Opinion: ‘Intoxicating Hemp’ Loophole Threatens Marijuana Safety in California

The language in farm bill has been interpreted to mean that any hemp-derived product with less than 0.3% THC in its final form is legal. Make a 70-gram brownie out of hemp containing just under 0.3% THC, and you get 21 times more THC than you can get in California’s regulated cannabis market. 
Furthermore, with some chemistry, innovative hemp manufacturers can create an alphabet soup of chemically synthesized cannabinoids that can get you high, like delta-8 THC, THC-P, and THC-O. The Drug Enforcement Administration has pushed back and classified two such compounds as dangerous Schedule I substances. Still, the regulations on synthetic cannabinoids made from compounds that naturally occur in hemp remain overwhelmingly unenforced.