A person would need to “smoke a joint the size of a telephone pole” to get high from hemp, even if it marginally exceeds the 0.3 percent THC threshold that separates the federally legal crop from prohibited marijuana, a Justice Department researcher says.
It’s part of what makes the federal definition of hemp, as set out in the 2018 Farm Bill, a bit perplexing. While the intent of the low THC standard is to prevent people from accessing an intoxicating product, the origin of the specific 0.3 percent rule doesn’t appear to be especially grounded in science.
“It’s just a really hard line, and it’s a really low line,” Frances Scott, a physical scientist at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences under DOJ, said in an episode of the Justice Today podcast that was posted this month.
In 2022, Scott helped lead a study that involved testing dozens of products that are marketed as legal hemp. The findings, published in Police Chiefs Magazine, revealed that the “vast majority” crossed the 0.3 percent THC threshold, making them “legally marijuana.”
“Some of these were like 0.35 percent, 0.4 percent, okay? So they’re really tiny amounts,” she said. “The implication is, this is legitimate farmers legitimately trying to grow hemp. They’re not trying to grow illicit marijuana and get you high because, quite frankly, you’d have to smoke a joint the size of a telephone pole to get much off of that 0.35 percent, right?”
Hellbound and Down 