Hemp Needs What Alcohol Already Has: A Clear Definition (Op-Ed)
Fixing the Intoxicating Hemp Definition Before It Fixes Us
Intoxicating hemp definition doesn’t sound like barroom poetry, but it’s the whole fight in a shot glass. Two Kentucky power players define the mood: Rand Paul slamming the brakes on spending to spare farmers; Mitch McConnell lining up with dozens of attorneys general to swing a hammer at a “public health crisis.” Both sound righteous. Both miss the point. The rot isn’t farmers or safety—it’s semantics. The federal rule clings to a wizard’s trick: hemp equals less than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC. So smoke shops sell high-THCa flower and 100 mg edibles with a wink and a receipt, and regulators stare at the statute like a Rorschach: the label says “hemp,” the effect says “marijuana.” Until we define what we’re actually regulating—plant versus product, potency versus provenance—we’re taking shots in the dark and calling it policy.
We’ve solved this before. Alcohol got its definitions straight a century ago. Liquor is liquor. If a bodega sells unlicensed vodka, the state shuts it down. No one argues it’s “fuel-grade ethanol” with a twist of lime. Cannabis got cute instead. The market exploits ambiguity, and the ambiguity pays. A Missouri survey pegged the problem in blunt numbers: the overwhelming majority of “hemp” products tested were functionally high-THC cannabis, with nearly a third flunking for pesticides—an ugly cocktail of regulatory drift and bad ingredients. The pearl-clutching isn’t all imagined, either. Even alcohol’s lobbyists have taken a swing at the hemp aisle’s sugar-coated edges, as noted in Beer Industry Trade Group Calls Out Hemp THC Sector’s ‘Bad Actors’ For Allegedly Marketing To Children. The packaging wars won’t decide the future, but they do show why clarity—tough, simple, enforceable—matters.
The surgical fix is boring on paper and revolutionary in practice: split the plant from the product. First, raise the farm gate to a 1.0 percent total THC cap. It’s pro-agriculture and honest about sunlight, soil, and stress. Crops breathe. They drift. Farmers shouldn’t lose their shirts every time the weather nudges a decimal point. Second, set an adult line for what hits consumers: 10 mg THC per package. Not per serving. Per package. That’s your bright line—the difference between wellness tinctures on Main Street and intoxicants that belong behind a licensed counter. You don’t need to chase “work-in-progress” extract or parse long chemical pedigrees. If the final thing on the shelf crosses the 10 mg threshold, it’s regulated like cannabis. Period. This approach stands in sharp relief to blunt-force proposals that would simply outlaw swaths of the category, as debated in Congressional Deal Would Ban Many Hemp THC Products, While Excluding Provisions To Let VA Doctors Recommend Medical Marijuana. You want clarity that works in the real world? Put potency where the public interacts with it: on the package, not the press release.
Follow the money and you’ll find why the hedging continues. Major operators straddle both sides of the fence—licensed cannabis on one channel, “hemp-derived” clones in another. One publicly traded company even bragged that its popular chocolate edibles move in dispensaries and, under a hemp banner, via e-commerce and local delivery in more than twenty markets—fast, frictionless, and unburdened by the rules brick-and-mortar shops live under. This isn’t a morality play; it’s a definitional vacuum creating arbitrage. Enforcement can’t do much if the law can’t say what’s what. Cleaning that up also guides fair penalties. As guardrails tighten, courts are already recalibrating punishment logic around drug convictions, a trend captured in Federal Officials Revise Sentencing Guidelines For Drug Selling Convictions. Proportionality makes sense when rules are clear. If we set a product threshold that actually means intoxication, then anyone who wants to sell above it needs a license, and anyone who sells below it is in the wellness lane. No one has to cosplay as a chemistry professor in court.
So what happens when we draw the line? You get a coalition that’s been missing for years: farmers who want breathing room, regulators who want an on/off switch, licensed operators who want a level field, and those attorneys general who want something enforceable without criminalizing the countryside. Fear doesn’t have to run the show. Real-world data from our neighbors is instructive, like the analysis in Youth Marijuana Use Has Declined Since Canada Enacted Legalization, Federally Funded Study Shows. Clear rules tend to beat moral panics. Raise the farm cap to 1.0 percent total THC. Cap consumer packages at 10 mg THC. Move intoxicants into licensed channels. Keep wellness out of the crossfire. It’s not heroic—just honest. And if you want to taste where clarity meets craft without the hype, pull up a chair and explore our flower and more here: https://thcaorder.com/shop/.
