funding announcements were made in recent weeks by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), part of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). And both are aimed at helping policymakers, regulators, law enforcement and others better understand and identify hemp and hemp-derived products as they flood the marketplace following the 2018 Farm Bill’s nationwide legalization of cannabis with less than 0.3 percent THC.

The NIST award is part of a broad effort to understand hemp-derived vape products and is expected to culminate in a publicly available report and journal articles. It will evaluate commercially available hemp products in the U.S. using standardized laboratory methods.

“The overall goal of this project is to provide policymakers, regulators, public health officials, toxicologists, and seized drug forensic laboratories with a better understanding of the chemical composition, stability, and product label accuracy of hemp-derived vape products,” an NIJ description of the award says.

Both awards note that following the legalization of hemp, more producers began using methods to chemically convert hemp into psychoactive cannabinoids, such as delta-8 THC and delta-9 THC.

“To address the excess of these materials,” the NIST award says of hemp following the Farm Bill’s enactment, “a synthetic process was developed to convert excess CBD-rich hemp into other cannabinoids such as ∆8-THC accelerating the hemp-derived product market. The 2018 Farm Bill does not address the regulation of these products forcing individual states to establish their own policies that have been slow to develop resulting in a drastic growth of these products in an extremely short period of time.”

The award says more information is needed about the current hemp-derived vape market across the U.S., how products vary across the country, how to identify synthetic cannabinoids and other, related issues.

The separate grant to Sam Houston State University in Texas, meanwhile, is meant to support development of analytical methods to distinguish between hemp and marijuana—chiefly samples seized by law enforcement. It will use “semi-quantitative and quantitative analysis of ∆9-THC, including in the presence of emerging ∆9-THC positional isomers, through ion complexation with copper phosphine complexes,” according to NIJ’s description of the award.

The announcement notes that “there are growing concerns about the potential conversion of cannabinoid isomers to ∆9-THC,” explaining that the research is intended to help provide “the seized drug community with a method for the differentiation of hemp and marijuana, including the differentiation of ∆9-THC positional isomers through unique mass spectral features for enhanced certainty.”

Funding to improve cannabis testing methods—and to conduct testing itself—has picked up since the federal legalization of hemp and ensuing flood of hemp-derived products onto the U.S. market, generally with little to no regulation. That’s on top of the rapid growth of the cannabis testing industry following the legalization of marijuana in states across the country.

This summer, NIST published a new report on laboratory analysis as part of a project designed to help testing labs ensure accuracy and precision in testing cannabis products. The report focuses on determining cannabinoid content in plant material samples, following earlier reports on moisture content and certain toxins and heavy metals.

NIST established its Cannabis Laboratory Quality Assurance Program (CannaQAP) in 2020. The program’s goal is to “help laboratories accurately measure key chemical compounds in marijuana, hemp and other cannabis products including oils,” NIST said at the time of its launch.

The program, created after the 2018 Farm Bill’s federal legalization of hemp, is split into three exercises. The first centered on measuring the concentration of up to 17 different cannabinoids in hemp oil. NIST published a report on that segment in mid-2021.

Meanwhile, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) along with other law enforcement agencies for years have been calling for help distinguishing legal hemp from federally prohibited marijuana.

Federally funded research published earlier this year detailed two new ways researchers say they’ve discovered to test samples.

As far as regulating cannabinoids, DEA also recently clarified that as far as it’s concerned, the 0.3 percent THC threshold for hemp includes not only delta-9 THC itself but also the related cannabinoid THCA, which is converted into delta-9 THC when heated—a process known as decarboxylation.

Some experts have disputed DEA’s interpretation of the statute on intoxicating hemp-based cannabinoids, however. And a federal appeals court ruled in 2022 that the way that existing rules are written makes delta-8 THC exempt from control, as the law is “silent” on the minor cannabinoid while clearly legalizing hemp extracts and derivatives.

Lawmakers at the state and federal levels have also begun looking at standards for delta-8 THC, a psychoactive compound commonly derived from hemp products. Some congressional legalization, meanwhile, would ban most consumable hemp-based cannabinoid products entirely.

Some industry stakeholders have said the change could even federally criminalize CBD products because the measure would apply to all ingestible hemp products with any level of THC.

Already many products sold as hemp meet the federal definition of marijuana. A NIST analysis earlier this year found that the vast majority of smokable hemp product samples–about 93 percent—contained more than 0.3 percent THC.

Meanwhile, more states are taking steps to regulate hemp-derived cannabinoids at that level. In California, for example, an industry effort to halt that state’s enforcement of new emergency regulations banning consumable hemp products fell short, with a state judge denying a request for a temporary restraining order.

The underlying lawsuit contends that the rules backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) are based on a faulty declaration of “emergency” and come after officials failed to effectively implement state hemp regulation legislation that was enacted in 2021.

States around the country are moving to enact similar cannabinoid restrictions in an effort to limit the proliferation of intoxicating hemp-derived products following the federal 2018 Farm Bill’s legalization of the crop. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D), for example, signed a bill into law putting hemp products under the purview of the state’s cannabis commission, a move that’s also sparked a court challenge.

Somewhat similar discussions about how to regulate hemp derivatives are playing out at the federal level, as congressional lawmakers consider legislative provisions to impose a general ban on hemp-derived cannabinoids such as delta-8 THC.

Rep. Mary Miller’s (R-IL) amendment to the 2024 Farm Bill, for example, was approved by a House committee in May and would remove cannabinoids that are “synthesized or manufactured outside of the plant” from the federal definition of legal hemp. The change is backed by prohibitionists as well as some marijuana companies, who’ve described the restriction as a fix to a “loophole” that was created under the 2018 Farm Bill that federally legalized hemp and its derivatives.

Anti-drug groups, law enforcement and some health organizations have called on Congress to embrace the ban, arguing that “trying to regulate semi-synthetic cannabinoids will not work.”

In addition to Miller’s amendment in the 2025 Farm Bill, the House Appropriations Committee in July approved a separate spending bill that contains a similar provision to prohibit cannabinoid products such as delta-8 THC and CBD containing any “quantifiable” amount of THC.

Hemp-derived cannabinoids also came up in a recent federal appeals court decision in which judges ruled that cannabinoids derived from hemp, such as THC-O-acetate, indeed qualify as hemp and are legal under the 2018 Farm Bill. In making that ruling, the court rejected the Drug Enforcement Administration’s more restrictive interpretation of the law.

How to address hemp-derived cannabinoids has caused some fractures within the cannabis community, and in some cases marijuana businesses have found themselves on the same side as prohibitionists in pushing a derivatives ban.

In a letter to congressional leaders ahead of Miller’s amendment, the U.S. Cannabis Council (USCC) proposed specific language they wanted to see included that would place hemp-derived cannabinoids containing any amount of THC under the definition of federally illegal marijuana.

While they’ve focused on the need to address public safety concerns related to unregulated “intoxicating” cannabinoid products such as delta-8 THC, some hemp industry advocates say the effect of the proposed language could be a ban on virtually all non-intoxicating CBD products as well, as most on the market contain at least trace levels of THC, consistent with the Farm Bill definition of hemp that allows for up to 0.3 percent THC by dry weight.

Meanwhile, the legislation that advanced through the House Agriculture Committee in May also contains provisions that would reduce regulatory barriers for certain hemp farmers and scale-back a ban on industry participation by people with prior drug felony convictions.

Specifically, it would make it so the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), states and tribal entities could choose to eliminate a policy that prevents people with felony drug convictions in the past 10 years from being licensed to produce industrial hemp.

However, advocates had hoped to see more expansive language, such as what was described in Senate Democrats’ recent summary of their forthcoming Farm Bill draft. Under that plan, there would be a mandate to eliminate the ban, rather than simply authorizing it, and it would cover all hemp producers, not just those growing it for non-extraction purposes.

The Senate Agriculture Committee has not yet released the draft text of their bill, so it remains to be seen if the summary description matches what will ultimately be released. Bipartisan House lawmakers filed standalone legislation last year that would broadly lift the felony ban for would-be hemp producers.

Lawmakers and stakeholders have also been eyeing a number of other proposals that could be incorporated into the Farm Bill—and which could come up as proposed amendments as the proposal moves through the legislative process—including measures to free up hemp businesses to legally market products like CBD as dietary supplements or in the food supply.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) reintroduced a bill that would triple the concentration of THC that hemp could legally contain, while addressing multiple other concerns the industry has expressed about the federal regulations.

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Photo courtesy of National Institute of Standards and Technology.

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Ben Adlin, a senior editor at Marijuana Moment, has been covering cannabis and other drug policy issues professionally since 2011. He was previously a senior news editor at Leafly, an associate editor at the Los Angeles Daily Journal and a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs. He lives in Washington State.

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