Q&A on the DEA IFR for Hemp - Q&A #6
On August 21, 2020, the Drug Enforcement Agency promulgated a new Interim Final Rule (IFR) that threatens the burgeoning hemp industry in the United States. I previously published an article about the IFR here, and you can read the full IFR here. To help breakdown some of the more pressing issues in the IFR, I published a fifteen part Q&A you can read here. Question #6 is below.
6. Can CBD be produced without the delta-9 THC level of in-process materials temporarily exceeding 0.3%?
Not with currently technology and currently available genetic strains. Currently available strains of hemp that produce CBD in sufficiently high levels to make extraction and refinement economically feasible also express THC. Generally, the higher the CBD content, the higher the THC content. While not a one-to-one relationship, available strains of THC-free hemp plants simply don’t have enough CBD to make refinement economically feasible.
It is important to recognize that extraction processes to produce CBD do not create new or additional THC, and they do not increase the total amount of THC in the material being processed. The extraction and refinement processes simply remove unwanted parts of the plant, such as bulky plant structure and materials like chlorophyll and wax during processing. As these unwanted parts of the plant are removed, the remaining parts (like CBD and THC) constitute a higher percentage of the remaining material. Unfortunately, current technology does not allow immediate removal and destruction of THC. It is not that simple. Instead, the production of CBD involves many stages of processing the hemp to separate and remove unwanted materials. At various stages of this process of repeated extraction, separation and concentration, the cannabinoids are concentrated and the delta-9 THC concentration exceeds 0.3% on a w/w basis notwithstanding the fact that the delta-9 THC level in the initial source hemp material was at or lower than 0.3% THC.
Accordingly, producing hemp extracts necessarily involves dealing with and managing THC levels.