Mitch McConnell: Drug Warrior, CBD Champion?
Yesterday, the Senate passed a version of the 2018 Farm Bill that would legalize so-called “industrial hemp” – legislation that has long been a pet project of one of the most powerful men in America, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). His office immediately issued a self-congratulatory press release about the sanctity of the American farmer and the enormous economic opportunity that will soon be available to former tobacco growers in his home state of Kentucky. These are the talking points McConnell has been pushing since the beginning of the year: that hemp is “a completely different plant than its illicit cousin,” marijuana, and that Americans are clamoring for more hemp products, spending $820 million last year on “everything from clothing to auto parts,” mostly made out of hemp grown overseas.
But hemp and marijuana are not actually different plants, and some experts say that McConnell’s desire to legalize hemp is not really about hippie rope necklaces and home insulation. It’s about a drug – a compound with such immense medical potential that the FDA just approved a pharmaceutical-grade version for children suffering from intractable seizures. We are talking, of course, about cannabidiol, or CBD.
Ever since Sanjay Gupta showcased the healing powers of CBD in his August 2013 CNN special Weed, America has been obsessed with the stuff. For the uninitiated, CBD is a cannabis compound that doesn’t really get you “high,” as THC does. Instead, CBD has a calming, anti-inflammatory effect that advocates and salespeople claim can do everything from reduce anxiety to kill cancer cells. At health food stores and marijuana dispensaries across the country, you can now find CBD lotions and CBD capsules and CBD beard balms and, yes, even smokeable cannabis that is high in CBD.
But CBD’s legality is complicated, to say the least. Without getting into the mind-numbing specifics, let’s just say that reasonable people disagree about whether it is possible for any CBD to be legal, and shops selling CBD products in states like Indiana and Tennessee have been raided by local law enforcement. So in order for mainstream retailers to feel comfortable carrying CBD products and Kentucky’s farmers to subsequently cash in on the CBD craze, McConnell put together legislation making it official. Though he’s focused his hemp legalization rhetoric on helping farmers and bland-sounding industrial products, his true intentions became abundantly clear about two weeks ago, when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) proposed an amendment that would exclude CBD and other major compounds (called cannabinoids) from the definition of legal hemp.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/mitch-mcconnell-drug-warrior-cbd-champion-667089/
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Having said that, I support the legalization of hemp for industrial purposes. It simply makes sense to use a plant that can have many uses and can be grown almost anywhere. Hate to admit it, but I'm with Mithch on that aspect, assuming he doesn't have some other devious reason for doing this, which seems pretty likely.
As far as CBD, I suspect it has some medical uses, but those kinds of things seldom live up to the hype from the snake oil sellers.
I do certainly support real medical testing and investigation, though.