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Congress accidentally legalized THC six years ago


When lawmakers voted to allow hemp production in 2018, they quietly opened the door to legal THC in all 50 states.

Congress effectively banned both plant varieties in 1937 with the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act, which erected an impossible set of regulatory standards for buying and selling any type of Cannabissativa and imposed stiff criminal penalties for noncompliance. In March 2002, the famed Israeli chemist Raphael Mechoulam, who first synthesized and identified THC in the 1960s, had filed a patent application with two colleagues for converting CBD oil into delta-9 THC—and a lesser-known but similarly intoxicating cannabinoid called delta-8. According to the plain text of the Farm Bill, it appeared to be legal to convert CBD into delta-8 THC so long as the process started with a plant that contained less than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC—an interpretation that was eventually endorsed in a ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

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