The Farm Bill… CLR Has A Quick Chat With Joshua Horn, Fox Rothschild

Joshua unsurprisingly calls the legislation a “game changer”

But why?

In one fell swoop he notes the US has brought to life a whole new sector of the economy and as well as the re-birth of industrial hemp it’s the process of  regulation that can now be applied to CBD that’s the real “game changer” here.

In essence, he explains, the bill sub- contracts the business of running hemp to the Agricultural Departments of each state. Departments have 60 days to start getting pilot programs into play, although in reality this will be a somewhat slower process if we look at the past experience of states that have regulated  medical and adult use.

This process will mean that already regulated states may have “competing” bodies regulating aspects of  CBD and hemp although Joshua notes that process and time will manage those issues with, yes, a few hiccups but nothing that seems overly concerning at the moment.

The huge opportunity in the growth of a federally regulated CBD industry managed by the states will , Joshua notes, start to apply pressure on the white elephant in the room.

Banking. 

For those of you who follow the minutiae of  proposed bills you’ll have seen the recent attempts by Cory Gardner to R-Colorado to attach an amendment to the proposed First Step Act to remove the threat of federal prosecution in states where cannabis is legal and lift restrictions on federally insured banks, which are currently barred from working with marijuana businesses.

But Gardner and other senators hoping to offer amendments of their own were blocked by a procedural maneuver from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

Gardner then sought unanimous consent for his amendment and was blocked by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who called the idea a “back door to legalization.” (Source: https://www.denverpost.com/2018/12/18/cory-gardner-marijuana-amendment-fails/)

And yes we’re sure it hasn’t bypassed you all why we highlighted a certain name above.

Here we have the leading proponent of hemp, the Senator from Kentucky, who knows that his work on this legislation will open the banking question doing his utmost to block work by Gardner trying to achieve something similar using another path.

And why ?

As Joshua highlights banks now involved in a federally regulated CBD industry derived through hemp will now be able to work with a plethora of new clients and many of those clients will be companies already operating in regulated medical & adult use states . Inevitably this will apply pressures that will call for solutions so those clients can be serviced appropriately.

Yes there will be plenty of discussion moving forward.. who wants to talk NIMBY or zoning restrictions, managing state vs federal, how companies operate across jurisdictions. The list is endless.

But in the end this strike of the pen is the beginning of the end of cannabis prohibition in the US. Hemp and the Farm Bill 2018 creates a whole new paradigm for the cannabis sector in the US in 2019.

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