Hey, it's Flora Lixman, and you're listening to Science Friday.

Have you ever been in a gas station and seen CBD gummies with THC in them and thought, wait, is this legal?

If so, you are right to be dazed and confused. These products are on non-dispensary shelves, thanks to chemistry, maybe some botany

confusion, and a weird legal loophole in the 2018 Farm Bill. So that law began regulating so-called

hemp with low THC content, differently from other cannabis. But enter chemistry, people started extracting THC from that

hemp and selling unregulated products that could get you high. Think of the buzzy beves in the

liquor store. Now a bunch of states are working on laws to ban these hemp derived products that

contain even tiny amounts of THC. And a federal law is slated to close this loophole

in November, which would end up possibly snuffing out a multi-billion dollar CBD business.

Okay, if you're confused, don't worry.

Rolling up to sort some of this out is Dr. Cinnamon Bidwell, a clinical psychologist focused on cannabis

at the University of Colorado. She co-directs the CU Change Lab. Hey, Cinnamon. Hi, good to be here.

Did I get that synopsis right? Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. This is confusing,

though, right? Because the law is legislating plants, even though CBD and

THC can be found in hemp, right? Absolutely. And cannabis is, it's a complex plan. We really

have to embrace the complexity here. So the Farm Bill essentially draws a line for a certain type of cannabis that has very,

very low THC. But biologically, from a plant perspective, cannabis itself is all under one type of

plant, right? It just draws a line of, hey, this very specific form of cannabis with very low

THC, which is the psychoactive component, gets to sort of

fall under this special regulatory umbrella. And that's what we're calling hemp, right?

Correct.

So hemp and cannabis, same plant botanically? This is what, you know, everyone is so confused about.

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