We heard that Prohibition Creamery had a CBD ice cream flavor, so we knew Ministry of Hemp had to go check it out!

Owner & founder, Laura Aidan, told us about how she discovered CBD and why she decided to make a CBD ice cream! We also got to try the flavor, “Afternoon Delight.”

Spoiler alert: we loved it and it definitely had us feeling relaxed after! If you are in or visiting Austin, check out Prohibition Creamery!

Visit Prohibition Creamery

Prohibition Creamery
1407 E 7th St
Austin, TX 78702

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In episode 64 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, our host Matt is joined by the whole Ministry of Hemp crew: Editor in Chief Kit O’Connell, Brand Manager Drew De Los Santos, and Videographer Desiree Kane to discuss cannabis on the election 2020 ballot. While the American public may be split on somethings, cannabis legislation is not one of them.

For more on the subject, Kit’s article on hemp after election 2020, too.

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Cannabis legalization & hemp after the election: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 64 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, “Cannabis legalization & hemp after election 2020”:

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum and this is the Ministry of Hemp podcast brought to you by ministryofhemp.com America’s leading advocate for hemp and Hemp education.

Matt Baum:
Hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving holiday and I know ours was a little strange in the Baum house because of COVID and whatnot. We didn’t really get to hang out with the family, but we still made the best of it and it went really well, but it felt like a nice relaxing end to a pretty stressful month and the main stress of this month yes, definitely COVID but there was also an election. So today we’re going to talk about the election, but don’t worry. We’re not going to get into the Trump stuff and Biden stuff. Not at all. Today, we are going to talk about cannabis on the ballot.

Matt Baum:
I wanted to give everybody a few weeks to just decompress after how gnarly the whole election process really was before we can talk about this kind of stuff, but it seemed like a really good time to get together with the other Ministry of Hemp guys and just talk through what went down as far as cannabis measures that were on ballots all over the United States. So here is our little Ministry of Hemp round table discussion about cannabis and the 2020 election.

Meet the Ministry of Hemp team

Matt Baum:
I am joined here today by the entire Ministry of Hemp crew, which is awesome because we’ve never done this. We’ve had Drew, Kit and I have done some shows, we’ve had Drew in some shows, but Desiree is here too. Desiree, why don’t we start with you say hi to the kids and tell them what you do for Ministry of Hemp.

Desiree Kane:
My name is Desiree Kane. I’m a Miwok two-spirit that recently moved to the Pacific Northwest in occupied Salish territory. What I deal with Ministry of Hemp is right now, I’m doing the holiday guide with Drew and Kit, where I get to take beautiful pictures of a whole bunch of products that you can come to Ministry of Hemp and see Kit’s input and review and learn some things about CBD comes in so many different forms and you can expect to see my pictures in there. Sometimes I also do educational videos. So you’ll see me making spritzers and also perhaps explaining to you what is CBG or what is CBN.

Matt Baum:
You have the glamorous job. We’re all here rolling around in the muck and editing and you’re making spritzers and making videos.

Desiree Kane:
It’s not awful.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough. That was the most punk rock intro we’re going to hear tonight by the way and I really liked it. Drew introduce yourself again. We know you but you know, just for the kids who are the new listeners.

Drew De Los Santos:
Yeah. My name is Drew and I am the brand manager at Ministry of Hemp, just making sure everything’s flowing and that we keep working with great brands

Matt Baum:
And then kit our editor in chief say, hi.

Kit O’Connell:
Hi everybody this is Kit O’Connell great to be here again.

Matt Baum:
Do you know kit? He’s been with me on a bunch of our Q and A shows. We’re not doing a Q and A show today, but what we are going to do, I don’t know if you pay attention to the news or not. It was a little election recently and it got some coverage and people freaked out about stuff and I know my heart almost stopped a few times and if it wasn’t for CBD, I probably wouldn’t still be here. But luckily I have lots of samples and they got me through that week. We just wanted to let it re-decompress a little bit, maybe except what happened with the election and then we can move forward from there. But we’re not here to talk about that.

Matt Baum:
We’re here to talk about marijuana and Hemp in the 2020 election. Because while we can say that it looks like America is very split. If you look at the election results and how many votes went to Republicans and many went to Democrats. One thing they don’t seem to be split on at all is marijuana and Hemp, which is kind of shocking. It was on a ton of ballots all over the United States and it won pretty big not just that but psychedelics as well in the form of mushrooms seem to win really huge Desiree you just moved to Portland. Tell us what went down in Oregon, which blew my mind by the way.

Cannabis & other drug laws change after election

Desiree Kane:
So Oregon, basically it is now legal or will be by 2023 to have therapeutically administered psilocybin therapy, which psilocybin is also known as magic mushrooms. They also decriminalized low levels of all drugs.

Matt Baum:
So what does that mean? Exactly? Because there are some pundits that freaked out, of course, and they’re like, Oh great, now kids can walk around with heroin. Like what does that exactly mean small amounts of drugs? Or is there a number on anything or-

Desiree Kane:
That’s something that I would have to look into it following that vote. I do know that basically they’re going to approach it as a public health thing and if you have certain types of controlled substances, you’ll be into a therapy program instead of sentenced to the prison industrial complex which creates a whole other set issues that are problematic.

Matt Baum:
It’s also very similar to a lot of programs that are going on in Europe right now, where rather than demonizing addiction, you work with addicts and [crosstalk 00:06:07].

Desiree Kane:
It’s the same thing Portugal has done.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, and it’s super successful and it scares a lot of people here in the United States, but guess what? It works folks, and it’s here because you have voted for it. So what else did we have on the ballot? Anybody let’s try in, let’s talk about this.

Kit O’Connell:
Well, I want it to jump off of what Desiree with the same, because what’s just happened in Oregon. You know we don’t know what’s going to happen at the federal level. Obviously a lot is still to be seen about what’s going to come. But if you look at the platform for president elect Biden, his platform that he ran under actually was quite progressive on the war on drugs and one of the things that he talks about in there is encouraging the people be diverted away from the prisons for possession. So we could see that there actually has been some Republican support for reducing the war on drugs too.

Kit O’Connell:
So they’re seeing as something that has some bipartisan support and there’s even one of the things that we’re seeing that’s interesting is that there’s this growing bipartisan support from the people of the United States, across the political board for cannabis legalization, a majority of people, it’s almost 70%. I think in one of the studies I saw across the political spectrum now support cannabis legalization and that’s really extraordinary. So that includes Democrats, Republicans, young people, old people, people from all backgrounds, races, if you lump them all together and take an average, the vast majority of people support this idea.

Matt Baum:
So real quick, just to spell it out, marijuana specifically cannabis was made legal for medicinal reasons in Mississippi and South Dakota. These are two distinctly red States like South Dakota has legalized medical marijuana and they have a governor that didn’t want people driving Hemp through the state. So the people have definitely spoken there pretty shocking and then voters legalize the possession of marijuana by adults in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota. So they got medical marijuana and recreational marijuana in South Dakota, which I thought for a long time, I’ve been saying for a long time, Nebraska will be the very, very last state to legalize marijuana and it will be after Puerto Rico is a state. So watch for that and now South Dakota has just proved me, right? Because South Dakota they’re very hostile to this stuff, but the voter [crosstalk 00:08:42]-

Kit O’Connell:
Montana?

Matt Baum:
-Yeah, I mean it blows my… Actually Montana we’ll see, from what I understand, that’s going to be on the ballot there soon too. So we’ll see. It’s the people that are coming out and voting for this. We listened to what a lot of officials say and look at laws. They’re trying to put on things to hold cannabis back, hold Hemp back. But then whenever it goes to the ballot, guess what? It gets voted in. The only reason it wasn’t on the ballot in Nebraska it’s because our governor said, there’s a problem with the paperwork. Try again next time and then ran around in circles so they couldn’t catch him because we were basically saying, what is the problem with the paperwork? Tell us they wouldn’t answer until it was too late and so it didn’t make the ballot and just like you said, kit, when polled in Nebraska, 74%, 74% of the population said, yeah I’m fine with it. It does not bother me at all.

Election 2020 shows cannabis popular in ‘red’ states too

Desiree Kane:
There also not a governor that can avoid in States like the Dakotas or any of the bread basket States, the big agriculture industry that comes with it. So the farmer, I think we can expect the farmers to be a little more mobilized around it and that’s why you have governor Noem in North Dakota, doesn’t want it driven through or whatever. But there are Hemp farmers who are being locked out of a crop and at the end of the day, that’s the constituency base that rules those States, right? So in the best interest of the farmers is to get on board and that will inevitably shift the politics of the governorship.

Matt Baum:
Oh definitely, and if you look at that list of States, almost all of them barring New Jersey really are well in Arizona maybe are agricultural States. So this States know where their bread is buttered. Nebraska is one where we have gently said, well we want to look into what it’s like growing Hemp and they’ve been very wishy-washy about it because the farmers want it. But like you said, you have governors who have to run on their constituency and they are terrified that their constituency will look at them and say, “Oh you’re a hippie and you like smoking weed now, got it.” We’re going to vote for this crazy person. That’s going to tell us it’s a sin or whatever. So-

Desiree Kane:
The supreme court recently resolved that issue where the electoral college didn’t have to vote the will of their constituency base. So moving forward, your vote is going to matter in a way that it hasn’t been before really and so it will become increasingly important to vote when you have these opportunities, because it can change American politics if we wanted to, we just have to actually organize around that.

Matt Baum:
Definitely. I also think it’s hilarious that a lot of these States you have very hard line, not just anti-cannabis, but just anti-drugs all across the board. Candidates who now have to look at the people that voted for this and go, “Oh, okay well, I guess that changes things a little bit and maybe I have to loosen up on some ideas of my own.” So-

Drew De Los Santos:
I mean, I think it’s like, it’s become undeniable of the various benefits of legalizing cannabis and legalizing Hemp and making sure that they get those regulations out quickly I think because in Texas, like right when all of the other States legalized cannabis and marijuana, one of the state senators, or state representatives in San Antonio, he put down a bill to legalize it here in Texas stating that, because of Corona virus, there’s a $4.6 billion budget hole that we’re going to have to deal with next year and the years to come. So it’s like, here’s an easy solution that doesn’t involve raising people’s taxes, you know add another revenue stream and it’s like, there’s only so many times that you can ignore that before it’s just like glaringly obvious.

Matt Baum:
It’s funny because we voted for gambling here, but we couldn’t vote for cannabis and I know don’t get me wrong, cannabis has ruined far more lives than gambling has in this country. We all know that to be true. So it’s absolutely ridiculous.

Drew De Los Santos:
Speaking of the records, one thing that was cool that happened in Arizona was as soon as it was voted in one of the district attorney in Arizona’s largest County started dropping the charges for people like immediately. So they immediately started dropping marijuana charges for folks there, [crosstalk 00:13:27]. which I thought was great.

Matt Baum:
That’s even more important. Definitely like, that’s the even larger side of this is when you start legalizing it for adult usage, you have to look at all these ridiculous cases and overcrowded prisons and overcrowded courtrooms and just get rid of this garbage, get rid of it. So we can focus on real issues, real crime, real problems, not the guy that had an ounce in his pocket when he got pulled over for doing five miles over the speed limit or something. So I’m really interested to see where that goes.

Kit O’Connell:
It has to be said too, they’ve done studies now consistently that showing that there’s a racial disparity when it comes to arrests around drugs and one of the problems that we’re seeing is that that racial disparity does not disappear even under most forms of legalization, “legalization.”

Kit O’Connell:
There’s always still ways that you can break the law in a legal state. You could sell weed without a permit or you can have too much of it or all kinds of things can happen and they’re showing that it’s still a disparity that black people and people of color are arrested more even though when they do studies in drug use, it’s the same that white people and people of color use drugs at the same where even white people use them more depending on the drug. So we need to make sure that we’re expunging cases and we’re making sure that there’s an accessible and like a level playing field under whatever we call legalization.

Matt Baum:
Definitely. So what happened in Texas? Tell me Texas people, Drew and Kit are both Texans. What happened? I thought this was supposed to be on the bill. I thought it was supposed to pass. I thought you guys were going to flip blue. You both promised me it was going to happen.

Kit O’Connell:
[inaudible 00:15:15] We always say that We’re going to flip blue.

Drew De Los Santos:
Maybe if it had been on the ballot, we would know but I think it always gets caught up like marijuana legalization bills always get caught up like in the Senate committees or they never leave the committees and I think our governor hasn’t been very willing to sign it, even if it does go through, but maybe Kit you can speak more to that.

Kit O’Connell:
Well, that’s one of the things that we’re seeing is it, we talked about how the people tend to support legalization, but the politicians don’t always. That’s definitely the case here in Texas and Hemp it’s very distinct on the whole. They’ve passed a very pretty broad, you know they nationally legalized Hemp in 2018, but here in Texas, the policy is pretty broad. They did try to ban smoke able Hemp, but even that got overturned by our court and least temporarily people can smoke hemp here again. Yeah so the populace wants it, the politicians are resistant, but Hemp is supported. It’s interesting that we talk about this a lot. There are two forms of the same plant they’re growing in very different ways, but they are at the base the same plant and it’s weird that politicians have accepted that it’s safe. As long as it doesn’t have THC in it. It’s, it’s very arbitrary amount of THC 0.03% is extremely low, so low that it’s even hard for people who are just making CBD products sometimes to keep it below that throughout the entire process.

Cannabis after election 2020

Kit O’Connell:
So we’ve created this arbitrary distinction, and now we’re talking about how we’re going to enforce it, or at least the politicians really want to enforce it. I hope to see that that is breaking slowly there’s talk that we may see a congressional vote on some form of marijuana legalization in 2021. I don’t know if we’ll see enough to get it through both parts of Congress, but we probably will see a vote on it. Biden does seem like he supports medical marijuana and he supports the States, making their decisions on recreational. That’s based on his platform. Obviously you’ve seen presidents change once they actually get into office, but based on his platform, he wants to see less jail time for people for possession in general, he wants to see a medical marijuana nationally passed and he wants the States to make up their mind recreationally. That’s a pretty good if we could get there, that’s pretty good.

Matt Baum:
I mean, we’re almost there 36 States. We have 36 States that have either enacted or voted to enact medical marijuana and then we have 15 States where adult usage is totally fine. So we’re way past halfway there. I can’t do that math but that seems like it’s close to 50, you know?

Kit O’Connell:
We’re even at the point where… One of the things I thought was interesting that started recently was there was some proposal. I saw this in Hemp Industry Daily. So I’ll give them a shout out, that we’re starting to see so many States legalize that theoretically those States could start working together and sort of forming blocks. Like right now we have the Oregon cannabis industry and the Washington cannabis industry and each state is in a silo. But there’s enough neighboring States that have all legalized. They could start actually working together and your dispensary in Portland could be selling the best stuff from Washington state. I’m sure there’s pros and cons of that

Matt Baum:
You got a conference just like college football. [crosstalk 00:18:53] You’ve got conferences, all of a sudden.

Kit O’Connell:
I think there’s a lot of interesting potential. The more that’s starts happening, the less it starts to live viable for the country to keep it illegal at all.

Why cannabis matters to hemp

Matt Baum:
Now I know people that listen to the show and I’ve had a couple of comments come at me whenever I do a podcast where we start talking about marijuana or THC related stuff and they say, I thought this supposed to be a Hemp show. Why are we talking about marijuana? So why are we all sitting here talking about marijuana when we are the Ministry of Hemp? Why is that?

Drew De Los Santos:
Well, I think that Hemp has helped to show an economic opportunity for the plant and it’s just like, there’s so much business that’s it just comes along with opportunity for people and not controlling a plant. Like these things are connected, not controlling business, not controlling what individuals do, when it doesn’t harm anybody else and it hasn’t been proven to harm anybody. Then the other thing about it is that it’s related because people still get arrested for Hemp. Like you were mentioning people can’t drive through South Dakota and people get arrested here in Texas for Hemp, even though it’s legal. So if marijuana was legal, that problem would go away and it would be time that wasn’t wasted money that wasn’t wasted going through this arbitrary legal process.

Matt Baum:
I just totally tricked Drew into saying exactly what I wanted to hear. That was perfect.

Drew De Los Santos:
Hey, that’s my opinion.

Matt Baum:
No, but I don’t disagree at all. I think we’re at a point now in the United States, where as bizarre as this sounds, I would argue that marijuana is probably less regulated, not regulated, but is probably easier to gain legally and work with legally than Hemp is in a lot of States. And that is preposterously stupid. Just inane. If we’re afraid of THC fine, let’s be afraid of THC, but the United States has shown we’re not. We’re not scared of it. When you put on the ballot, we’re going to vote for it. So it’s time to stop pretending like one, there is some issue with 0.03 THC in Hemp that makes it perfectly safe and okay, we can raise that number. We could raise it to 10% and you still wouldn’t even be coming anywhere near the good stuff, if you will. You know what I mean?

Matt Baum:
And it’s so limited right now. I just did a wonderful interview with a woman. That’s going to… I don’t know if it’s going to be next week or the week after that was talking about Hemp plastic and one of the reasons that’s holding things back like Hemp fibers and Hemp plastics is because big business doesn’t know what to do yet. They’re looking at marijuana being legalized and going, well their safe money there and we know we can do that. We can take credit card payments for it now in a lot of States where this has been approved and whatnot. Banking is becoming easier for marijuana than Hemp and that is ridiculous. That makes no sense to me. Does anyone have any thoughts on why we’re still having to talk about this at this point 36 States voted for medical marijuana, 15 it’s totally legal, but Hemp is still having trouble and it was legalized by the farm bill. Why are we still talking about this?

Kit O’Connell:
One problem is just like, we don’t want to get into the details on this show, but there has to so much just like divisiveness and politics, even though sometimes there’s been bills proposed to fix some of the issues with Hemp that’s left behind in the Hemp industry. There just hasn’t been the time or the energy or they’re being distracted by other things. It’s hard to get it on the agenda. Hard to get a lot of things on the agenda and Hemp is included in that list right now unfortunately.

Kit O’Connell:
Even though some people do want to fix it, even Mitch McConnell has shown that he has said he wants to fix some of the holes that were left behind by the 2018 farm bill legalization of Hemp, but it was just too much [inaudible 00:23:00] and there’s too much going on as we all very well know to let that in [inaudible 00:23:05] I think one problem too is just this like we do have this patchwork of laws. They still don’t have a FDA regulation. We still don’t have a USDA regulations that everybody can agree on and all of that’s holding the industry back too, and it’s even still this sort of like some States do it this way. Some States do it that way and I’m sure, you know the banking industry wants to come in and do a one way across the country and that’s still not possible for Hemp.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. Banking and insurance, both especially crop insurance. That’s one of the things with a lot of the farmers that I’ve talked to. Crop insurance is such a nightmare because it’s different from state to state to state. Now that is true also with corn and soybeans, but corn and soybeans are not limited other way in other States are [fightyard 00:23:53] traded as commodities and Hemp is not. So it’s little things like that. It’s easy for us to say “we did it, we voted, we won, we’re legalizing marijuana and we’re fighting for Hemp.” But that fight is not over. It’s nowhere near over and we need to keep telling the people in power.

Matt Baum:
We want this and we don’t just want this because one, we want to get high. That’s it man. Or we’re hippies and we like wearing Hemp clothes. No, we want it because it’s important for our farmers. It’s important for business revenues. Like Drew said, it is important to free up frivolous lawsuits and get people out of prison that should not be there and it’s important for our own wellbeing. There’s so many pluses to this and we can’t stop fighting yet. I think that’s the most important thing to remember. Let’s not just say, “we did it, we got rid of Trump, all our problems are gone. All of them.” No, they’re not.

The history & future of cannabis in the U.S.

Desiree Kane:
Well, I think that there’s honestly a debt to be paid on a national level when it comes to cannabis. Because look at the history, cannabis was first called Indian Hemp and it came illegal when there were floods of Mexican, quote unquote Mexican immigrants like migrating in. So it’s part of a vast criminalization mechanism that is built into the system. So when you ask and I liked Drew’s answer about why it’s important with marijuana, with THC, with Hemp, with all of these things, there’s so much that has gone into why that plant is illegal and it is very racially motivated against black and Brown people. So we have to actively combat that as we as a nation are going through this moment of racial equity. Some moments are happening and that the fight around cannabis is a frontline in that way.

Matt Baum:
One of the really cool things that I’ve seen in Nebraska, just like every other state, we have definitely jerked our native American people around and now they’ve said, “well, we’re going to start growing marijuana and Hemp because it’s our land and you guys don’t want to patrol it, you don’t want to take care of it, you say it’s not part of the United States, so there you go.” And they are, and they’re doing a fantastic job and our governor hates it, and I love that he hates it. You jerks are the reason that they are living where they’re living. Okay. So now we can’t get mad and decide, wait a minute. We don’t like what you’re doing on the land that we said as yours. That isn’t really good for farming other stuff, but that which we’ll do very well there, by the way, and make you a ton of money. Now we’re upset.

Desiree Kane:
I really like what NuWu is doing in Las Vegas. It’s where I grew up. Oh my goodness. It’s beautiful to see native people with economic empowerment that is fueled by a plant that is within the natural order.

Matt Baum:
Right. Not fueled by casinos, which is just-

Desiree Kane:
[inaudible 00:27:24] Around casinos and all of that. But with cannabis, you know it’s another way that you can treat many things. As we know, there are multiple benefits for consuming cannabis of all varieties.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely.

Kit O’Connell:
Desiree can you introduce what NuWu is real quick? There’s a lot of people listening. Won’t know what that is.

Desiree Kane:
Yeah. NuWu I call it the pot grocery store, but it’s a beautiful marijuana dispensary in Las Vegas that is run by the Paiute people native to Las Vegas, who, you know Las Vegas is built upon their ancestral bones. Every time you go swimming there, guess who’s underneath your pool.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. But we like to say, “nah, it’s just a desert. They came out to this desert in the middle of nowhere and we built a strip and now it’s beautiful and gorgeous and there’s famous people in restaurant.” And like, yeah there was something there before you jackasses and it wasn’t just sand. So-

Desiree Kane:
Oh, there’s also like a beautiful Springs there that that tribe has really fought to preserve also.

Matt Baum:
This is awesome and this has been a great discussion and I think again, we go into speaking about marijuana THC, because it is the same plant at the end of the day. It’s the same plant and any legislation that is good for marijuana is even better for Hemp because it erodes that case. That’s out there and saying, “well, we don’t know and it might be a little scary and maybe we shouldn’t feed it to animals and if kids eat the seeds, what’ll happen.” Like it’s time to settle down. It’s time to listen to the American public that has voted and said, we want this and we’re going to see more and more States fall and it is going to be legal. I think it is a foregone conclusion and it wouldn’t surprise me in the next two years. We don’t even have to talk about this garbage anymore and we can laugh about it. Remember that? That was ridiculous. That’s where I hope we end up guys. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining me. This was fantastic.

Drew De Los Santos:
Thanks Matt. I was just going to say one thing real quick, is that another reason it’s important is because if it’s one that we all Agree on, like we should hold on to one good thing that people from all walks of life can agree on. We need that right now.

Matt Baum:
Right. Because it seems like there’s not a lot ofs we do agree this country at the moment. So.

Kit O’Connell:
I think in our ideal world, what would I see for the future? You know we are still going to have distinct industries. It’s not like Hemp is going to disappear if we legalize marijuana, because they are so different. I hope we will invest more in fiber Hemp and in all the ways we can use Hemp, if we get rid of all these like you said, just all these distinctions, if we’re allowed to explore the whole plant, but I think it’ll be better for everybody.

Matt Baum:
Most definitely because we’re not going to, in a position where it’s like, okay, so marijuana is legalized. Let’s make cattle feed out of it. No, that is where Hemp will come in. You know, that that fibers woods, plastics, cardboard’s, that is where Hemp is going to come in and it’s going to come in huge and there’s just no way to stop it. It’s just a matter of catching up, education, that’s what we’re here for help you guys and we just have to keep screaming in our leaders and letting them know we want it fights not over. That’s a most important thing to remember big wins in this election, but the fight is not over.

Kit O’Connell:
I agree completely.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
I hope you dug this little break from our usual format, and I hope it was informative too and I hope you understand that. Yes, just because things have changed and we will have a new White House and a lot of people have new governors and senators and congressmen. We’ve still got to stay on them. We’ve still got to let them know we want cannabis legislation in this country, because it is better for everyone from the buyer to the farmer to keep fighting the good fight out there guys and don’t forget, we hear the Ministry of Hemp think that an accessible world is a better world for everyone. So you can find a complete written transcription of this episode in the show notes for this post at MinistryofHemp.com

Matt Baum:
That brings us to the end of this episode, but maybe you have some questions about legislation in your state or who you need to talk to, to help fight the good fight, or maybe you just have some Hemp questions. That’s totally cool and we would love to hear from you. You can call us at (402) 819-6417 and leave your Hemp question on our hotline. We, perhaps this panel we had today, we’ll answer it right here on one of our Q and A shows, or you can also send an MP3 question to me, Matt@MinistryofHemp.com just make sure that your message is in MP3 form so we can play it on the show and be sure to leave your name too so we know who we’re addressing and if you want to read more about this subject, head over to MinistryofHemp.com we have a fantastic story.

Matt Baum:
Hemp after election 2020 legalizing cannabis will make Hemp thrive. It’s one of our featured stories right now, and it really drills down into a lot of these subjects, really informative stuff. If you enjoy informative stuff like that, follow us on all our social medias @ministryofhemp/ministryofhemp and if you want to support us and help us get more of this information out there and push more Hemp education, head to patrion.com/ministryofhemp and you can become a Ministry of Hemp insider. We’ll have a link right in the show notes for this episode, you can click on and when you do it, any amount that you donate to help us out, first of all, I can’t stress how much it helps, but any amount you donate makes you an insider. It gets you access to early stories to podcast extras and all kinds of other cool stuff we’re doing.

Matt Baum:
But first and foremost, it helps us so much. Also, if you dig what you hear, do me a favor rate this podcast, give us a star or even a short written review, because it’s seriously, it helps so much to push us up in search algorithms to get this show in front of people that are looking for more information on Hemp. All right, I can go on about this all day long but I got stuff I got to do. So I’m going to get out of here and I like to sign off the same way every time by saying, remember to take care of yourself, take care of others and make good decisions. Will you, this is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp signing off.

The post Cannabis Legalization & Hemp After The Election (Ministry of Hemp Podcast) appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

On September 17, 2020, Texas Judge Lora Livingston extended a temporary restraining order blocking the hemp flower ban. The policy would ban sales of hemp flower intended for smoking, though other forms of hemp would remain legal.

As previously reported, Judge Livingston blocked the policy at an initial court appearance after hearing arguments from plaintiffs with the pro-cannabis nonprofit Informed Texas. With the extension, the ban cannot go into effect until after the court trial, when the judge will hear further arguments about the legality of the policy. The extension allows hemp flower sales to continue until at least February 1, 2021, the next court date.

While Judge Livingston could still decide to allow the policy to go into effect, this decision seems encouraging for the Texas hemp industry.

Previously: Texas Hemp Flower Ban Could Hurt Texas Hemp Industry

Previously: The Texas Department of State and Health Services’ issued new rules banning retail sales, processing, marketing and manufacturing of smokable hemp flower products. The ban was due to go into effect on August 2, 2020. While the full impact of the Texas hemp flower ban is still unknown, we want to share with you how this new policy is already impacting consumers, businesses, and the Texas economy.

In May 2019, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill that legalized hemp in Texas, including growing, production, and sale of hemp products. The law banned production of smokable hemp products in Texas, but not sales. Hemp advocates think that this ban was necessary to help the bill pass.

Fast forward to this summer, when the Lone Star State announced these new policies, which ban hemp marketed for smoking. Over 1,600 individuals submitted comments opposing the ban, but the rule was passed anyway against industry and consumer opposition.

The Texas hemp flower ban also bans sales of CBD vaping products like CBD vape juice & cartridges.

It’s important to note that selling raw hemp flowers did not get banned in Texas, only the sale of hemp marketed for smoking. The new policies don’t put any restrictions on how consumers use hemp, including smoking it. Ultimately, anyone selling hemp flower can not market it as a smokable product. They can advertise it as a food additive like cannabutter, a topping for a smoothie, or perhaps to be brewed into a tea. 

The industry responded quickly, launching a lawsuit and obtaining a temporary restraining order against the policy.

Nevertheless, it’s now harder to access hemp for wellness in Texas. Consumers and industry alike will have to navigate the new complications the hemp ban represents. 

Texas consumers and businesses lose education and easy access to hemp smoking products

Even people who don’t smoke hemp seem shocked to hear about the ban.

“Most of our consumers are either taken off guard because they were unaware of it, or not surprised, said Amos Lozano, co-founder of Emjayze Hemp.

“‘Sounds like Texas’ is a phrase I’ve heard a lot.”

Emjayze Hemp now sells pre-made “tea rolls.” That is, a product marketed with the idea that consumers pick up a pre-rolled pack of hemp tea, untwist the top of a single serving and put it into their beverage or food of choice.

Local hemp retailers must shift away from fully educating their customers on how to use hemp products. Customers now need to educate themselves about the benefits of inhalation outside of a natural face-to-face encounter. All because the Texas legislature doesn’t want to allow businesses to discuss a common method of consuming hemp products. 

Vaping consumers could be hurt even more than hemp smokers

Since they can still possess and use the products, it might seem like the Texas hemp flower ban doesn’t really affect consumers. It actually creates a significant barrier to consumers who use hemp for pain relief.

“‘Sounds like Texas’ is a phrase I’ve heard a lot.”

Hemp entrepreneur Amos Lozano on the Texas hemp flower ban

“What I’ve seen is that the sale of flower has come down to retail locations deciding to either sell it or not sell it,” Lozano told us. “The real people who are losing in this ban are those who use vaping products because there isn’t a way to get around it.”

While Lozano can pivot to selling “tea” or hemp flower as a food additive, there’s no similar workaround for vapes.

Sadly, this could lead to people seeking other, less safe methods for pain relief. Many consumers report vaping or smoking CBD-rich hemp is one of the fastest ways to find relief. Cutting out people’s ease of access to their medicine is only creating unnecessary barriers.

Hemp flower ban hurts Texas hemp industry amid economic crisis

Marijuana Moment reported on August 6, 2020, that four Texas companies filed a lawsuit against the ban.

The companies are suing on the grounds that the ban violates the state constitution. They’re also arguing that the Department of State and Health Services exceeded its authority with the ban.

The plaintiffs argue that Texas would lose an estimated 2.9 million dollars in sales tax revenue over the next five years. Crown Distributing, LLC, the lead plaintiff, stands to lose $59.6 million in revenue over the same time period.

“At a time when the Texas economy is reeling from the fiscal impact of COVID-19, it is unfortunate that the State chose to foreclose such a large economic opportunity for our state,” attorney Chelsie Spencer, counsel for Crown Distributing told Marijuana Moment.

On August 19, 2020, Informed Texas reported that the judge in the lawsuit issued a temporary restraining order. This extends the status quo, allowing sales of smokable hemp and vaping products for 14 days until the next hearing. Plaintiffs will be back in court on September 2, 2020.

“It’s awesome that those companies took action immediately to file the lawsuit,” Lozano said, when asked about the lawsuit launched by other brands. “I’m happy that those people pulled their resources together so quickly.”

Lozano looks to the good with the bad with Texas hemp flower ban

As Texas crawls out of cannabis prohibition, proper regulation is vital as it explores the healing properties of hemp and beyond.

Through all the change, there has been a little bit of good come out of this situation. Lozano hopes it leads to a focus on other uses for hemp.

“I’ve talked a lot about what I don’t like about the ban, but let’s talk about what I do like about it,” he said.

“What I like about it is that there is a shift to focus on industrial hemp. The plant can produce plastics, construction materials, and people can do more with it besides smoking it.” 

Lozano said that he believes the Texas ban hemp flower ban, along with any similar rules, will look silly someday. And despite the ban, he remains hopeful for the future of Texas cannabis culture. 

The Texas hemp ban ultimately directly impacts education, marketing, and tax revenue around smokable hemp and CBD vaping products. While Texas is continuing to make great strides towards better cannabis policies, laws such as this just make Texas to lose out on valuable tax revenue and slow the growth of the industry.

Lozano says he’ll keep selling his tea and hope the lawsuit succeeds.

“Right now, all we can do is sit back, wait, and watch eagerly.”

The post Texas Hemp Flower Ban Can’t Go Into Effect Until At Least Feb 2021 appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

First though, Ministry of Hemp podcast host Matt talks about the different types of CBD on the market, full-spectrum, broad-spectrum, and isolate to help you understand what is in each and what they do. We recently published a guide to CBD spectrums that will help you understand more.

After that Matt has a conversation with Alwan Mortada, CEO of Ott Coffee from Austin, Texas. Alwan is a software engineer with a love of both coffee and CBD that lead him to combine them naturally to make a delicious and relaxing cup. They discuss the challenges of starting a new business, traveling the world to find quality beans and CBD, their shared love of good coffee, and Matt’s penchant for making fun of decaf.

You’ve got hemp questions? We’ve got hemp answers!

Send us your hemp questions and you might hear them answered on one of our Hemp Q&A episodes. Send your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com

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CBD and Coffee Podcast: Complete Episode Transcript

Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 43 of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, “CBD Coffee”:

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum and this is the Ministry of Hemp Podcast brought to you by ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.

Matt Baum:
Hey, it’s Matt Baum and you’re listening to the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, thanks for coming back. And today in the show, I’m going to be talking to a guy named Alwan Mortada and he is a software engineer living in Austin, Texas that has decided to start infusing coffee with CBD, which is very cool. We’ll get to that in a little bit but first, I thought it might be good to talk about the difference between full spectrum and broad spectrum CBD products.

A little about CBD spectrums

Matt Baum:
The CBD market can be a strange place to navigate right now. Different companies have different things on their labels based on how many milligrams are in the bottle, how it’s made, whether this is an isolate, a broad spectrum, a full spectrum. It’s hard to know what is what, and I get it. There’s a lot of confusion there. This stems from the fact the FDA has yet to set down guidelines on how every state and every company should be selling, marketing and labeling CBD, but that’s coming. For now, know that there are three major types of CBD on the market. There’s full spectrum, broad spectrum and isolate.

Matt Baum:
Let’s break that down real quick. An isolate sounds just like what it is. It is a tincture that isolates one aspect of CBD, whether that be CBDA, CBDG, CBDN. It isolates that one type of CBD that can be directed for all manner of things, whether it be sleep or pain relief, or anxiety relief. The idea behind an isolate is it isolates one type of CBD and that is what is in that bottle.

Matt Baum:
Now, a broad spectrum CBD is going to have just about everything, CBA, CBG, CBN, all of that stuff, but it’s not going to have THC. Which, is what a lot of people want because they don’t want to come up positive on drug test or maybe they just don’t want THC in their regimen, and that’s fine. But keep in mind, a broad spectrum CBD does not include everything that is in the hemp plant. THC, even in a very low level, is a part of it. So, if you want full spectrum, if you want all those benefits from the cannabis plant, you are looking for a full spectrum CBD tincture or gummy, or a pill. And that will be the closest you can get to the actual plant because it represents all of the cannabinoids, and included in those cannabinoids, like I mentioned, is THC.

Matt Baum:
Now keep in mind, this would be at the level of 0.3% or below to maintain legal standards. Now, the marijuana that a lot of people smoke these days is at 25 and 30% THC levels. So, 0.3% is so low that even the most sensitive of you out there, will not experience a sense of being high or stoned that you would get from smoking marijuana. With that said, there are tests out there that can pick up on this. So, if you are in a position, maybe you’re a police officer, a first responder, you’re in the military, and any THC is unacceptable, then you might need to look into a broad spectrum. That’s not to say that one is any better than any other. There are several opinions out there. The full benefits of full spectrum versus broad spectrum, versus isolate are still being investigated and the science is still coming in.

Matt Baum:
So for now, if you don’t need to worry about THC in your drug test or you’re not being drug-tested, by all means try a full spectrum. If THC is a problem, by all means use a broad spectrum. And if you know exactly what you’re going for, then yeah, use an isolate. All that we here at Ministry of Hemp ask, is that you know what you are taking, know where it’s coming from and know what is in it. We have a fantastic list of trusted brands that we have tried that are upfront with their lab results, over at ministryofhemp.com, and we have a fantastic guide that will help you choose full spectrum, broad spectrum or isolate. You can find it up on our site right now. I’ll have a link to it in the show notes. But the short version is, make sure you’re buying quality product, make sure you know what you’re buying it for and make sure it’s right for you.

Meet Alwan Mortada

Matt Baum:
My conversation on the show today is with Alwan Mortada. Alwan is a full stack software engineer. He works for Audi, which means he’s a smart guy. And he’s decided to devote some of his life to infusing CBD into coffee beans. As a software engineer, he drank a lot of coffee, I get that. I work in web hosting and I drink a ton myself. Alwan is the founder and proprietor of Ott Coffee. I spoke to him from his apartment in Austin, Texas. Here’s my conversation with Alwan Mortada.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. This is definitely a passion of mine that has been accruing interest over the past year and three months. Just about two or three months, a year and three months.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Alwan Mortada:
And this came about and I just felt such a burning fire in my belly to do it, to go for it and jump in the water, so to speak.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Alwan Mortada:
And go after this beautiful idea that I has … Like, “Oh.” Like the bulb kind of lit in my head, I’m like, “Yes, that’s exactly what I have to do.” And [crosstalk 00:06:39]

Matt Baum:
So, did you start with coffee? Was that first or was this the thing where you said, “I want to infuse CBD into coffee, go.”

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. Honestly, I didn’t think twice about trying to come out with any other product other than a coffee-infused product. I didn’t think about tinctures or anything else. Even tea, I didn’t think about tea. I just thought about coffee. I’m like, “Yeah, I run on coffee almost daily, I love the taste.” I’m still a novice then. I was still a novice then I would say, just a regular coffee guy, so to speak. I mean, I didn’t really become a coffee enthusiast until I jumped into this endeavor and I took my belt, I call it, white belt trip, to Colombia. I’m still a white belt. I think I will always be a white belt in coffee. I went to Colombia to go drink as much coffee as I could possibly can. You got to distinguish …

Matt Baum:
It’s the place to do it.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, exactly. Distinguish what good coffee tastes like from bad coffee because if you don’t have a reference, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. You just drink anything.

Matt Baum:
Of course. So what’s your background? Did you have a coffee background before this or was this just purely born out of a passion for just loving coffee?

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I have a definitely passion for entrepreneurship. I have tried different things, different entrepreneurship in the past. Wasn’t successful in the sense of financially but was successful in the fact that I failed. I failed gracefully, how about that?

Matt Baum:
Sure. That’s the only way to do it. You fail upwards, right?

Alwan Mortada:
I successfully failed. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. No, my background is actually in economics. My bachelor’s is in economics and business administration, automotive technology, and I jumped ships in 2015 to learn how to code. I came to the beautiful city of Austin, Texas, which is my home. And five years of persistence and learning how to code, the ABC of code, eventually after trials and tribulations, found myself at a very solid company working at Silvercar by Audi. And through my, I guess, my persistence, I mean, everything leads to the current moment. At one point of my life, I did consider very seriously to pick up professional boxing.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. I started boxing-

Matt Baum:
Is that like a family thing or do you just love boxing?

Alwan Mortada:
No. Oh man, I just had a passion to challenge myself and that came through boxing because it’s definitely a challenging thing to go train. And not only that, to go face somebody who’s trying to rip your head off. Equal-

Matt Baum:
It’s about as competitive as it gets.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s very lonely in that circle. I carried that with me through my development career, that mindset of like, “Okay, I’m going to go train for a fight.” I mean, everything in life people grab different things and they use them to their advantage. And one of the things I grabbed was I’m going to treat everything in life as a boxing fight and I’m going to win.

From software engineer to CBD coffee

Matt Baum:
So, let me ask you, did you go find a coffee sensei or something and trained the same way where you’re just like, “Now, this is the new thing I’m dropping myself into. I’m just going for it.”

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question. In my early days when I first moved to Austin, there was a micro roaster/coffee shop that I always went there and learned how to code. Like spent hours, drank a bunch of coffee. It was great coffee. Barrett’s micro roasters. They’re North Austin. It looks small, cute coffee shop, like local neighborhood type coffee shop. And in the back, there’s a small micro roastery. The roaster, his name is Travis. Travis has more than 28 years of roasting experience. He’s a master at his craft. I didn’t know him then, I just approached him when I was like, “Okay. Where can I go … I need a roaster, I need somebody who knows coffee well to come out with a supreme premium coffee roast.” That’s one of the players in the team that I have to kind of put together in order to come out with an exquisite product.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Alwan Mortada:
I just knocked on his door and he’s like, “Okay. Let me think about it.” I came the next day, he’s like, “Okay. I thought about it. Okay. Let’s do this.”

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, it was definitely a great match like that. And also, I mean, as I got to know Travis and he got to know me, we figured that, man, we have a lot of common values. Taking care of your neighbor is definitely a good one, being a conscious individual in the society and in planet Earth right now. One of the small tiny things is he’s selling iron straws or metal straws. I’m like, “Okay, that shows that we care about the environment enough to sell metal straws instead of regular straws, plastic straws that are served at the coffee shop.” So, small things like that and eventually we were like, “Okay, we are a match.” So, we started this partnership. I basically roast at his facility and then infuse it myself now, but prior, I was using a dear friend of mine, who’s actually a petrochemical engineer who has a background in food science and chemistry, to help me with the best ways to infuse those, and of course test at the end.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Alwan Mortada:
That was a whole-

Matt Baum:
We’ll get to that in just a minute. I want to focus on the coffee thing for a minute here because I’m trying to follow through a line of thinking, if you will. Because I mean, like I said, I love coffee and I’m a bit of a coffee snub. You sent me some coffee, it was very good and I very much enjoyed it and-

Alwan Mortada:
Thank you. Thank you so much.

Matt Baum:
… I’m going to beg you for some more when we get done with this. But where does the thinking come in? The reason why I have you on the show, obviously, is because you’re infusing your coffee with CBD. Where does that thinking come in where you look at a drink that, like we were joking about before we got started, I used to wake up every morning and get going and focus. And sometimes I need the lightning, I need to bring the real caffeine in. Where does the idea to infuse that with CBD, which from my experience, kind of takes me in the other way, settles things down, balances things out? What’s the thinking there?

Discovering the benefits of cannabinoids

Alwan Mortada:
Right. And it’s definitely … I run on coffee. In the morning, I definitely … As a software engineer, I need to be up and my brain has to be on fire. There’s so many things like data models or different associations between different objects and arrays, and et cetera, that I have to kind of figure out, and kind of translate a business problem into computer language. So, I did notice that when I do drink regular coffee, I get alert but I’m almost overly alert. Hyper-focused, is what I call it, where …

Alwan Mortada:
And being in a software or you don’t have to be a software to be honest with you. With the age of technology right now with the million messages that you kind of get on Facebook, Instagram, email, text message, your grandma, whatever, it’s very easy to take your attention away from an email that you’re writing, a small article that you’re reading, a code that you’re trying to write as well, or a problem that you’re trying to solve. So, I started mixing my coffee with some CBD and so I had great results. The only thing that I didn’t like is the fact that the oily taste from the …

Matt Baum:
Yeah, like a tincture.

Alwan Mortada:
From the tincture, would kind of linger there and every tincture now have different flavors and stuff like that so you lose the taste of coffee. That’s on one hand. On another hand, I’ve always been a believer in cannabis and hemp. I think cannabis and hemp is the plant of heaven, to be honest with you. That’s personally thinking. My mom was, thank God, a cancer patient that survived and she had breast cancer in 2009. And I’ve seen her suffer throughout her journey, taking pharmaceuticals, painkillers, and it just made her a bit of a zombie. Like where is my fun mom that used to joke with me? On one hand, the effect of chemo and everything else, is just horrendous and then-

Matt Baum:
Right. It can be just as bad as the disease, I mean.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. And you add on top of it, all the painkillers, you’re left with probably a codependency there after the whole thing is done.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely. Oh, no question. No question.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. So, I used to go to Colorado for a good while every other year or every period of time. I would go snowboarding and man, it was a treat going to the dispensaries down there. I’m like, “Wow, this is amazing. Let me smell this and let me smell this, and let me smell that. And I want to take this.” So, I would always get her … And come back with some gummies. And gummies, especially the half-and-half, like the half THC, half CBD gummies, worked great because she never really liked to get stoned. And some of the gummies out there that are THC only, they do have an effect. They’re specific to their need but most of the time they’d get you kind of stoned. But the CBD and THC ones, even on me, always had a nice feeling. Like I’m not stoned but I’m super relaxed yet I don’t feel like I’m hot out of my mind, you know?

Matt Baum:
Right.

Alwan Mortada:
I can still focus, I can still write emails, I can still just … But I forget about any pain or aches, or joint pain, or muscle aches that I have. So, my mom loved those and she would take them to sleep and before she goes to sleep, it helps her with her sleep or … And she wakes up often at night. So, I’ve seen how cannabis touched my old mother’s life. I take care of her in a lot of ways and I’m like, there’s no way for me to be like, “Oh, that’s a …” I can’t condemn it. I’m a believer.

Matt Baum:
Sure. You’ve seen it in action. I mean, how can you?

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, absolutely.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, exactly. How can you? Of course, I would want to wish this kind of medicine on any person, let alone my mom. Any person who’s suffering from any kind of pains or aches. Actually, right here I have a letter from one of my customers, right here.

Matt Baum:
Oh nice. Handwritten and everything. Look at that. Yeah.

Alwan Mortada:
Handwritten.

Matt Baum:
You don’t see a lot of those anymore.

Alwan Mortada:
No. This guy’s awesome. His name is [Lewis 00:20:02] Salm, S-A-L-M. He’s like, “Al, thank you so much for your kindness and fairness. I’ll gladly pay $100 for the coffee. I don’t have much but I’ll gladly give since you will. This stuff works miracles for my chronic pain gastric problems. After 20 years, I think I may be able to quit opioids. I have told several CBD stores about your product so you may hear from them. Thanks again and I hope I can buy from you in the future. P.S., my phone won’t send texts.”

Matt Baum:
That’s amazing. So, you draw this through line from seeing your mother suffer and benefit from CBD to the same benefits that you experience from coffee, doing your job, working, coding and whatnot, and there’s just a natural cross basically, that you see, more or less.

Creating a CBD coffee brand

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. Absolutely. I saw that cross … As a market opportunity, I saw this cross when I was doing some research online early 2019. And I was doing some research looking what the trends are because I still have a very good tendency and one of my hobbies is to look at economic forums and read some articles about what’s trending in the economy. And of course CBD was really hot. Some people are throwing crazy numbers out there, what the projections would be in 2023.

Matt Baum:
Oh, it’s insane. Yeah.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. It is insane. Now, I mean, how much I believe that is another question. But as I was looking at the industry, an evolving industry, I noticed that there’s one area that I had a passion for and there’s not many people with their flag in the ground. And I knew if I was to jump in this, this has to be tiptop quality. Like the coffee and the cannabis has to be given. The quality of those two ingredients have to be given. And what is my personal purpose behind the whole endeavor is to be a lifestyle company that is for purpose and giving back to your local community first and then the outside community. So, Austin first because I live in Austin. I would love to give back in my own community. And then as I grow, I start to give back in other communities. And also to be environmentally-conscious. There’s no doubt about having recyclable bags, being organic.

Matt Baum:
I assume those practices are going through to the growing of both the coffee and the hemp for the CBD.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. Also, the same deal goes with the hemp too. Yeah. So, in January 19th, 2019 is when the idea hit my head and I decided to start doing it. I decided that year that I need to get my white belt in coffee so I traveled to Colombia. That was [crosstalk 00:23:41]

Matt Baum:
Is your coffee coming from Colombia?

Alwan Mortada:
Yes. My coffee is Colombian. Yeah. Now, we’re not big to the point that we’re importing containers, I would love to be at some point, but we do pick our farms that I went and visited on my trip through an importer, a broker basically, that kind of have relationships with these farms and-

Matt Baum:
So you can make sure everything’s fair trade and everything’s done the right way.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, absolutely. So the coffee is fair trade and organic though I can’t claim that because the facility that I roast in has to also be certified. And there’s certain procedures that we have to go through that we’re still going through that and we’re still attempting that.

Matt Baum:
This is all very new. I mean, like you said, 2019 you had this idea. It’s only about a year ago, from my math.

Alwan Mortada:
That’s very true, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So we can do step by step, slowly but surely. One of the things that I learned from my software job is how to get something out of the door, an MVP. One of the previous failures that I had was I got stuck on the design phase. I got stuck on the design’s phase for too long and I missed the train. The bird just landed just till that short amount of time and then flew away. This time around, I actually took the shot right away. I was like, “All right, you can do it.” If you go to the Instagram, Ott Coffee on Instagram, I purposefully left the earliest bag that I came up with. It was just a plain old bag with a sticker on it. Not even a sticker, actually it was a stamp. I used a stamp.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, save some money, right?

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, save some money. Like, let’s try it out. And the first person who bought that bag from me was my coworker. He bought a bag $40, a bag’s worth, and I’m like, “Wow, all right. I think you have a market.” [crosstalk 00:25:57]

Matt Baum:
It starts with one. It starts with your first sale. That’s how it goes.

Alwan Mortada:
And I thought to myself, “If every company in Austin had one person to buy this coffee, I mean, you have a market.”

Matt Baum:
Yeah. Definitely. So what’s your market look like? Actually, before we get into that, I’m sorry, where is the CBD coming from? We know where the coffee comes from, where do you get your CBD from?

Alwan Mortada:
The CBD currently comes from Boulder, Colorado.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Alwan Mortada:
All organic hemp, lab-tested of course. A veteran-owned company, Extract Labs out of Boulder, Colorado is where I get my THC-free hemp oil and less than … The THC-free is a broad spectrum, for people who don’t know, does not have any THC but has other cannabinoids. And then a full spectrum under 0.3% THC that does have CBD, CBN and CBG at different ratios but mainly the main ingredients is the CBD and less than 0.3% THC. Which, works great for what is known in the industry as the entourage effect of all these cannabinoids working together, even in small tiny doses. And that’s what I infuse the decaf with and that’s what makes the decaf so special.

Matt Baum:
Okay. We were talking about that earlier because you were drinking decaf and I was teasing you a little bit saying like, “What’s the point?”

Alwan Mortada:
What’s the point? No, I completely agree with you. But now there’s definitely a value [crosstalk 00:27:36]

Matt Baum:
And now you add something like this, there’s a point to drinking decaf all of a sudden.

Alwan Mortada:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure.

Matt Baum:
You’re getting something out of it.

Alwan Mortada:
You’re getting a delicious taste for sure and you’re getting all the relaxation of the cannabinoids. And I personally love to put some honey in it so I get some nice, sweet taste.

Matt Baum:
I may have to stop making fun of decaf coffee now. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.

Alwan Mortada:
I think I might have converted you.

Matt Baum:
You may have.

Alwan Mortada:
I’m going to have to send you a bag so you can try it yourself and tell me what you think. I think-

Infusing CBD into coffee beans

Matt Baum:
Let me ask you, earlier you said you were experimenting with it and you were literally putting tinctures straight into your coffee but you didn’t like the oily thing. How did you get past that? How do you infuse CBD into coffee without that oil thing? Because we know that it carries best with an oil and a binder, and all that, so how does it work in the coffee?

Alwan Mortada:
Great question. I had to go back to high school chemistry. I went and started hitting the books. It’s something I’m passionate about. I found a natural tendency to go and learn everything I could on the internet.

Matt Baum:
You can’t do any of this the easy way. I like that.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. I mean-

Matt Baum:
Why hire somebody when I can learn?

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. Absolutely. That’s the attitude, is that you do everything you can, you read a book. If you couldn’t figure it out 100%, then you may ask somebody, “[inaudible 00:29:08] do you know anybody who knows about this subject? Let me hit them up.” If you don’t get any information there, then you may hire somebody, which I eventually did. I started with a chemistry teacher. I put an ad on Indeed, I’m like, “Hey, I need a chemistry teacher here, I need somebody with a chemistry background.”

Matt Baum:
That is great.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. And I hired a good fella who is a chemistry teacher, who has a very good background in organic chemistry and lab testing. A lot of our early stage tests happened in my kitchen. Yeah. I had an air fryer that simulated a roasting machine in the sense of the temperature, it went all the way up to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. I would put the coffee in there for a period of time and then I’d add different forms of cannabinoids. Maybe some isolate mixed with MCT oil and then add that to the coffee. And at the time-

Matt Baum:
See what survives basically.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, exactly. I’d had different mixtures, different experiments like that. And then I bought a couple of cannabinoid test kits online. They sell them nowadays for like 130 bucks, that gives you six tests. So you can have six different infusion ways and then you can test them-

Matt Baum:
With six different results.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, different results. Exactly. And then once we started getting some kind of good results, the challenge was about dosing. How can you dose the coffee appropriately because you have to do … That’s part of the oath that you have to your customers.

Matt Baum:
You’re getting what I’m telling you that I’m selling you.

Alwan Mortada:
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And basically, that’s why every bag has a QR code on the back so … I mean, it’s an industry standard at this point but I think every CBD cannabis product should have a QR code so the customer can have like, “Okay. I know what I’m getting exactly and it’s certified by another person.”

Matt Baum:
Independent results, definitely.

Alwan Mortada:
Independent result. Yeah, for sure. So, we got some good results then my personal friend, who’s a petrochemical engineer, [inaudible 00:31:55]. He’s a good friend of mine who owns an oil company. So, as I’m talking to him and picking his brain back and forth, we came to the realization at that point, after more experimentation, is that … Of course, coffee has oil in it and-

Matt Baum:
Yeah, naturally.

Alwan Mortada:
Natural oil, exactly. And so, some coffee has maybe 13% all the way up to 20% oil, so that’s the basic or the biggest factor of how much a certain bean going to absorb versus the other. After knowing that, we decided, all right, let’s experiment some more with a small batch and try to infuse cannabinoids straight into the bean without adding any-

Matt Baum:
Just using the coffee oil that’s present in the bean, more or less.

Alwan Mortada:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we chose a natural hemp distillate, the full spectrum or the broad spectrum, to use that. Now, the process is a bit complicated. It’s a bit of proprietary information [crosstalk 00:33:21]

Matt Baum:
Yeah, I know. I don’t want you to give away any company secrets or …

Alwan Mortada:
No. No, not at all. I had to learn it the hard way for sure. It was definitely a lot of fun but nobody extended the hat. I did ask some people in the industry, which is unfortunate actually, I didn’t get any help. I had to figure it on my own, but it’s part of the journey. Like, you don’t know something-

Matt Baum:
Well, you’re also kind of the pioneer here too. I mean, you’re one of the first guys doing this. As far as I’ve seen, there’s not a lot of people out there doing this so this is undiscovered country, I mean.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. There’s a couple of people … In terms of the nation, there’s not a lot of people doing it, that’s for sure.

Matt Baum:
No.

Alwan Mortada:
I’m very fortunate, I’m very grateful to be one of the pioneers, amongst a couple other companies that are doing it and-

Matt Baum:
So now basically you are choosing a bean that is higher in oil because it accepts the properties of the CBD distillate that you’re using naturally.

Alwan Mortada:
Right.

Matt Baum:
That’s amazing.

Alwan Mortada:
It’s soluble. It absorbs, it binds with the oil.

Matt Baum:
It’s almost like it was meant to do it.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, exactly. It’s pretty much like a sponge, you know what I mean? It just absorbs it and just tucks it in.

Matt Baum:
Instead of forcing it in there, you’re just sort of introducing it and it goes, “Yeah, okay great.”

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. That way … I don’t know how the other competitors, how they infuse their beans but we definitely do not use any binding agents.

Matt Baum:
That’s amazing.

Alwan Mortada:
That’s against what I think is a natural process of an infusion.

Matt Baum:
You’re just basically forcing something into something else at that point.

Alwan Mortada:
Right. You’re adding another chemical, which is not usually the nature of the chemical bonds. When it comes to organic chemistry, you know how certain molecules bind with each other. They usually do it either naturally or in the middle between those two, there’s a binding molecule that kind of hooks them all together.

The future of Ott Coffee

Matt Baum:
So let me ask you, this is very new and Ott Coffee is still on the up and up, what’s next? What can we expect next from you?

Alwan Mortada:
What’s next is definitely … Right now we have the productivity series. It’s a caffeinated Colombian medium roast that will take away all the anxiety, all the heart-racing, all the jitters-

Matt Baum:
I think that’s what you sent me and I very much enjoyed it.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. Exactly. But it will leave you alert, calm, focused yet still mellow.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, I didn’t feel like I had the lightning, the anxiety. Like that coffee, my heart’s beating a little too fast. Yeah.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Matt Baum:
I really liked it.

Alwan Mortada:
But you still feel kind of like … Still alert.

Matt Baum:
Still lifted, still aware. Yeah. Still very much awake.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, a little aware. Definitely. Yeah. It definitely helps me a lot with my ADHD, especially if I drink regular coffee as a developer.

Matt Baum:
Same here. I think we’re very similar guys here.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. It doesn’t need a lot to stimulate that ADHD with regular coffee.

Matt Baum:
So where do we go to find the coffee right now? Where do I go to get it?

Alwan Mortada:
In Austin, there’s a bunch of places that I’m in. Wheatsville Co-op is a big one, Thomas Market is another, Joy Organics is another.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, Joy Organics is great. I know them. They’re good people.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. Joy Organics, they’re a quality brand. They’re a quality store and a brand. Danielle is a dear friend of mine. I actually approached her in the beginning stages where I was like, “Hey Danielle, I watched your dad in a YouTube show and he’s like, ‘Go to market ASAP.'” So I’m like, I owe it to him [crosstalk 00:37:26]

Matt Baum:
So, if I’m not in Austin, how do I get ahold of your coffee?

Alwan Mortada:
Ottcoffee.com is …

Matt Baum:
Ottcoffee.com.

Alwan Mortada:
… our website where it’s under reconstruction. It should be done within three weeks, I hope. I’d love to have a … It’s going to have our productivity series, our relaxation series. I’d like to add in the works, our creativity series, which will probably be a one-to-one ratio between CBD and CBG, which is another cannabinoid known to be the mother of cannabinoids.

Matt Baum:
That’s very cool.

Alwan Mortada:
It’s a bit of chemically-altered and I think other cannabinoids stemmed from it. And correct if I’m wrong, I’m still a novice, I’ll always be a novice.

Matt Baum:
Hey man, I’m still a novice too. I’m just a podcast host here, all right?

Alwan Mortada:
Okay, all right. But we learn from each other so …

Matt Baum:
Yeah, that’s the idea.

Alwan Mortada:
Correct me if I had a misinformation here or there.

Matt Baum:
No one’s going to barbecue for that, don’t worry. They’ll come after me, not you, don’t worry.

Alwan Mortada:
Okay. All right. It’s out in the open now.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, there you go.

Alwan Mortada:
I can’t hold it back. Yeah. And there’s the relaxation series, a decaf full spectrum which has CBD, CBN, CBG and less than 0.3% THC. It’s delicious and it’s been my favorite for a while now.

Matt Baum:
I look forward to checking that out. That sounds amazing.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah. We are exploring cold brew at this point as well.

Matt Baum:
I do love cold brew. Ooh, I love cold brew.

Alwan Mortada:
I mean, why not? Like, why not?

Matt Baum:
Sure. Yeah.

Alwan Mortada:
Especially that we have a delicious in-house brew. So, we’re in the R&D right now, research and development. I refuse to go out to market unless the product that I had, met the most highest standards of quality, taste and authenticity basically.

Matt Baum:
That’s the only way to do it. Yeah.

Alwan Mortada:
This is the only way to do it. You’re absolutely right.

Matt Baum:
Especially when you’re trying to build a reputation. I mean, you have to have a reputation to build a reputation.

Alwan Mortada:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think you have to have some self-integrity.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely.

Alwan Mortada:
So, that’s what I definitely strive to live up to, to be honest with you.

Matt Baum:
Al, I am super excited to try this stuff that, again, I’m going to beg you to send me here. And I look forward to the website kicking up so people, I assume, will be able to subscribe, maybe in weekly shipments and whatnot, if you don’t live in Austin.

Alwan Mortada:
Yes, yes. That’s definitely in the works.

Matt Baum:
Very cool.

Alwan Mortada:
A subscription model is the way to go. A lot of people buy it from me often. It’s a bit tough right now because you’ve been … eBay doesn’t let you sell on their website, Amazon doesn’t let you sell on their website but I have a lot of customers that with the small, short period of time that I was able to sell it on eBay, they would always hit me back up, hit me back up and message me.

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome.

Alwan Mortada:
And I felt very grateful to be making somebody’s day that much better.

Matt Baum:
But that’s why you need that site so you can control that, so you’re taking it out of their hands. Now it’s your business man.

Alwan Mortada:
Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It’s my business now.

Matt Baum:
I look forward to that, definitely. I want to thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for talking to everybody, thank you for being who you are and making fantastic coffee and infusing it with CBD, which is so cool. Seriously man, thank you so much for joining us.

Alwan Mortada:
No, I really appreciate the opportunity to help me voice this new beautiful thing, mixing coffee and cannabinoids in general because it’s a special thing. The coffee plant is definitely a special thing and the hemp cannabis plant is also a special thing.

Matt Baum:
And when you find something like that where you take the coffee plant and you take the cannabis plant and they just seem to intertwine and work, that’s amazing.

Alwan Mortada:
Well, the crazy thing about this Matt is that …. The crazy thing is that you think about the wheel of coffee, the Ethiopian bean, the Colombian bean, the Guatemalan bean, and all the different flavors you can get out of that. And of course, you have the hemp or cannabis, you also have such a wide variety of colors that you are like, “Okay, I want this to mix and match and experiment.” And eventually come out with a supreme product. And that’s why we have only the productivity series that is ready available to sell and relaxation series right now. We have only two lines of our product because it’s not in the amount of products that you’re ready to sell, it’s in the quality of them.

Matt Baum:
Right, exactly.

Alwan Mortada:
I see other companies that may have seven or six different blends but they’re just extra options. Sometimes you confuse the consumer by having so many other options, but give them like two options or three options that are exquisite and they’ll never look back.

Matt Baum:
Not to mention the fact that you did the hard work and you found the right bean and you found the right mixture, and you made sure they work together.

Alwan Mortada:
It’s all about that bean.

Matt Baum:
That’s what it’s all about man.

Alwan Mortada:
That’s true. It’s so true.

Matt Baum:
I appreciate you doing the hard work buddy.

Alwan Mortada:
Of course, of course. Yeah. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.

Matt Baum:
Thank you.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
I really like what Alwan had to say about how he found two plants that wanted to work together and the respect that a lot of people have in this business for the hemp plant, not just for the CBD that it makes, but for the plant itself and how it grows in nature and how it interacts to other things. It’s really impressive and it’s really cool. And it’s nice to talk to somebody like Alwan who has taken what he’s learned in another field and applied it to coffee and CBD. We’ll have links to his new website for Ott Coffee, so you can check it out as well right here in the show notes.

Matt Baum:
That brings us to the end of another episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast. Thank you for listening. And next time on the show, I’m super excited to talk to Eloise Theisen. She is the president of the American Cannabis Nurses Association. So, be sure to check that one out. It’s a fantastic conversation. If you have questions about this episode or any hemp questions at all, call me at 402-819-4894 and leave a message. And myself and Kit O’Connell, the editor-in-chief of ministryofhemp.com, might answer your questions right here on one of our Q&A shows.

Matt Baum:
Speaking of ministryofhemp.com, check out the new post we have about Dr Hemp Me, it’s Ireland’s most popular brand of CBD. We don’t get to review a whole bunch of UK CBD brands so this is certainly a fun one. And if that’s not enough, you can follow us on any social media you’ll find Ministry of Hemp, @ministryofhemp of backslash Ministry of Hemp. And if you dig what you hear on this show and you dig what we do on the site, please check us out on patreon/ministryofhemp. Any donation makes you a Ministry of Hemp insider and gets you access to podcast extras, early interviews and all kinds of other stuff, not to mention the fact that it helps us spread the good word of hemp.

Matt Baum:
Huge thanks to everybody that’s already downloading. If you want to subscribe to this show, you can do it on any of your favorite podcast apps or of course Apple Podcast. Here at the Ministry of Hemp, we believe that an accessible world is a better world for everyone. So, you will find a complete written transcript for this show in the notes as well. Now, I got to get out of here and I like to end the show the same way every time by saying, remember to take care of yourself, take care of others and make good decisions, will you? This is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp signing off.

The post Talking About CBD Coffee With Alwan Mortada Of Ott Coffee (Podcast) appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

First, we look at developing Texas hemp regulations and how it could change the future of the plant in the Lone Star State. Matt talks to James Higdon, owner of Cornbread Hemp in Kentucky, about his concerns as an out-of-state hemp producer. James also appeared in episode 32 of the show, our Kentucky Hemp podcast episode.

For a closer look at the Texas hemp regulations, we also got a brief statement from Coleman Hemphill, president of the Texas Hemp Industries Association. Hemp is legal in Texas, but the new regulations could dramatically alter the shape of this fast-growing industry.

To close out this episode, we get an entrepreneur’s perspective on being a hemp producer in Texas from Micheal Tullis, owner of a small hemp boutique. Early Fruit Hemp Co. is finding success in Lubbock Texas despite the small, sometimes hostile market.

Texas to rule on Lone Star hemp regulations

The Texas Department of State Health Services is preparing to make sweeping regulatory changes to how hemp is manufactured, labeled and sold in the state of Texas. Here’ the major proposed changes, summarized from a post by Texas NORML:

• A ban on the “manufacture, processing, distribution, or retail sale of consumable hemp products for smoking”
• Stringent licensing requirements for CBD retailers
• Stringent testing requirements for CBD products sold in state
• Strict requirements for the labeling of hemp products
• Regulations which could restrict sales of CBD products from states like Kentucky and Colorado

Matt and Jim primarily talk about the labeling requirements, and the changes which could ban sales of products from his state. However, hemp advocates locally and nationwide are concerned about the entire set of changes.

We contacted Coleman Hemphill, president of the Texas Hemp Industries Association, but reached him too late to include him in this episode. However, he suggested the state is poorly equipped to implement these changes, since just 2 staff members are assigned to this aspect of the hemp program and no budget dollars have been set aside to implement the complex licensing and testing program.

In addition, Coleman thinks the new regulations might not withstand legal challenges, even if they do go into effect. Not only does he think these regulations clearly conflict with the 2018 Farm Bill which federally legalized hemp, they also cause substantial damage to existing Texas businesses. Both these factors are likely to be compelling in court. Finally, he told us that sales of all out-of-state hemp products should be safe for at least the remainder of 2020.

How to tell Texas to keep all forms of hemp fully legal

We’ll have more a deeper look at this story soon. In the meantime, you can leave a comment on the hemp regulations using this Action Network form or via the formal comment process. You can also call and leave a message for the Texas Department of State Health Services at (512) 231-5653. Coleman recommends both leaving a comment and calling for maximum effectiveness, but the deadline for formal comments is July 8, 2020 (Monday).

You’ve got hemp questions? We’ve got hemp answers!

Send us your hemp questions and you might hear them answered on one of our Hemp Q&A episodes. Send your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com

Subscribe to the show!

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Become a MOH Insider and help spread the good word!

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Texas Hemp Stories: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 42 of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, “Texas Hemp Stories”:

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum and this is the Ministry of Hemp podcast brought to you by ministryofhemp.com. America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education. (silence) Today on the show, we’re talking about Texas. Texas represents one of the largest hemp markets in the United States. Recently, there’s been some new regulations introduced that are a little, well unclear to say the least. Back in episode 32, I talked to Jim Higdon, he’s the cofounder of Cornbread Hemp out of Kentucky. He wrote a fantastic book about the history of hemp in Kentucky. He contacted me to tell me about these new regulations.

Troubling new Texas hemp regulations

Jim Higdon:
I’m confident that I’m still confused, but at least I’ve got some firm understanding of what it is I’m confused about and also everyone asks you like lots of dogs hearing noises for the first time. [crosstalk 00:01:06]

Matt Baum:
Right, right, right. I would say any good legislation should be like that though. Right? It should be completely confusing and absolutely unclear, so we can argue about what it actually means just in case we want it to mean something else. Right?

Jim Higdon:
It disappears by my reading to mean something bad. Everyone who should know this is like, “Well, I think I’ll look at that. That’s interesting.” Not like, “Oh, we looked at that and that’s not the case because of XYZ you’re not. Just like uh, uh.”

Matt Baum:
Right. So, let’s talk about it. As we understand it, what is being proposed and then we’ll talk about what that could possibly mean and what the issue is.

Jim Higdon:
As I understand it, talked with you from Louisville, Kentucky, the great state of Texas has already passed CBD legislation to legalize the sale of CBD products in Texas.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Jim Higdon:
What we’re looking at now is the Department of Health and Human Services maybe. The State Department of Health in Texas is issuing regulations on how that would go about. So, it’s the executive branch of the Texas state government setting the rules up for how that CBD industry will operate legally at Texas.

Matt Baum:
Got you.

New labeling requirements for Texas CBD sales

Jim Higdon:
Okay? So, law is passed. It’s legal. This is just the framework for how that would go about. In the regulations, it says out of state CBD products can be sold in Texas. Well, before we get to that, before that, there’s some curious novel label requirements that are going to be required in Texas. They’re going to require all the labels to have the URL of the business, the email address of the business, and I believe a phone number of the business on the label, which is regulation that we’ve not seen before from any other state and [crosstalk 00:03:10]

Matt Baum:
Yeah. I mean, I guess I get a URL, that makes sense. I can see, like for marketing purposes, why you might put your URL on a label or something, but a phone number, that’s kind of odd.

Jim Higdon:
The phone number is odd considering the font size. It’s going to have to be the fit, is going to be like five point font or something. The other thing is that all that is made redundant by the QR code, which is also required in the Texas proposed regulation. That’s a good thing because all CBD products should have QR codes that link to lab reports. So, you can determine the potency and safety of all those CBD products, absolutely should have QR codes and the Texas regulation requires, mandates QR code and that’s good, but with the QR code, it makes redundant needing a URL or a phone number because you just like QR code it and there you are. So, the label requirements are a little funny and could require supplemental labeling at one form or another, not just for my company, but for many company looking to do business in Texas.

Matt Baum:
The catch is not that like, it’s a big deal that the phone number there, but the catch would be, well, now all these companies may have to completely redo their labels just so they can be sold in Texas.

Jim Higdon:
Correct.

Matt Baum:
Got you.

Lack of clear FDA regulations hurts industry

Jim Higdon:
This is just one example of the lack of FDA regulations is causing a vacuum where individual states are making their own regulations, and Utah has strict regulations, but Utah is a small market. Texas is now implementing a unique kind of strict regulation, which is fine, but Texas is a huge market. There’s going to be a lot of CBD companies who want to comply with those Texas regulations, but they’re different in every state. So, as this patchwork of regulations, we’re going to … could have contradictory labels where you have to have different labels for different states and they can’t go to each other states. So, it’s just an example of how desperately we need federal regulations to make these uniform, so states like Texas aren’t stepping out and making these decisions on their own without consulting other states in the process. This is unfortunate-

Matt Baum:
Leaving small business people-

Jim Higdon:
… frustrating, but not really Texas’ fault, necessarily. It’s the federal government’s fault.

Matt Baum:
But, it puts a small business person in a situation where they may have to decide, “Okay. Is it worth it for us to make new labels just so we can get into Texas or do we make new labels I can get into Texas and say, “All right, screw Utah, I guess we’re not going to sell stuff there because their label has to be completely different.”? It’s just a mess.

Jim Higdon:
Well, and I don’t mean [inaudible 00:05:58] Utah as contradictory to Texas, but just as an example like Utah like-

Matt Baum:
Hypotetically. Yeah.

Jim Higdon:
… If you’re selling in Utah, you have to submit all your labels to the state of Utah for approval. If you’re selling in Denver, in Colorado, you have to get approved by the Denver Department of Public Health. Every state has some very curious regulatory compliance to go through and it’s this crazy bureaucratic patchwork that companies like mine have to navigate. Texas is about to come online with this particularly strange set of requirements, but so the phone number on the label like it’s inconvenient, but whatever. It’s fine, we’ll deal with it. The problem is in the same set of regulations for out of state CBD companies, Texas is like fine. You can sell out of state CBD products under these three circumstances.
Circumstance number one is coming from a state with a hit program that’s been approved by the USDA under the 2018 arm bill as I understand that language to be. Now, the problem with that, it sounds very normal and rational is if Texas wants out of state products, then you get products from states with the USDA approved program. The problem is, is the rules that the USDA implemented in late last year are so strict that 14 states have chosen not to comply with those standards and go by 2014 farm bill standards. Those states include Kentucky, Colorado, and Oregon, where the top three producing cannabinoid states in America with the top brands located in those three states. It seems like the Texas regulations bar CBD products from Kentucky, Colorado, and Oregon, unless the second provision in the out-of-state CBD regulations apply, but it’s written in this confusing manner that I don’t know what it means, and I couldn’t get anyone on the phone today in the Texas state government to tell me. So, it’s-

Matt Baum:
So, let me see if I’ve got this. So basically, Texas is saying we will only be able to buy CBD products that are adhering to the 2018 farm bill and the three biggest states who are arguably doing it the best and have the most support for CBD and hemp are going by the 2014 farm bill, because that one was looser than the new regulations, therefore you can’t sell stuff from Kentucky, Colorado, and what was the other one? I’m sorry.

Jim Higdon:
Oregon.

Matt Baum:
And Oregon in Texas.

Jim Higdon:
Again, this is my reading of Texas proposed regulations. I’ve not had any help from anyone and it’s confusing and I’m not a Texan. So, I could very well be getting this wrong, but as I understand it, here’s the language. A registered selling consumable hemp products processed or manufactured outside this state must submit to the department, evidence that the products were manufactured in another state or foreign jurisdiction with one, a state or tribal jurisdiction plan approved by the US Department of Agriculture under US code, which I believe is this 2018 farm bill thing, to a plan established under that same code. That if that plan applies to the state or jurisdiction, this is the part that I don’t understand, if that plan applies to the state of jurisdiction. So, maybe this is the caveat that the 2014 farm bill applies, but if that’s the case, then why have the number one, if the number two is to get out of jail free card?

Matt Baum:
Right.

Jim Higdon:
Then the third option is foreign jurisdiction. So obviously, that’s not the case. So, [crosstalk 00:09:53]

Matt Baum:
I know nobody can see this because if you’re listening to the show, but I am making that twisty dog head we talked about as you read this. Yeah, this is a sticky wicket.

Jim Higdon:
Yeah. It seems like it’s saying that only USDA approved hemp states can sell in Texas. That excludes 14 states as I understand it, that includes Kentucky. So, if I want to sell to Texas, I can maybe do it online, but not in retail. I’m fulfilling online orders into Texas every day.

Matt Baum:
Right. It sounds like we need to get someone from Texas on the phone to clear this up, but I wouldn’t even … Where do you go?

Jim Higdon:
I mean, I don’t know who’s covering the hemp [inaudible 00:10:40] in Texas. Texas is a foreign land to me. So, I’m a little bit out of my depth. I just am focused on this as a business person, because we’re trying to get Cornbread hemp everywhere we can, and really interested in doing the work in Texas. We have … Cornbread is a brand that will resonate really well in Texas.

Matt Baum:
Definitely.

Jim Higdon:
We can’t do that if these proposed regulations read like that, like they seem to read.

Matt Baum:
If this continues, it might not just be Texas. It could be a lot of states.

Jim Higdon:
Right. Not just Kentucky. This isn’t just my self interest. This is … if they want to buy at Charlotte’s web retail out of Colorado, it would also apply it seems. It’s just strange and it’s also strange that … I mean, it makes me feel particularly vulnerable that I’m totally wrong because I’m the only person saying, “Hey, is this a problem?”

Matt Baum:
Well, if nothing else, we’ll find out if it is, I guess.

Jim Higdon:
If I’m wrong, then that’s going to be great. If I’m right, then that’s bad, but then maybe there’s still time to change it.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Jim Higdon:
Because these regulations are still in the post stage. We still have time to raise public awareness enough so that they realize that they’re making a bad regulation. So [crosstalk 00:11:53]

Matt Baum:
Well, and even scarier part is maybe you’re not wrong and they don’t understand and didn’t even realize what you’re saying. That’s the really scary part. If they go, “Wait a minute, we didn’t even think about that.”

Jim Higdon:
That feels like the rightest answer. I think that’s the situation because they wrote these rules and didn’t realize they were excluding people. They just wrote the rules. Trying to be boy scouts about it. By boy scouting it, they cut themselves short.

A developing story in Texas

Matt Baum:
As of June 4th, Thursday night, when I’m editing this, we still haven’t heard from Texas. We still don’t know what these proposed regulations mean or who to even talk to about them. Therein lies the insanity of the hemp business right now. All people like Jim are asking is tell us the rules and make those rules apply to every state so we can adhere to them. I can’t think of another business in the world that is asking for this much regulation. Here is hemp saying tell us what to do and we’ll do it, but when it comes down to individual states making rules that only apply to those states, you end up in a quagmire, just like this where three of the most important states working in the hemp business right now could be excluded from retail in Texas, one of the largest markets in the United States, and that is insane.
Now, I’m not trying to demonize Texas. I’m not saying there’s anything fundamentally wrong with Texas. In fact, in our next story, we’re going to hear a really nice story about Texas, but this is a perfect example of where the federal government needs to step in and make these guidelines so they can apply to every state. Jim and I went on to talk about how Mitch McConnell, the Senator from Kentucky, who’s been an important Kentucky hemp advocate is noticeably silent and absent of late. Yes, there’s a lot of stuff going on right now between COVID and protests against racial injustice, both of which are important and need our attention, but at the same time, when you have a discussion of regulation like this, that ends on the 8th of June, four days from now, and we can’t get an answer, that is scary and that could set a precedent.
Jim isn’t alone here. He gave me the contact information for Jana Groda, who is the vice president of the Kentucky Hemp Industry Association, who has also reached out and can’t get any information out of Texas yet. My initial plan was to reach out and find out for myself, but I can’t get that information either. So, we’re going to continue to follow this one and I’ll let you know, and here’s hoping the Jim is wrong and this is just some strangely worded regulations.
No, it’s not all weird, confusing, bad news coming out of Texas. There’s some good stories too. My next guest, his name is Michael Tullis and he is the proprietor and owner of Early Fruit Hemp in Lubbock, Texas. You might know Lubbock as the birthplace of Buddy Holly. It’s a smallish Texas town in northeast Texas with a population about 250,000 people. I was surprised to hear how well a small hemp business could do in a town like this. Here’s my conversation with Michael Tullis of Early Hemp.
Tell me your story. How do you end up in the hemp world as a small retailer in Lubbock, Texas of all places.

Selling hemp in Lubbock, Texas

Michael Tullis:
Completely by accident. So, really I was interested in hemp and I started seeing on the shelves here in Lubbock and I was like, “Wow, that’s really cool. Let me buy one of these pre-rolls to test it out and see how it goes.” I liked the idea of it really, but I didn’t like that product at all.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. It didn’t smoke good. It didn’t taste good. Nothing.

Matt Baum:
How long ago was this? When was this?

Michael Tullis:
So man, it started showing up around here around 2018. Maybe the end of it is probably when I first noticed it.

Matt Baum:
So just a couple of years ago?

Michael Tullis:
So, [crosstalk 00:16:04] here in Lubbock a couple of years. Yeah. I honestly never even heard of smoking hemp flower. I knew CBD oil was getting pretty popular. So, I was just taking it back and decided to give it a shot.

Matt Baum:
So, that was … you tried it and you were like, “I’m going to do this. I’m going for it.”

Michael Tullis:
I was like, “Well, I’m now going to do this if this is what it’s going to be like.” But, I do like cannabis a lot and I have for a long time. So, I figured I’d try some more out and did some research and I found some really cool farms that are doing some really good stuff. Mostly up in Oregon, but across the country. By the time, I tried a bunch of different products of theirs, I decided I might as well go at it myself, see if they’ll open up any deals with me. So, I’ve got a couple of farms that are working with me, I guess, wholesale. Producing everything there from seed to packaging, which is really cool. It’s really small naturally craft type product.

Matt Baum:
So, not that I expect you to be like a full on hemp scientist here, but you said when you first tried smokable flower hemp, you didn’t like it. Do you know … What went into the process of deciding “I know I don’t want it to be like that.” What is the process of improving it, I guess? What process you went through to-

Michael Tullis:
I mean, I smoked prerolls before not hemp marijuana prerolls. I mean, I kind of know what they’re supposed to smoke like, know what the insides of them look like. This one didn’t didn’t work at all after several attempts. So, I opened it up and it was like a powder. It wasn’t even … and there was little metal pieces in there. It was like really sketchy. I’m like, “It just looks like they just scraped together something out of a grinder at the end of a long day.” I guess I didn’t really think that I could do it better, but that there was definitely someone out there who was doing it better or it wouldn’t be a thing. [crosstalk 00:18:03]

Matt Baum:
Sure. Was that you guys your first product, the flower, or did you start with tinctures and whatnot?

Michael Tullis:
The flower was where we started. We realized pretty quickly that people wanted the tinctures more than anything or the salves. A lot of people want the gummies too, which is pretty crazy. I’ve never even tried the gummy myself.

Matt Baum:
I’ve tried a few and there’s a few I’ve liked, but it’s definitely not my favorite delivery system.

Michael Tullis:
Really?

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Michael Tullis:
I’ve heard they’re pretty good [crosstalk 00:18:34]

Matt Baum:
Yeah. Like anything, it depends who’s doing it right and what they’re putting in it. Right?

Michael Tullis:
Right. Right. So, these same farms that I was getting flower from, they were rolling out their own tinctures and their own salves around the same time. So, I just asked them for some of those. I hooked it up and some of them didn’t work as good as others. It took some time to weed through some farms, but we’ve found some really good tinctures as well.

Hemp at the farmers’ market

Matt Baum:
Nice. The majority of your business, is it online or is it local? Is it people from Lubbock coming to Early Hemp or Early Fruit? I keep saying Early Hemp. Sorry. Early Fruit.

Michael Tullis:
No, it’s okay. The majority of our business is local, which is really cool. So, we set up a booth at a farmer’s market once a week. That’s about all we do here, but the response has been amazing.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. It blew me away. I didn’t think at all that Lubbock, Texas would respond well to a cannabis company.

Matt Baum:
Is Texas hemp friendly? I mean, I know they’ve got some fairly good laws there. In the beginning of this show, I’m actually discussing an issue with some verbiage in their latest rules that are coming out for CBD and hemp in Texas. From your experience as a small business person opening a small hemp business, has it been friendly? Have you felt pushback?

Michael Tullis:
Actually, I haven’t felt any pushback at all.

Matt Baum:
Wow. That’s great.

Michael Tullis:
I haven’t had anyone … I’ve had a couple of people who will come up and give me their opinion about it, but that’s not the law coming up and giving me their opinion bottom online.

Matt Baum:
Sure. As far as like administrative or governmental, it-

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. Nothing’s been a problem at all. Banks around here were an issue for a minute.

Matt Baum:
I can see that being tough definitely.

Michael Tullis:
Finding a small bank, I think was the trick. A lot of the big banks were still scared, but [crosstalk 00:20:28] local banks, they’ll help you out.

Matt Baum:
You’re dealing with a local bank?

Michael Tullis:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
That’s amazing. That’s totally amazing. What about like credit card processing? You don’t have to tell me who you’re using, but I assume that was difficult to get that going.

Michael Tullis:
It was pretty hard. The company ended up with, there was supposedly a six week wait, ended up actually being 12 weeks. So, we got pushed back pretty far, yeah, at the beginning.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, that’s great. It just sucks right now because everyone is so terrified that at any minute it could be made illegal again. So, major credit card processors are still scared and waiting for the FDA to say, “Nope, it’s okay.” Or … It’s bizarre. What do you think your biggest challenge has been so far? So, for Early Fruit.

Challenges at every step

Michael Tullis:
Really, I think every step of the way has been the biggest challenge. But, once I got banking, it kind of went downhill from there. Everything started falling into place. So, I would say that was it and-

Matt Baum:
The whole discussion with the local banks, getting that set up, was it … this is literally just you face to face saying like, “Look, this is what I want to do. I believe there’s a market here.” You can tell by state law and the farm bill that it’s legal and they were receptive? They were just like, “Michael, we like the cut of your jib. Let’s do this.”

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. It took a few tries and it took a few banks, but I eventually got … I guess I have to get the right pitch down.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough.

Michael Tullis:
They were pretty welcoming. They weren’t too surprised. I guess maybe a few people have been trying around that time and they were willing.

Matt Baum:
That’s great. That is a much better story than I’ve heard from a lot of other people in different states.

Michael Tullis:
I know. I was terrified the whole time. I was like, “Man, this is going to be the hardest thing in the world.” But-

Matt Baum:
Oh yeah. Convincing people that you’re not a marijuana salesman, right?

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. Around here, it’s pretty hard. There’s not too much education on the difference between hemp and marijuana around here.

Matt Baum:
You guys are maintaining a blog on your site. That’s really good. I checked out, by the way, for education-

Michael Tullis:
Well, thank you. Thank you.

Matt Baum:
What about like locally? What are you doing for … Are you doing anything to try and educate the local populace?

Michael Tullis:
Just kind of while I’m there I’m providing as much education as I can answering questions, things like that, but no, I’m not really an outreach person. I even have trouble even typing up these little blogs that I post.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Michael Tullis:
It’s just some severe stage fright that eventually maybe I’ll get over. But, for now I think I’m doing pretty good getting some education out at the farmer’s market that I go to.

Matt Baum:
Cool. What do you see-

Michael Tullis:
Now, if they want more, they know where to find me.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, right on. What do you see the future for Early Hemp? What are you hoping for? Are you going to try and get into your own farming or you just want to be an out like a retail outlet?

Planting hemp in Texas

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. So, it started as a retail outlet, just trying to get something quality here in Lubbock. Since then, it’s worked and I’ve met a lot of great people. I’ve built some relationships in the hemp industry, which is really crazy. So, I’m actually looking to … not looking to. We just planted 16,000 plants.

Matt Baum:
Oh man!

Michael Tullis:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
That’s huge.

Michael Tullis:
Where we grow in our own this season.

Matt Baum:
Wow.

Michael Tullis:
We’re a little bit late into it, but I think it’ll still work out fine. Texas stays hot.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Michael Tullis:
It doesn’t cool off for most of the [crosstalk 00:24:05]

Matt Baum:
Not too much. No. Barring catastrophic climate change, which is a reality.

Michael Tullis:
My gosh, these days, anything can happen.

Matt Baum:
Tell me about it. So, do you have processing set up? 16,000 plants, that’s not exactly a small experiment you’re jumping into, is it?

Michael Tullis:
No. I tried to keep it as small as possible, but I’ve got some friends that talked me into crazy things.

Matt Baum:
We all do, I suppose.

Michael Tullis:
Right.

Matt Baum:
How are you guys going to go about processing that?

Michael Tullis:
I’m not quite sure. I know we’ve got a place to dry it, which is the scariest part. If you think about that many plants, that’s a big facility.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. That’s like an airport hangar, right?

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. Gosh, I hope we don’t need that much, but yeah, it’s really going to be a lot. So, we’ve got that figured out. As far as processing, we’ve got a few different options. Unfortunately, not many here in Texas.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Michael Tullis:
Yet. Hopefully, within the next couple of years, they’ll start filling in. Well, we’d like to just do something simple with it. If we need to take it and extract it with ethanol ourselves, hopefully not, we’d rather have a CO2 extraction, something a little more pure.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Michael Tullis:
But, if we have to, and then get into our own products. If even the grow itself works, we’ll be able to get our own tinctures and our own salves made and hopefully our own smokable flower. We’re growing outdoors though, so it’s not really aiming for that this year.

Matt Baum:
Are there rules against that right now in Texas?

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. Yeah. There’s rules against a lot of stuff. Manufacturing and producing and even retail smokable, hemp I think right now is all really questionable.

Matt Baum:
So, it has to come from like greenhouses more or less.

Michael Tullis:
Yeah or out of state.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. So, do you truly are in the experimental phase right now? You’re like, “Let’s see if this stuff will even grow, basically.”

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. Yeah. So, really this whole thing started off as an experiment. A year and a half ago, I didn’t think I was going to be even successful doing retail much less have an opportunity to really dive into the hemp industry, really dive into growing and learning everything that I’ve learned. So, I guess at this point, I’m happy if everything just shuts down and it doesn’t work. From here on out, I learned a lot and I had a great time.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough. I like that attitude.

Michael Tullis:
I’ve surrounded myself with a lot of really good people.

Matt Baum:
It’s fantastic.

Michael Tullis:
Right. Thank you.

Matt Baum:
You’re like, “Oh, I learned a lot and I can take that away.” Good for you, man.

Michael Tullis:
Thank you. Thank you.

Matt Baum:
I’d be terrified person.

Michael Tullis:
I have a lot of really smart people around me too. I’ve got some brilliant people, so I’m not … maybe not as scared as I should be.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough. How many people you’re working with on this project?

Michael Tullis:
There’s four of us that are working on a project and then [inaudible 00:27:13] got a couple extra people helping out.

Matt Baum:
That is awesome. So, you said hopefully you would like to have it processed somewhere and then you want to turn it into your own tinctures, your own oils and topicals and whatnot.

Michael Tullis:
That’s the plan. That’s my plan for it anyways. We’ll see what everyone else wants to do.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Michael Tullis:
But, we’re all moving in that direction. It’d be nice to be able to brand it and get our own products out there. So, we’re doing this … My store this kind of small batch from farm to table type product and I’d like to be able to do that for myself, integrate my own … in that direction as well, you know?

Matt Baum:
Then it’s world domination after that. Right?

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. If I can take care of my house first, but you should let me take over the world, we’ll have a good time.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, that’s important. Definitely. I’ve talked to people in LA and Minneapolis and Seattle, but not a lot of small town hemp retailers out there right now. So, it’s cool that something like this can even work in Lubbock.

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. I thought so too. Hopefully, it stays working.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, man. I hope the best for you. I appreciate the flower that you sent me. It was fantastic, by the way. I really enjoyed it.

Michael Tullis:
Really? Yeah, I’m glad you liked it.

Matt Baum:
Definitely.

Michael Tullis:
Glad you liked it.

Matt Baum:
I’ll have links to Michael’s Early Hemp site in the notes of this episode. I was really fortunate and glad that I could get two stories from Texas, one that’s kind of weird and hopefully turns out to be good and one that just is good. A small business run by a local proprietor who’s trying to spread the word through education and quality products. I think it really illustrates how somebody who cares about hemp and CBD and does their homework and works with the right people and seeks to educate their local populace can succeed no matter where they are. I hope if you’re listening, you’ll throw a click Michael’s way and at least check out his site.

Black Lives Matter: Final thoughts from Matt

That is it for another episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting. If you haven’t had a chance yet, please head over to Patreon\ministryofhemp and become a ministry of hemp insider. It will get you early access to our articles, extra content, podcast extras and more importantly, it helps us spread the good word of hemp.
If you dig the show and you believe in what we’re doing, please help out. If you can’t, that’s fine too. You can write a review of this show or leave it a star rating on your podcast app. It really does help to get this information to other people. If you need more Ministry of Hemp, you can follow us on Twitter, on Facebook, we’re everywhere on social media at ministryofhemp\ministryofhemp, and we’re always publishing amazing stories over at ministryofhemp.com. Like a story about hemp masks that are offering sustainable personal safety during the COVID-19 crisis.
Now, I know we’re trying to return to work and return to life and whatnot, but you still need to wear a mask. If you want to do so and make a statement and do it sustainably, why not wear a mask made of hemp fabric. There’s also a great post about how to maintain focus while working at home without guzzling gallons of coffee, which is something I am very guilty of.
At the Ministry of Hemp, we believe that an accessible world is a better world for everyone. So, we will have a full written transcript of this show in the show notes for this episode. Before I end the show with my usual sign off, I want to say that the Ministry of Hemp and myself stand with Black Lives Matter and stand with the protestors and support everyone that is out there right now fighting the good fight, but please, please take care of yourself. COVID-19 is still very much a reality. So, please wear a mask, wash your hands, take care of yourself, take care of others and make good decisions, will you? This is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp podcast signing off.

The post Texas Hemp Stories: Will New Regulations Endanger Texas Hemp? appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

“It was voted out of the House and the Senate unanimously,” said Coleman Hemphill, president of the Texas Hemp Industries Association, a recently formed chapter of the national Hemp Industries Association nonprofit. Ministry of Hemp is also a member of the HIA.

HB 1325 passed the legislature and was sent for signature on May 26. Texas Governor Greg Abbott is expected to sign the bill into law. However, it’s unclear when farmers will actually be able to plant the crop.

UPDATE June 29, 2019: On June 29, 2019, Gov. Abbott signed the hemp bill into law. -KO

“Texas will have to wait until the USDA puts out its [hemp growing] rules, which who knows when that will happen,” said Hemphill.

Predictions for the release official federal guidelines on hemp growing vary from late this year to sometime in 2020.

The bill also clarifies the legality of CBD oil supplements in Texas. Everyday people would be allowed to possess and consume CBD, a massively popular nutritional supplement derived from hemp with numerous benefits. However, CBD sales would be limited to permitted establishments, a process that will be overseen by the state’s health department.

Hemphill was optimistic the licensing process would remain simple and not shut out existing or smaller vendors.

“It should be pretty broad and open,” he said.

The Lone Star State, with its abundant space and long fertile growing season, could be a powerhouse in the growing national hemp industry someday.

A CLEAR PATH FORWARD FOR HEMP IN TEXAS

The bill sets forth clear guidelines for the Texas Department of Agriculture.

These guidelines include limits on the amount and type of fees that can be collected. Fees for applying for a hemp growing license would be limited to $100, with additional limited fees per hemp growing site. The state is also allowed to collect fees if it performs testing for THC levels. Following the current international standards, industrial hemp cannot have more than 0.3% THC. That’s far below the amount present in psychoactive cannabis that makes people feel high.

However, unlike many other hemp growing programs in the U.S., farmers who accidentally grow hemp that tests “hot” (above 0.3% THC) won’t necessarily be forced to destroy their crop.

“It can either be processed into fiber or it can be further processed to below the 0.3 threshhold,” Hemphill told us.

Texas hemp guidelines are expected to overall follow federal guidelines, including those around people with drug convictions. Under the guidelines set forth under the 2018 Farm Bill, many people felony drug convictions would be barred from being a producer in the hemp industry.

Additionally, because Texas did not participate in earlier hemp “research” programs set forth under the 2014 Farm Bill, state officials probably won’t issue hemp growing licenses until the USDA publishes its guidelines.

The bill also prohibits the in-state production (but not sales or use) of smokable hemp products.

CBD REGISTRATION PROCESS TO BE DETERMINED

While stores throughout Texas already sell CBD oil, it’s legal status has been unclear until now.

Although the 2018 Farm Bill removes hemp from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of banned controlled substances, the Food & Drug Administration continues to express concerns about the legality of CBD in food or supplements. There have been a few police raids on Texas CBD stores and even arrests at Texas airports over CBD.

HB 1325 should provide clarity around these issues.

“This bill does explicitly allow for CBD in food products and in animal products,” he explained.

The Texas Department of State Health Services will create the guidelines for registration. Hemphill hopes hemp advocates like his organization can ensure the process is fair and easily accessible. Large vendors with multiple locations, such as grocery stores, would only need to obtain one license for their entire operation.

Hemphill doesn’t like that the bill implies that hemp is harmful by requiring vendors to be licensed. CBD has few side effects and the World Health Organization has noted that CBD is very safe with no potential for abuse.

However, he’s also hopeful the process could be good for customers. Some states require CBD vendors to offer third-party lab results and other information about the quality of their products. Similar regulations could protect Texas CBD buyers.

TEXAS HEMP INDUSTRY COULD BE POWERFUL

With unanimous support by Texas legislators, Hemphill sees few remaining hurdles to the future of hemp in Texas.

Though the growing season would allow a fall planting of hemp in the state, unfortunately he doesn’t think farmers will be allowed to plant before spring of 2020 at the earliest.

Support for CBD and hemp comes amid continued resistance to psychoactive cannabis. Bills to legalize recreational cannabis or expand Texas’ extremely limited medical marijuana program failed to pass. They’re expected to be reintroduced in 2021, the next time the state legislature meets.

Ministry of Hemp will continue to closely follow hemp in Texas in the future. We expect the Lone Star State to be a major player in this growing industry, which is predicted to reach almost $2 billion in sales by 2022.

The post Legal Hemp In Texas: Lone Star State Legalizes Industrial Hemp appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

Ministry of Hemp got CBD facials and talked with Culture Trip‘s U.S. Editor, Jillian Anthony, during SXSW 2019!

Restart CBD and Dawn Evans of Synergy Skincare & Spa paired up to give SXSW attendees a relaxing & restorative CBD facial. Both are women-owned businesses in Austin, Texas.

Visit Restart CBD

• 9705 Burnet Rd #314,
  Austin, TX 78758
• Homepage
• On Facebook
• On Instagram

Visit Synergy Skincare & Spa

• Homepage
• On Facebook
• On Instagram

The post Getting CBD Facials At SXSW With Culture Trip (VIDEO) appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In our new spotlight series we are going to visit places and people within the hemp industry!

Our first stop is the Joy Organics store in Austin, Texas. We got to talk with owner Danielle Cearbaugh and get some insight into what Joy Organics is about and what she wants you to know about buying quality CBD. We also got to try Joy Organics’ CBD Energy Drink, which comes in a delicious “Happy Berry” flavor.

Bonus: Use coupon code mof15 for 15 percent off online Joy Organics orders!

Visit Joy Organics Austin

Joy Organics
902 N Lamar Blvd
Austin, TX 78703

More Information

• Joy Organics Austin
• On Instagram
• On Facebook

The post Spotlight: Visiting The Joy Organics Austin Store appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

That’s the message of the Texas Hemp and Garden Show, which took place on March 13 and 14 in Austin, Texas, at a downtown nightclub near the heart of the popular SXSW festival and not far from the capitol building.

2018 marked the Hemp and Garden Show’s second year, and there were about a dozen different vendors or organizations represented when I dropped in on the second day. Activists helped passersby fill out voter registration cards on the sidewalk, a DJ spun tunes from a small stage outside, and inside a succession of experts spoke about topics ranging from agriculture to the war on drugs. At night, musicians took over for the speakers including a surprise appearance from rapper Lil’ Flip.

“To get the vendors from other states that have legal programs interested in showcasing here in Austin was very exciting,” said Mónica Enriquez, one of the organizers of the event.

https://youtu.be/W3ybaPp2xwM

Enriquez saw the Texas Hemp and Garden Show as an opportunity to educate locals about this beneficial but misunderstood plant while simultaneously bringing national attention to the state’s burgeoning hemp industry. While Texas hasn’t yet legalized industrial hemp, there are signs of slow progress for cannabis in the region.

‘WE’RE GOING TO BE THE BEST STATE’: A FUTURE FOR TEXAS HEMP

“A lot of people are surprised that Texas does have a medical marijuana program in effect,” explained Enriquez. “Once upon a time, Gov. Greg Abbott said that would never happen under his tenure so that’s already a very promising sign of some change for us.”

Under the current program in Texas, a very limited number of patients with severe epilepsy are able to access low-THC CBD oil made from cannabis grown in the state, but there’s already talk of expanding the program to include more residents.

While hemp research is legal nationwide under the 2014 Farm Bill, the law left it up to each individual state to create a legal hemp program, something Texas has resisted so far. Enriquez credits groups like the Texas MAMMAs (Mothers Advocating Medical Marijuana for Autism) with changing attitudes for the better. Another group working on legalization, and one which had a booth at the Hemp and Garden Show, is Foundation For An Informed Texas, which is focusing on educating rural parts of the state about the benefits of cannabis.

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The Texas legislature won’t meet again until early 2019, giving advocates like Enriquez time to build a groundswell of support for changing Texas hemp law.

“With the legal program there, we’re not going to be the last state, and hopefully we’re going to be the best state,” she said.

“We’re very hopeful for Texas and obviously if federal law changes than our battle is won.”

TEXAS HEMP AND GARDEN SHOW CREATES EDUCATION & NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES

Along with her husband, Enriquez started Lazy Daze Counterculture, an Austin smoke shop that soon expanded to multiple locations around the country. This led the pair to found Texas Green Rusht to help entrepreneurs and other Texas hemp advocates and professionals network and support each other through shared challenges.

“There’s a lot of different issues that come up running a business in this industry even though our business has nothing to do with touching the plant,” she said.

This in turn led to the creation of the Hemp and Garden Show to capitalize on the massive influx of attention and visitors SXSW brings to Austin. “We really wanted to show what Texas has to offer the rest of the country when it comes to this industry.”

One highlight of the show was a panel of Texas veterans advocating for access to medical marijuana. “That was a very exciting panel, my father’s a veteran and the veteran issue is very important, for us to provide that service to those who have served us.”

In addition to several different CBD brands and a pretzel vendor (they were delicious!), the show also featured a booth representing Dr. Bronners and their Hemp History Week organization.

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Another unique vendor was Colorado Hemp Honey, which offered CBD oil infused honey in a variety of flavors. I grabbed a jar of the ginger flavor and hope to review it in the future here on Ministry of Hemp.

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“It really was like a ‘Field of Dreams’ experience — if you build it they will come — and we were really excited that other people were excited about what we were doing,” Enriquez told me.

If the enthusiastic response to the Hemp and Garden show is any indication, then hemp has a bright future in Texas.

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