Missing the pot
Hemp vs cannabis: policy tangled in the weeds
03 April 2025 - 05:00
For all the government’s recent flip-flopping on the sale, then not-sale, then sale-again of hemp-based products, you’d be forgiven for thinking that some strong skunk was being inhaled in the corridors of power.
The hemp that is grown for industrial purposes, such as fibres for making textiles, is breathtakingly short of tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive part of the plant that makes people high. As a British hemp industry analyst pointed out to me once, you’d have to smoke a spliff the size of a telephone pole to get even a light buzz from industrial hemp...
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