Honeysuckle Magazine published my article on the early history of the drug war in the media under their “Honeysuckle Magazine’s Honeypot” imprint.
Tag: Cannabis
Charlotte Figi, Young Activist Who Inspired A CBD Movement, Dies After Viral Infection
Posted in Journalism, and Ministry of Hemp
Charlotte Figi, a girl who helped inspire a movement for access to the healing powers of CBD and cannabis, has died after an illness resembling COVID-19. She was just 13 years old.
Reports of Figi’s death first appeared online on April 7. According to a Facebook post by the family, Figi died of respiratory failure and cardiac arrest after an extremely severe seizure, likely brought on by illness. Her entire family were sick with a severe illness resembling COVID-19 for a month prior.
Figi suffered from Dravet syndrome, a rare and severe form of epilepsy that begins in the first year of life. People with Dravet syndrome suffer frequent, intense, prolonged seizures and the condition resists conventional forms of epilepsy treatment. Remarkably, cannabidiol, a natural compound found in cannabis that’s better known as CBD, brought relief from the hours-long seizures she often suffered, reducing their length and frequency.
I updated my popular Ministry of Hemp article on how CBD can help alleviate symptoms of anxiety with some new research from 2020.
Even as CBD’s popularity grows, so does confusion about its legal status and the Food and Drug Administration’s handling of CBD. In reality, the FDA currently does not regulate CBD.
In December, the FDA issued a “consumer update” about the safety CBD. The administration also sent 15 warning letters to CBD brands around the same time. This only added to the tension and confusion. Is CBD safe? Is it legal?
My article on the “felony ban” in the law that legalized hemp in the United States was published in issue 7 of Hemp Magazine.
The felony ban in the 2018 Farm Bill perpetuates the racism of the War On Drugs in the new legal hemp industry. Under the law, many people with drug felonies are banned from being a producer in the hemp industry. At least one state even bans people with drug misdemeanors.
Hemp Growing Licenses Up In 2019, But How Much Hemp Really Grew?
Posted in Journalism, and Ministry of Hemp
A look at the total number of hemp growing licenses issued this year gives us an important glimpse into the rapidly growing hemp industry.
More people than ever are interested in growing hemp now that the crop is legal. An amendment to the 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp after decades of prohibition. Even though the Department of Agriculture didn’t issue formal hemp growing guidelines until late October, interest in the crop is already booming.
According to a report by Vote Hemp, U.S. states issued 16,877 hemp growing licenses in 2019, across 34 states, for a total of 511,442 licensed acres. From these numbers, we can learn a lot about the state of hemp in America, and what’s going right or wrong.