The legislation Congress passed this past week to reopen the government included a provision

banning intoxicating products made out of hemp plant.

Hemp is a type of cannabis, just like marijuana, but has a lower level of the psychoactive

element, THC.

Because of that, hemp hasn't been as strictly regulated as marijuana. Critics say that allows

the manufacture of synthetic THC products that can be more intoxicating the marijuana, but others

warned that the new limits could kill a growing industry and hurt U.S. hemp farmers.

Ali Rogan spoke with Manisha Krishnan, senior culture editor at Wired.

Thank you so much for joining us.

So just to set the record on some terms we're going to be using, there's hemp and then

there's what people call marijuana or weed.

They're both derivations of the same cannabis setiva plant.

But they are regulated differently. Why is that?

So cannabis or weed essentially is federally illegal, and it contains delta nine, which is the

psychoactive ingredient that gets people high. Hemp, on the other hand, comes from the same plant,

but it contains very low levels of

Delta 9. And it was legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill. However, hemp does contain other

psychoactive ingredients, including Delta 8, including THCA. And so what happened when the Farm Bill

was passed was it created this market for Delta

8 products for psychoactive products that were derived from hemp.

And so how does that difference in regulation lead to what critics have called a dangerous

loophole?

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