Buzzkill!
What Louisiana legislators with feet of clay refused to do members of Congress had
the fortitude to do to prevent soon people without a “medical” reason from
getting high legally in the state.
One of the downplayed aspects of the tussle between Democrats and Republicans to pass at least a temporary continuing federal budget, accomplished this week, was that three appropriations bills would move forward to fund their areas for the entire fiscal year, one of these being the Department of Agriculture’s colloquially known as the “farm bill.” In it was a provision that starting the next fiscal year would ban sales of hemp-related products if each container has more than 0.4 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive portion of cannabis that comes from the hemp plant..
The 2018 farm bill legalized using industrial hemp, but failed to put adequate restrictions on the use of THC from it, defining usage by weight instead of total amount. The marketplace abhors a void and so it stepped in to create consumable products as high as 15 mg per unit. While these are smaller amounts relative to what may be sold legally as medical marijuana or illegally as lids on the street, take enough of them and you can cop a buzz.
Unfortunately, Louisiana was one of the worst offenders in regulating the amount the industry that sprung up can include. Allowing 5 mg per serving, few states regulated to permit a higher dose. The industry argues that if made too low, as with the incoming level, demand for consumables with it would fall off the table and severely concatenate the industry.
Uh, yeah. Because people don’t buy the chews, the drinks, the inhalants, etc. because they savor the taste, it’s because they want to get stoned on a chemical the federal government consistently warns is unhealthy, unsafe for and dangerous to most people. And can the violins from playing over the moaning about jobs and livelihoods lost, or that the law will drive people to a risky black market that only will confirm it’s addictive people involved; policy shouldn’t cater to people’s weaknesses or making a buck off of something destructive.
Of course, Louisiana wouldn’t be expected to have taken a stern line on things related to marijuana. Its medical marijuana laws are among the most lax in the country, basically allowing anybody to get as much ganja-related products as they like as long as they can find a complicit physician.
A few legislators at least had their heads on straight to challenge this. Last regular session, having seen past efforts to clamp down fail, a couple of bills surfaced using taxation strategies to try to discourage consumption, but neither made it out of committee.
Louisiana’s Republican delegation stepped where their supermajority counterparts in the Legislature didn’t. All four voted for the omnibus bill, while the two Democrats didn’t (although Rep. Troy Carter made approving noises about circumscribing hemp products, but likely didn’t like the budget portion of the bill that held spending, especially involving wealth transfer provisions, down). As it is, little hemp is grown in Louisiana because of an unconducive climate.
Nor does the state benefit that much financially from direct sales of the high-content products. It took in only just over a million bucks from their sales in fiscal year 2024. Employment and income taxes plus sales taxes also came into state and local coffers as a result, but it also will have displaced other uses of those dollars that consumers could have spent elsewhere that likely would have registered similar amounts. Governments will suffer little if any fiscally from the new lower level that effectively moots state laws with higher levels, as manufacturers won’t want to run afoul of federal law and probably will ratchet down to zero production of higher content consumables well before next Sep. 30.
So, Congress, with the help of Louisiana’s GOP congressional delegation, rescued the state from bad legislative policy. At least somebody in elective office got it right.
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