The federal hemp ban that was included in a spending bill President Donald Trump signed last week could inadvertently hurt a patient demographic that isn’t usually associated with cannabis: Dogs, cats and other pets who’ve come to rely on cannabinoids as part of their veterinary medical care.
As certain GOP lawmakers in Congress pressed for a policy change to prevent the sale of consumable hemp products, the narrative often revolved around the idea that a strict ban would close a “loophole” in the 2018 Farm Bill that legalized the crop, leading to the expansion of an often unregulated market for intoxicating cannabinoids.
But while there’s broad consensus that gas station THC vapes and copycat hemp edibles appealing to youth should be addressed, stakeholders and advocates say that narrative paints an incomplete picture, as the language included in appropriations legislation that’s set to take effect next year threatens to upend legitimate enterprises as well—including those that provide access to CBD for pets.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) attempted to distance himself from that argument before Congress passed the bill with the hemp provisions. He said that the Farm Bill and hemp legalization provisions he championed were always meant to be about industrial uses, and CBD products would be spared even with a ban on intoxicating elements of the plant.
The way the law is written, however, will permit such limited concentrations of THC that most growers and manufacturers say the idea of a CBD carve-out is infeasible. And for companies marketing such non-intoxicating products, that could spell doom—or at least force them to take on the significant added cost of extracting CBD isolates so as not to run afoul of the law.
Tim Shu, founder and CEO of the company VetCBD, tells Marijuana Moment that the passage of the appropriations legislation is cause for concern for animal companions, many of which have found relief from conditions such as arthritis, epilepsy, pain and other health conditions with the help of CBD.
Just like the 0.3 percent THC by dry weight limit that currently defines hemp, the more restrictive THC limit prescribed under the newly enacted law is “arbitrary,” Shu said. He also stressed the importance of the “entourage effect” for cannabis that makes it so having the plant’s natural ingredients—THC, CBD, terpenes and other compounds—work together often enhances their therapeutic efficacy.
“If the rule stays unchanged, then essentially anyone that’s producing CBD products from hemp are going to have to use CBD isolate,” he said. “And the problem with that is that we know from increasing evidence that the entourage effect does have benefits—it does appear to be a real thing.”
“This is something that people tend to forget about. Everyone’s thinking about intoxicating hemp properties, right? The delta-9, delta-8 THC stuff that you can find at gas stations. But the reality is that there are a lot of people and animals that rely on full-spectrum CBD products from hemp to not suffer,” Shu said. “And as usual, the neediest suffer the most.”
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