The Nickel Report

Last December, we reported that President Trump signed into law the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (the 2018 Farm Bill). Since then, federal and state governments have rushed to implement the new law and state analogs in time for the 2020 growing season. As we have seen with the development of complex new regulatory schemes in other industries, regulatory uncertainty and opportunities abound.

Industrial hemp has officially returned as a legal agricultural commodity in the United States.  On December 20, President Trump signed into law the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, otherwise known as the 2018 Farm Bill. See PL 115-334, December 20, 2018, 132 Stat 4490. The 2018 Farm Bill re-legalizes the production of hemp after the crop was banned for more than eighty years under federal law.  Hemp is a “cousin” of marijuana; both are varieties of the Cannabis sativa L. plant, but hemp does not have the psychoactive properties of marijuana.  Hemp is one of the oldest cultivated industrial crops in the nation.  It was grown as early as the 1600s until the mid-1930s when state and federal laws effectively ended the legal production, sales and use of the cannabis plant.  The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (CSA) officially categorized “marihuana” as a Schedule I controlled substance, which was defined to include “all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa L.,” such as hemp.