Cannabis is a genus of flowering plant. Cannabis has hundreds of species or strains. Some cannabis plants are classified as marijuana, which are drug varieties. Some cannabis plants are classified as hemp, which are not drug varieties.
How do you know if it’s marijuana or hemp? Botanically, marijuana plants contain greater than .3% Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Delta-9-THC), the chemical, or cannabinoid, in the plant that makes users high. Hemp contains less than .3% Delta-9-THC. Marijuana plants (and its derivative Delta-9-THC products such as vapes, dabs, and edibles) are legal for recreational use in 25 states. Hemp plants, however, are legal in ALL 50 states under the Farm Act of 2018, because they contain very little Delta-9-THC and are considered an industrial plant.
Unfortunately, the Farm Act accidentally legalized THC nationwide. The authors left out a very important rule you can’t make psychoactive products or THC isomers out of hemp. You see, marijuana and hemp plants also contain another chemical called cannabidiol (CBD), which on its own doesn’t make you high. But in a lab, you can take hemp (legal), extract the CBD, and run it through a process called isomerization (loophole). If you close a carbon chain and move a double bind in CBD, you can convert it to Delta-8-THC.
Check out our library of educational parent sheets.
Feel free to print, copy, share, or otherwise distribute these in any way!