Hemp on the Horizon: The 2018 Farm Bill and the Future of CBD
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Hemp on the Horizon: The 2018 Farm Bill and the Future of CBD*
The 2018 Farm Bill has signaled a sea change in hemp cultivation and sale in
the United States. In addition to legalizing the crop and sketching out a
framework for its regulation, the bill has brought some clarity to the legal status
of cannabidiol, or CBD, a hemp-derived non-psychoactive compound that has
become immensely popular in recent years. In the wake of the bill's passage,
however, the CBD market remains severely under-regulated, a state of affairs
that threatens consumer safety and leaves businesses without assurance that their
operations are legal. To ameliorate the present confusion, at least two significant
regulatory issues must be resolved. The first concerns the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration's current, yet largely unenforced, position that the addition of
CBD to ingestible products is illegal. The second involves the lack of guidance
in the Farm Bill regarding the labeling of CBD products.
After providing background on the history of hemp in the United States and
detailing the 2018 Farm Bill's regulatory framework, this Recent Development
argues that the federal government must act quickly to fill the holes in the
legislation. In the absence of swift federal action, it contends that states will need
to address these questions themselves. Such action is necessary to ensure
consumer safety and make certain that products and businesses can enter the
CBD industry on solid legal footing.
The United States' eighty-year-long prohibition on hemp cultivation1 has
come to an end. On December 20, 2018, President Trump signed into law the
Agriculture Improvement Act, most commonly known as the 2018 Farm Bill.2
Among the many provisions altering agriculture and nutrition policy within the
$867 billion package deal' are several that work together to legalize hemp and
sketch out a regulatory scheme for the crop's commercial production.4 With the
* © 2020 Shannon Smith.
1. Congress effectively outlawed the production and sale of both hemp and marijuana in 1937
with the Marihuana Tax Act. ROBERT DEITCH, HEMP-AMERICAN HISTORY REVISITED 150-51
(2003); David R. Katner, Up in Smoke: Removing Marijuana from Schedule I, 27 B.U. PUB. INT. L.J. 167,
177 (2018); see Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, Pub. L. No. 75-238, ch. 553, 50 Stat. 551 (repealed 1970).
2. Actions Overview H.R.2-Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, CONGRESS.GOV,
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2/actions [https://perma.cc/W4E5-4PAV];
see Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, Pub. L. No. 115-334, 132 Stat. 4490 (2018).
3. MARK A. MCMINIMY, CONG. RESEARCH SERV., R45275, THE HOUSE AND SENATE 2018
FARM BILLS (H.R. 2): A SIDE-BY-SIDE COMPARISON WITH CURRENT LAW 1 (2018)
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45275.pdf [https://perma.cc/UX7X-YVGS].
4. See Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, Pub. L. No. 115-334, §§ 10113-10114, 12619, 132
Stat. 4490, 4908-14, 5018. Other sections of the 2018 Farm Bill, which are not discussed in this piece,](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/addendum98&div=4&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Hemp on the Horizon: The 2018 Farm Bill and the Future of CBD
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