Photo courtesy of Higher Love
Higher Love - Houghton, Michigan
Higher Love's Houghton, Michigan location
With HR 5371 signed by President Trump to end the recent federal government shutdown, a nationwide ban of hemp-based consumer products is slated to go into effect next at the end of this year. The U.S. Hemp Roundtable predicts that 95% of the $28.4 billion hemp industry could be in jeopardy along with hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions in taxpayer revenue.
Hemp, although extracted from the cannabis plant, only contains trace amounts of THC, the psychoactive component in cannabis. However, within the 2018 Farm Bill that legalized U.S. cultivation of hemp was a loophole that involved its minimal THC quantities. Despite the “intoxicating” effects of hemp being arbitrary, this loophole is now being exploited by Republicans like Mitch McConnell to ban hemp-derived products like Delta-8 THC.
Wisconsin alone is home to more than 400 hemp growers who could face dire consequences if state industry safeguards are not created within the next year. But what is even more ambiguous is what things will look like in states that have already fully legalized and decriminalized cannabis—Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota fall into this category.
Getting Higher Love
In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Joni Moore owns Higher Love, a company operating 11 dispensaries across the UP. To Moore, hemp and cannabis are medicines regardless of how they are used. “Everyone is using it for medicinal purposes whether they recognize it or not,” she believes. “As a botanist and herbalist, that’s how I view the attraction of humans to this amazing plant.”
Moore points out that the cannabis plant has been traded around the world for thousands of years. “People recognized long, long ago all the beneficial uses. They realized it could be used not only medicinally but for fiber, for food, for oil and all these things,” Moore says.
Unfortunately, the federal ban on hemp could mean that dispensaries may be forced to discontinue many products like gummies, vapes and tinctures on grounds that they exceed the legal limit for THC. Moore continues, “We want to provide people with quality medicine, and if people are gravitating towards hemp, we are ready to move into Wisconsin with organic hemp. But now that they’ve introduced this idea that they’re going to ban hemp, we have to wait and see what’s going to happen.”
Staying the Course
In Michigan specifically, a 24% wholesale tax has recently been imposed on cannabis retailers in order to fund statewide road maintenance, beginning January 1. Because of this tax, customers could potentially gravitate towards hemp instead of cannabis or have to settle for lesser-quality cannabis. “There are already companies going out of business because they can’t make it,” Moore laments.
Despite such concerns, Moore contends that Higher Love, like other dispensaries, are going to stay the course. “We’re looking into diversifying into non-cannabis items,” she mentions. “For example, we’ve filled our stores with lifestyle products like hippie clothes, posters, candles, incense and accessories. We may go into other states with those products as well.”
There is, however, also talk of federal lawmakers soon rescheduling cannabis. “The industry is always changing,” Moore notes.
