U.S. Hemp Roundtable asks senators to expand legal protections to all hemp cannabinoids in Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act

Photo © AdobeStock.com/ lovelyday12

Hemp advocacy group the U.S. Hemp Roundtable (Washington, DC) sent a letter on August 5 to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) asking the lawmakers to consider further changes to their recently introduced Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act (CAOA). The bill, which the senators first released a draft of last year, was officially proposed this July. The bill would remove cannabis from the federal Controlled Substances Act and allow states to create their own cannabis laws. In its letter to the senators, the U.S. Hemp Roundtable reiterates its public comments to the bill’s draft a year ago.

First and foremost, the U.S. Hemp Roundtable states that language in the bill that would require CBD manufacturers to submit New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) notifications for all CBD supplements be changed. The group states that while it appreciates that the bill carves out a regulatory pathway for CBD supplements, hemp-derived CBD should be treated “like any other botanical ingredient, subject to the same regulatory regimes.” In other words, like other botanical ingredients, CBD ingredients should be able to rely on Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) safety conclusions in lieu of NDI notifications.

Moreover, the group reiterates its concerns that the bill only specifically calls for the legality of hemp-derived CBD and not other hemp-derived cannabinoids. It also suggests creating a separate regulatory pathway for non-intoxicating hemp and intoxicating cannabis products.

U.S. Hemp Roundtable also calls the CAOA’s threshold for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in hemp of 0.001% total THC “an arbitrary and unrealistic standard.” States the group: “No full-spectrum or broad-spectrum hemp extract would qualify, and likely most CBD isolates would be challenged to comply, given the limitations of current testing technology. Indeed, this limit would delegate most, if not all, popular non-intoxicating CBD and hemp extract products to the adult-use cannabis market.”