In Colorado, Hemp Growers Look to the Cannabis Market for Relief Ahead of the Switch to New USDA Rules

This summer, when Colorado starts allowing hemp businesses to sell products into the licensed medical and adult-use cannabis market, Andrew Brown plans to leverage the new opportunity for his companies, Mata Leao Farms and Gunbarrel Organic Extractions, a vertically integrated hemp enterprise in the southern edge of the state. He says the new move isn’t a game-changer, necessarily, but it does go a long way in leveling a playing field that so far remains uneven in the U.S. 

Colorado is joining a small regulatory tilt toward lifting up a hemp industry left reeling from oversupply and the forced plowing of hot crops last fall. (Illinois also allows hemp growers to sell products, including biomass and extracted cannabinoids, into the state-licensed cannabis market).

For Brown, the argument is simple: The market is seeing great demand for CBD products, and the licensed medical and adult-use dispensaries offers a degree of regulatory oversight that the FDA has thus far been unwilling to extend to hemp businesses working in the cannabinoid space. Even on the USDA side of the hemp industry, final regulations remain in flux until a more formal document is released later this year. (The USDA’s interim final rule has been picked up by many states this year, but some, like Colorado, will continue to operate under looser 2014 Farm Bill regulations.)

The cannabis market offers rigorous testing standards to the benefit of both consumers and producers. 
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