MJBizMag February 2022 - 34

LIQUID
GOLD?
Delta-8 Debate
When the 2018 Farm Bill legalized commercial hemp production,
it gave rise to an unlikely intoxicant
By Omar Sacirbey
W
hen Harold Jarboe told his
partners at Columbia River
Cannabis in 2014 that he was
leaving the licensed Washington state
marijuana company to grow hemp in
Tennessee, they thought he was crazy.
" They thought I'd lost my mind, "
Jarboe recalled. And for a while, it
seemed as if they were right.
Jarboe launched Tennessee
Homegrown in 2016 and toiled to build
it into a well-respected manufacturer
of hemp-derived CBD products.
He invested in premium genetics,
operated leanly and, most importantly,
tested his products at a third-party lab
before sending them to retailers. The
company was profitable but struggling
to survive.
Then, in early 2020, retailers started
asking for delta-8 THC.
Jarboe knew D-8 occurred naturally
in cannabis in miniscule amounts. But
the plant did not produce enough D-8
for an economically feasible harvest, so
the requests caught him by surprise.
" No one in the industry saw this
coming 2½ years ago, " Jarboe told
MJBizMagazine. " Labs didn't see it.
Processors didn't see it. Store owners
didn't see it. "
With his interest piqued by the
requests, Jarboe researched and found
that Israeli cannabis scientist Raphael
Mechoulam had written in 2005 about
converting CBD isolate and distillate
into delta-8 THC. At the time, both
hemp derivatives were extremely
34 February 2022 | MJBizMagazine
Extraction companies
started converting
CBD to delta-8 THC
after passage of the
2018 U.S. Farm Bill.
Photo courtesy
Tennessee Homegrown
expensive, making the conversion to
D-8 commercially unfeasible.
Loophole-Turned-Dam Break
That changed dramatically with the
passage of the 2018 U.S. Farm Bill,
which pulled the rug from underneath
CBD prices.
When Congress passed the Farm
Bill, hemp cultivators and processors
were sitting on loads of CBD oil that,
until then, was hard to move in a
marketplace limited by lack of federal
clarity on CBD. The new regulations
undammed that supply, with CBD
distillate unleashed along with a new
wave of entrepreneurs looking to enter
the industry.
Jarboe said CBD prices dropped from
$25,000 per kilogram to as little as $500
after the Farm Bill's passage. Suddenly,
converting CBD into delta-8 THC was
economically feasible.
" One of the reasons this didn't
happen earlier is because anytime
you have to do a conversion, it's an
added expense. When CBD prices
went through the floor, this raw
material became really cheap, " Jarboe
explained. " Previously, the barrier to
doing this had been cost. And now that
cost barrier was gone. "
In its effort to legalize and regulate
hemp-derived CBD, the 2018 Farm Bill
stated that any cannabinoid derived
from hemp-defined as cannabis
containing less than 0.3% delta-9
THC-was a legal product.
Yet by specifying delta-9, the
bill's authors unwittingly left other
cannabinoids outside the realm of
regulation.
MJBizMag February 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of MJBizMag February 2022
