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Hemp growers urge lawmakers to fix regulations instead of ending industry
A pair of Illinois hemp growers say legislation included in the Senate bill to reopen the federal government would erase a multi-billion-dollar industry.
“If they sign that bill into law, they’ll have outlawed everything in my shop.”
Stacy McCaskill founded Hempstock Pharms in Woodstock in 2019 and says the bill’s limits of .4 milligrams of THC per package are too restrictive.
“That’s an impossible limit.” She says, “Our best-selling product, our joint and muscle salve, because we use that full spectrum extract, it’s making joint muscle salve illegal.”
Mason Lopez, who’s owned and operated Sun Drenched Farm in Sheffield since 2022, tells Brownfield…
“All CBD hemp comes with trace amounts of THC, so everything we do would be eliminated.” He says, “The patients that have relied on full-spectrum products from the hemp market are not going to be able to find them in the regulated cannabis market because it’s just not a high enough revenue earner.”
AUDIO: Mason Lopez – Sun Drenched Farms
McCaskill says instead of destroying the industry, lawmakers should work towards common-sense regulations.
“We want 21 plus; we want potency and purity tested.” She says, “I mean, that’s what a good actor does. All we’re asking is please, please, let’s fix what’s broken, not burn down what’s working.”
Lopez agrees and says, “It’s a shame that they’re going to take away access to full-spectrum CBD, which many people are using as medicine.”
McCaskill says the move will likely lead to a black market for hemp-derived products.
“I even had a customer come in yesterday, and she said, ‘You know, I’ll commit to buying from you until you hang a closed sign on your door,’ she goes. ‘But after you close, I’m gonna have to go back to the street. I’m gonna have to go back to the illicit market because they don’t make what I need in the dispensary, and it’s too expensive.’”
Although the legislation wouldn’t take effect until a year after being signed into law, both farmers say they’re not optimistic.
“The biggest hope that I have is that maybe there’s an avenue for current hemp operators to grandfather into the regulated cannabis market,” says Lopez. “Besides that, I’m not too optimistic that language will change over the next year as far as operating in the hemp space.”
Proponents of the legislation say it closes an unintended loophole in the 2018 farm bill and returns the focus to industrial hemp fiber and grain. McCaskill tells Brownfield…
“In the United States, we just never got the support that that industry needed to build out the fiber and seed processing infrastructure.” She says, “So, the only real opportunity for farmers in the United States was for growing cannabinoids.”
If passed by the House, the legislation would go to the President to be signed into law.
AUDIO: Stacy McCaskill – Hempstock Pharms
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That is a slap in the face again to us people that suffer from chronic pain. I use that compound on my knees, and it helps tremendously. I have tried every other special compound that big pharma has to offer and the ingredients are toxic and they don’t even work on my pain whatsoever. I do not get a buzz from the compound they sell at Hempstock Farm, far from it actually! So this is very offensive to me that they want to mess with a good product.
I don’t think they understand how much this helps people, veterans, pts for any body.
You might have to get together and take a trip to DC.