Newly Published U.S. Military Research Demonstrates that Hemp Foods Don’t Contain Significant Amounts of the Drug THC :: News :: Natural and Nutritional Products Industry Center
As part of an initiative to examine the legitimacy of legal arguments by military personnel that fail marijuana drug tests but claim they encountered intoxicating Tetra Hydrocannabinol (THC) via the legal ingestion of hemp products, the U.S. military directed laboratory testing of a wide variety of hemp food and cosmetic products. The findings of the new research, published in the July/August 2008 Journal of Analytical Toxicology, indicate that not only do hemp products in the marketplace not contain hemp at levels that would cause intoxication or failed drug tests, the vast majority of the tests did not detect any THC.While this new data will help government prosecutors in court prove that the defendants obtained THC from marijuana and not hemp, it confounds a decades-long government initiative to prevent commerce of hemp products, and to ban hemp agriculture in the U.S. under the misguided “drug-war” campaign that tried to construe hemp as the same as marijuana.
On February 6, 2004, the Hemp Industries Association won its 2 ½-year old lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The unanimous decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit permanently blocks DEA regulations that attempted to ban nutritious hemp foods such as waffles, breads, cereals, vegetarian burgers, protein powders, non-dairy beverages, salad dressings and nutrition bars. These are the types of products that were analyzed as part of the government research.
Hemp Protein Powder and Shelled Hemp Seed produced and marketed by Manitoba Harvest Hemp Foods & Oils (www.manitobaharvest.com) were among the hemp foods tested and found to have non-detectable levels of THC. “It is frustrating that one agency of the U.S. government continues to wage a war against industrial hemp claiming that its the same as marijuana, and yet at the same time they are doing research demonstrating how it does not contain significant levels of THC and therefore noting that military personnel can’t reasonably claim that hemp foods cause a failed drug test,” says Mike Fata, President and co-founder of Manitoba Harvest.
I used to think it was ironic that the Drug Enforcement Administration is in charge of prohibiting something that is not a drug. Then I remembered that we have a Defense Department that frequently goes on the offense and an Interior Department in charge of the great outdoors.
If there is one upside to high gas prices and the coming of peak oil, it is that the world will be forced to turn to hemp for its fuels and products currently based on petrochemicals.
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