People Keep Stealing Industrial Hemp, Which Will Not Get Them High
They’re in for a major disappointment if they try to smoke it.
Since the legalization of industrial hemp, farmers across the country have eagerly planted the crop.
Industrial hemp has many uses. The seeds can be pressed for oil or just eaten; the stalks can be made into textiles or rope; it even has some potential as a biofuel. Perhaps the most lucrative use is in producing cannabidiol, or CBD, a newly trendy extract from industrial hemp.
But a rash of hemp crop thefts across the country, believe police, have nothing to do with any of that. After all, it takes specialized equipment to turn industrial hemp into fabric or CBD oil. Industrial hemp is a valuable crop, but it’s a lousy target for theft. As a result, many police forces believe their local thieves have been stealing the hemp because they think it’ll get them high. It…won’t. At least, it shouldn’t.
Cannabis thefts have been reported in York, Pennsylvania; Clarksville, Tennessee; Georgia, Vermont; Edgecombe County, North Carolina; and many more.
The cannabis crop, like most other crops, comes in many different strains, or varietals. Many of those are bred to have high levels of THC, the psychoactive compound that gets you high. Industrial hemp is not one of these; legally, industrial hemp is only permitted to have 0.3 percent THC at most. Many industrial hemp crops have no THC, or barely detectable levels.
That’s such a low concentration of THC that it’s effectively useless for finding a high. Smoking legal, approved industrial hemp will absolutely not get you stoned; it will, probably, hurt your throat. And it could be much worse. Though industrial hemp is so new that legislation regarding pesticides has yet to be decided, illegal or semi-illegal pesticide use is common. And smoking or otherwise ingesting a crop that’s been doused with a pesticide could be very dangerous indeed.
Most of the police forces involved have issued announcements that industrial hemp grown in their districts will not get you high, so please stop stealing it (paraphrasing). We’d like to echo that. Also, it’s rude to steal crops.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].People Keep Stealing Industrial Hemp, Which Will Not Get Them High
by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
July 31, 2019
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreShare With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
I do not believe it’s that simple. There are many farmers who have had their crops stolen just post harvest by people who know exactly what they are stealing. It is either being sold on the black market or sold to people who have the ability to process it for CBD and other canibinoids. Either way, it is becoming big and scary business
I guess its better to teach the people on how to grow it for them to just produce it and not steal it anymore