ANALYSIS: How Congress Created a Legal Market for THC—By Mistake

Congress’s legalization of hemp-derived tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in 2018 is the most far-reaching move by the legislature to ease federal cannabis restrictions in recent history, and it happened by accident.

The hemp provisions in the 2018 Farm Bill were intended to remove hemp from the federal controlled substances list and to regulate it instead as an agricultural commodity. However, because the Farm Bill’s definition of hemp only prohibited one form of THC—the compound most commonly associated with a cannabis “high"—its enactment de facto legalized every other intoxicating cannabinoid that hemp can produce.

Attorneys general from 20 states and Washington, D.C. signed ...