A hemp farmer in Minnesota was recently arrested and charged with two felonies and one gross misdemeanor for allegedly growing hemp that was over the legal limit for THC, according to a report from Twin Cities Pioneer Press. The farmer’s name is Luis Hummel, and he runs the 5th Sun Gardens Hemp Farm in Lanesboro, Minnesota.
Law enforcement initiated a traffic stop back on March 15th, 2019. A county sheriff’s deputy seized the hemp-derived products after they were eventually found in a vehicle, and the driver said the products had come from Hummel’s farm. The criminal complaint outlined in the report from Twin Cities Pioneer Press states that the driver told the deputy that the products were illegal. There is no indication as to why the driver offered up this information.
Hummel was then charged with drug sales and possession. Police say the THC count in the hemp products is ten times more than the legal limit for hemp sales in the state, after tests were done on the products. Hummel is currently in the process of suing the state of Minnesota over a cease and desist order that he received on May 1st, 2019. The order informed Hummel that he was being removed from the state’s legal hemp program, and that his license to participate in the program would be suspended for one year. Additionally, Hummel was ordered to destroy the entire crop and to not grow any more at this time.
The complaint also alleges that Hummel intended to “entice the buyer” by making his hemp products appear to be more like that of cannabis products. In the lawsuit, Hummel contends that the driver of the initial traffic stop was not arrested or charged with anything themselves, and that the cease and desist letter was premature because there hadn’t been any tests done on the hemp products when the letter was sent out. Hummel’s lawsuit says that the letter and the order to destroy his entire hemp crop violated his due process rights. Hummel estimated that his farm was worth about $3.5 million before the letter was sent out.
Paul Johnson, who is the President of the Minnesota Hemp Farmers and Manufacturers Association, agrees with Hummel’s arguments, and said that the hemp in question was under the legal limit of 0.03% THC at the time it was tested by law enforcement. “My concern is that again, it shows how the regulation is not contemporaneous with what is really happening,” Johnson said.
The federal government completely ignored the Necessary and Proper Clause when they defined marijuana in a way that adumbrated its actual meaning. They completely ignored the 10th Amendment when they defined hemp as a type of cannabis. They set up farmers to fail when they made the criteria of 0.3% THC to be applied to a field of plants. The plants get destroyed, the growing season is forfeited, the bills don’t get paid, the farm gets foreclosed, then sold at auction, for 0.4% THC in a crop of spindly cannabis plants. If the first 0.3% THC is descheduled, then how can the next 0.1% THC be in Schedule 1 when other drugs with plenty of THC are in Schedule 3? It is only because of the stubborn existence of untenable laws.
The government needs to do away with the misguided marihuana/hemp designations of cannabis, and just return control of cannabis to the states, or to the people, like the 10th Amendment says. The synthetic THC should be prohibited. THC from cannabis should be descheduled, and the % THC content of cannabis products should be labeled so consumers can make informed choices. A simple definition of marijuana that upholds our Constitution, like this, could do these things if people demand it:
The term “marijuana” means all parts of the smoke produced by the combustion of the plant Cannabis sativa L. which is, as are the viable seeds of such plant, prohibited to be grown by or sold by any publicly traded corporation or subsidiary company, and such smoke is prohibited to be inhaled by any child or by any person bearing any firearm, as is the intake of any part or any product of such plant containing more than 0.3% THC by weight unless prescribed to such child by an authorized medical practitioner.