Industrial Hemp, Deception, and the Wild West

As my coauthors were doing the industrial hemp expo tour to promote our book Farming Industrial Hemp Not Your Daddy's Tobacco before the pandemic, they heard many stories about how products from America's newest agricultural crop had helped them heal health conditions where the doctors told them there was no hope for them.

Yet, we heard other stories of what happens when growing practices are not tightly regulated. One gentleman took marijuana to alleviate his health condition. Instead, he has been living not only with his own condition, but also with symptoms caused by mold in the marijuana product he took. This was the true motivation for writing our book.

The results: we influenced Congress to instill safe growing practices for industrial hemp and a fledgling industry toward credibility and safety.

The Beginnings of the Industrial Hemp Industry

Industrial hemp is a cousin to marijuana. Basically, marijuana has a higher amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) than industrial hemp, which is higher in cannabidiol (CBD). Extract CBD from the plant, and people can experience relief without that "high" feeling. According to Harvard Health Publishing, CBD has been found to be helpful in conditions such as chronic pain, anxiety, and arthritis. CBD has been found to be especially helpful for epilepsy, and is effective when traditional medications fail to help quell epileptic fits.

When we heard the Virginian government was going to open up its study of industrial hemp to organizations other than universities, my coauthors and I jumped on board with both feet. We know someone who had been suffering with chronic pain for decades. Ibuprofen had affected his vision, so this was no longer an option. (Ibuprofen-based OTC medications have been known to cause blindness.) He had an allergic reaction, a dangerous rash, to Tylenol. Aspirin-based products aggravates his Crohn's Disease. He did not want to become addicted to prescription pain medication. Industrial hemp, high in CBD and low in THC, was the path to a better life for him, and we were determined to find out the healing powers the plant possesses.

Personally, I use CBD every day to control pain due to my carpal tunnel. My husband, the person who helped inspire our book, is the one who suffers from chronic pain and Crohn's Disease. My son also has Crohn's disease. We take the product for health purposes. We do not want to take toxic, pesticide-ridden CBD extract or the hemp "flower" (what they call the buds of the plant). We want to take the product knowing that it will influence our health in a positive way, minus all the side effects from traditional medications.

My coauthors and I spent years communicating with the professors at the universities about their results from their agricultural studies. Back then, the universities studied what would happen to the plant if they simply allowed it to grow in our Southern ground full of clay or altered growing conditions. We too, conducted our own studies and found through our research facts about the plant that warranted attention.

In the beginning, it was like the Wild West in a vast sea of lies and misinformation.

In 2018, when the FDA came out with the new Farm Bill including industrial hemp, the first companies began producing products from America's first crops. In addition, the U. S. government came out with its own guidelines about testing and growing practices.

When we learned everything there was to know about the plant, we realized that companies and the U. S. government were putting out patently false information, some based on deception, and some based on lack of experience with industrial hemp. The latter is forgivable. The former, unforgivable.

And it could become dangerous to the American public.

We became alarmed when we began hearing what companies were putting out to the public as part of their marketing schemes. There was one show that was partly responsible for compelling us into action. It featured a man who wore a lab coat to resemble a scientist, but clearly, a real scientist would not make the claims he made. He asserted that the extraction process purifies the CBD, and all the pesticides and molds and bacteria disappear.

When we conducted the research for our book on all of the bugs, microbes, and molds that could affect the plant, we could spot the snake oil salesman in what the man on the program was stating straightaway. If a plant is improperly dried, it could harbor mold and other harmful spores. If the CBD extraction company processed the moldy plants, mold winds up in the final product. If hemp is grown with chemical pesticides, the final product will be high in pesticides. (I'll explain in a bit why this point is important.) The CBD extraction machines are costly, but they are not magical alchemy machines. It's like saying, when we put lead into the machine, gold comes out.

We were simply dumbfounded that hogwash like this could show up on channels people normally trust and rely upon to provide them with quality information. We were not only angered, we were outraged. How long would it take for these companies to put out products that could not only wreck an entire fledgling industry but also harm the public?

Moreover, we read the government's initial instructions on growing practices, and we were equally horrified. In a pamphlet to growers (for which we hold a license in Virginia), the instructions were to plant industrial hemp like corn right in tobacco fields and dry it like tobacco.

Tobacco in itself might not be an exceptionally toxic plant, but it's hard on the soil. It extracts a lot of nutrients from the dirt. Moreover, the growing practices it takes to farm the plant to keep it safe from cutworms and other pests is highly toxic. It often contains mold due to the drying practices, leaving it on the ground and out in the sun. The ground then contains not only the toxic pesticides, but it also contains the nicotine from the parts of the plants that are churned back into the ground.

Grow hemp in old tobacco fields and then allow it to dry on the ground just like tobacco? We think not.

Think of industrial hemp as the sponge of the plant world. It was planted in Chernobyl, Russia to help detoxify the ground of the site of the nuclear disaster. It takes up all the toxins and holds them in the plant. It's like a purifier, another one of its real properties.

This means if you grow the plant with pesticides, the plant will absorb the pesticides. If you grow the plant in toxic ground, the conditions tobacco creates when grown and harvested, it will suck up all those toxins. (We quoted the research in our book.) When you smoke industrial hemp, then, you will be smoking toxins, nicotine, and possibly some mold that may have formed after leaving it on the ground.

We knew this due to our research. If people sought to take industrial hemp for health conditions, we felt it was unfair to the public to purchase product that could be potentially harmful and not tell them about it. The plant can be wonderful to alleviate health concerns if grown in the right conditions. It makes a big difference with this plant. Yet, the snake oil claims were common practice from most companies. We had to alert the public, and fast, of the possible dangers of hemp grown and cured in unsafe conditions.

How Farming Industrial Hemp Influenced Growing Practices, the Industrial Hemp Industry, and Quelled the Wild West

When our book premiered at the Tennessee Industrial Hemp Expo in 2018, the book sold out of the first printing. My authors caused quite a stir in the industry and were invited back to speak about their findings at other expos across the world. They have consulted farms in China and Africa.

When we offered the science to back our claims in our book, the claims no one else was making, we also offered solutions to the baby industry that encouraged companies to grow their safest products and offer the proof.

We shared our book with the CEOs of top industrial hemp companies, state and federal agencies, congressmen and women, and the United States President.

Afterward, everyone else was beginning to say what we were saying. As a result of our influence, companies producing CBD products often offer lab results of their products to the public to prove their products' safety and efficacy.

Most of all, the government agencies altered their advice for growing practices and made our recommendations into law. Now, nine out of the ten approved pesticides the U. S. government recommends for industrial hemp are biopesticides, natural products such as neem oil, which happens to be one of the natural pesticides we recommended in our book.

At its time of publication, Farming Industrial Hemp was the only book focused on growing safe hemp and questioned a lot of the misinformation running rampant during the first year of legalization. Now, product safety is built into growing and production.

The last item on my list is the award the book won only three months after its publication. While this was gratifying in so many ways, it pales in comparison when considering the potential health problems that could have existed if it weren't for our solitary voice taking a look at the science and then writing the truth.

Our Peace of Mind

Now, my family can take industrial hemp products with peace of mind. We buy from companies who are willing to provide us with lab results on the safety and CBD content in their products. The worry of consuming pesticides is no longer an issue. A lot of the first season hemp grown in tobacco fields was never sold here in Virginia. Devastating for the farmers, but better for the American public. We know because a lot of those growers tried to sell us their crops. Nearly all of them were grown in tobacco fields without first curing the soil of toxicity. (Again, we explain how to do this in our book.)

This is how my job as an author has influenced the American public for the better. We influenced companies and regulatory bodies of the nation to establish this young industry toward safety and prosperity.

Writers can change the thinking of society. We change minds, and we can influence those who make decisions that affect the lives of millions of people.

If you're a writer, keep writing. Writing is so difficult: the constant rejections, the low pay. Our world needs writers and authors to question those who harm society through misinformation and the pursuit of their own greed at the expense of others.