USA TODAY: What looks like pot, acts like pot, but is legal nearly everywhere? Meet hemp-derived delta-9 THC.

SOURCE: USA Today

EXCERPT:

“The medical marijuana and recreational marijuana industries are very regulated to the point where identification, passports, driver's licenses are all held very tightly at these dispensaries,” said Eric Wang, vice president of sustainability for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, a Kentucky-based trade group.

By contrast, he said, a 12- or 13-year-old child can buy a hemp-derived product legally.

When a bipartisan group of lawmakers passed the 2018 Farm Bill, the advertised aim was to help struggling farmers by allowing them to grow industrial hemp. The law also meant people could sell CBD across state lines. CBD has since become a multibillion-dollar industry.

At the time, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky who sponsored the legislation, said of hemp that “everybody has figured it out that this isn’t the other plant.”

The primary difference between marijuana and hemp is that hemp contains very small amounts of THC. The federal law states that it can contain no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC on a dry-weight basis.