The Senate Judiciary Committee spent close to three hours Thursday afternoon discussing a committee substitute for Senate Bill 546, which would update the state’s list of controlled substances.
About a dozen community members were invited to the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday afternoon to discuss issues around the banning of three substances in a meeting that stretched for hours, before a confusing ending.
The committee spent close to three hours discussing a committee substitute for Senate Bill 546, which would update the state’s list of controlled substances.
The bill would add dozens of substances to the state code, but the committee’s discussion focused on three substances: the hemp-derived cannabinoids Delta 8 and Delta 10, as well as the derivative of a Southeast Asian plant with opioid-like properties known as Kratom.
Sen. Mike Stuart, R-Kanawha, is the bill’s lead sponsor. Throughout discussion, he compared the current situation of Delta 8, Delta 10 and Kratom in West Virginia to the start of the opioid epidemic.
“We’re seeing similarities today to what we saw at the beginning of the opiate crisis,” Stuart said. “If we could go back in time and make a change to what happened to this countryside in West Virginia, I think we would have made those changes.”
As written, the bill would put the three substances in Schedule 1, along with opiates, methamphetamine and psychedelics such as LSD. Stuart’s argument, supported by several guests including a police lieutenant, a psychiatrist specializing in addiction and the Poison Control Center, revolved around not only the danger of the substances, but specifically their ease of availability.
“The drug normalization of America knows no partisanship or socio-economical notation,” Stuart said. “This is not going to be an easy vote, because it’s become so widely dispersed throughout West Virginia.”
Other senators asked why the substances under discussion didn’t merit regulation instead of a full ban. Sen. Mike Caputo, D-Marion, asked as much of Amy Minor, the director of regulatory and environmental affairs with the West Virginia Department of Agriculture.
Minor’s office already regulates the legitimate production and sale of industrial hemp products in the state, including Delta 8 and Delta 10. Some Delta 8 and Delta 10 products sold in the state are illicit, and there is currently no regulation of Kratom in West Virginia.
“You definitely support an age restriction just the same as we do alcohol, same as we do tobacco, same as we do medical cannabis?” Caputo asked.
Minor said the Department of Agriculture was in favor of an age restriction of 18 years and older.
“Yeah, I don’t know why we don’t have it for this. I would rather see us, Mr. Chairman, moving in a direction of a regulation rather than what direction we’re moving here, but I’m just one opinion,” Caputo said.
Caputo’s point was supported by several guests, including an industrial hemp farmer and a woman who uses Kratom to mitigate symptoms of Lyme Disease.
More than two hours into the meeting, there were still several witnesses who had not been heard and the chairman, Sen. Charles Trump, R-Morgan, indicated a desire to adjourn and reconvene Friday to continue hearing testimony. However, the committee was thrown into procedural confusion after Sen. Laura Chapman, R-Ohio, unexpectedly moved to vote on the bill, ending public testimony and committee discussion.
After several other procedural motions, including a motion to adjourn the meeting in lieu of a vote, Trump was required to consult with the Senate parliamentarian, who informed him that the motion to vote would need to be carried through.
“I have no no more to say except for we heard all this testimony. I think that we’re all tired, but we all know how we’re going to vote on this and we should just agree to the language,” Chapman said.
The committee agreed on the language of the committee substitute for Senate Bill 546 and moved to report the same to the House. However, no bill was reported to the Senate from the Judiciary Committee Friday morning.
John Fuller is waiting for another farmer he’s never met before to talk about a situation he never imagined he would be in.
It’s an overcast January day on his farm in west Kentucky, where he grew 18 acres of hemp last year, investing more than $250,000 of his own cash. He’s one of nearly 1,000 licensed hemp growers in 2019 who helped grow Kentucky’s biggest hemp crop since the state reintroduced it, trying to cash in on what could be a $1 billion industry for CBD products made from hemp.
But now, Fuller is wondering how much of that investment he’ll get back.
“There’s some pirates that are out here. Just pirates. Us trying to get with a good, ethical processor has been a real, real challenge for us,” Fuller said.
Later that morning, Bobby Huff arrives after driving more than two hours from Clinton County. By coincidence, both men are pharmacists turned hemp farmers, who saw potential in the alleged medicinal properties of CBD.
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Ohio Valley ReSource
John Fuller (left) and Bobby Huff (right) inside Fuller’s high tunnel.
Both men are also among dozens of hemp farmers who had contracted to grow the crop for the hemp processing company Bluegrass Bioextracts in Owensboro, Kentucky, owned by local businessmen who would dry the hemp and turn it into CBD oil.
But in November, the local business owners announced they were selling the company to a Nevada limited liability company, DTEC Ventures. The same month, Fuller received emails from the company saying the deal was off: the company said their crop tested positive for heavy metals and couldn’t be accepted. But Fuller was suspicious.
“We went back and tested our soil and tested our product…and our independent labs that we’re sending it to say ‘no heavy metals,’” Fuller said. “So what’s the deal? You know, Bluegrass has stopped accepting hemp?”
One of the new operators of the company in an email to Fuller then claimed the company couldn’t accept farmers’ hemp because of “increased scrutiny” from state and federal regulatory agencies. When Fuller reached out through email to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture to verify this claim, a KDA official said there had been no regulatory change.
The contracts that Huff, Fuller and dozens of other farmers had signed — promising potentially around $40 per pound of CBD-rich hemp for thousands of pounds of their harvest — were now just pieces of paper.
“It really makes me angry,” Fuller said. “I can get by with my day job if this whole farming thing tanked, but the farmers that used hemp in place of tobacco for last year, they’re not going to get paid for their crop.”
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Huff (left) and Fuller (right), next to a small hemp processing machine.
The former local owners of the company now have sued DTEC Ventures for $69 million in part for failing to fulfill contracts to farmers. John Fuller held a press conference at his farm with several other contracted farmers to raise awareness about their situation. The former company owners declined to comment because of the litigation. Representatives for DTEC Ventures didn’t respond to several requests for comment.
For many other farmers in Kentucky and across the country, the hopes of a financial windfall from hemp to be a saving grace from faltering markets in tobacco, soybean and corn, has hit a harsh reality. Amid boundless rhetoric touting the potential of the new crop that many still see, some farmers suspect they’re facing unfair treatment and empty promises, wondering who and what they can trust.
Boom To Bust
With the federal government legalizing growing hemp in the latest Farm Bill, Kentucky saw a rush of interest in cultivating the crop, particularly to make CBD products. The 972 hemp growers licensed last year were over four times more growers than in 2018. The number of hemp acres harvested also quadrupled, up to 24,900 acres, and 92 percent of those acres were grown for CBD products.
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Several states also grew hemp for the first time last year, with other leading hemp states including Colorado and Montana seeing a spike in their production. That large supply led to a nationwide glut of hemp. CBD-rich hemp is often sold by the percent of CBD measured in each pound of hemp.
“When we started out 2019, I had $5 per percent CBD. Fast forward to the end of 2019. Now, we’re looking at less than $1 per percent CBD. That’s a huge change,” said Tyler Mark, assistant professor of production economics at the University of Kentucky.
Mark said that glut has led to a subsequent price crash for CBD-rich hemp, and the substantial profit margins expected have now disappeared for many.
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Colorado-based analytics firm PanXchange tracked the average selling price of hemp at $4.35 per percent CBD in each pound of hemp in July of 2019. By January, the price was at 74 cents. Mark said the crash is also partially because the true demand for CBD products and hemp isn’t yet known.
But because of that uncertainty, some hemp processing companies could be struggling to fulfill contracts signed with farmers when hemp markets were booming.
“If the processors did not have a contract locked in to sell those final products so that they could afford those types of contracts that they originally signed at the beginning of the year, they’ve got definite cash flow problems,” Mark said.
Another prominent Kentucky hemp processing company has struggled to pay its bills in what’s turned into a prolonged court dispute over an unfinished construction site.
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An overview of GenCanna’s unfinished processing facility in Graves County, August of 2019.
GenCanna, based in Winchester, Kentucky, announced in late 2018 it was investing $40 million to build a second hemp processing facility in Graves County, signing up farmers throughout the state to grow hemp for the company.
As construction continued at the site, the first lien against the property was filed in early September: the Hannan Supply Company in Paducah alleged their company was owed over $250,000 for construction materials and labor.
Dozens of construction-related liens have been filed against the facility site since then, ballooning to more than $32 million combined as of late December. GenCanna also had to layoff 60 employees last year, after being a title sponsor of the Kentucky State Fair, buying billboard space across west Kentucky, and sponsoring a statewide tour for Kentucky Sports Radio.
In late January, construction company Pinnacle, Inc., based in Benton, Kentucky, pressed for GenCanna to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy because of the overdue bills. GenCanna relented on Thursday, filing for bankruptcy in federal court.
“[GenCanna was] trying to float too much money and grow way too quickly. I think that is probably one of the biggest problems in the hemp industry is greed, and not working for what a company is worth,” said Tate Hall, President of the Kentucky Hemp Industries Association. “They should have never announced or upgraded that facility if it wasn’t going to be built in time or they couldn’t finance the building.”
Hall said GenCanna’s situation isn’t unique, as some processors in the state and elsewhere in the country expanded too fast for the hemp market to stabilize. He said that left contracted farmers in many instances out of luck in getting paid. In the case of GenCanna, he’s concerned construction companies with more resources may be paid back by GenCanna before contracted farmers.
“Just because they filed ‘Chapter 11’ don’t mean anything with GenCanna. That’s a long way from being over, and I can guarantee you those contractors are not going away. You can’t just wipe your debt off,” Hall said. “I’m 100 percent for those contractors and farmers.”
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The unfinished construction site of GenCanna’s processing facility in Graves County, in August of 2019.
GenCanna representatives did not respond to several requests for comment. The Associated Press reported last month GenCanna said that contract payments to farmers were up to date.
Acela CBD in Maysville, Kentucky, is another hemp processor where farmers are concerned about their contracts.
“If I’m going to go down, they’re going to go with me,” said Marty Voiers, who grew two acres of hemp in Lewis County for Acela. “My dad said ‘you better be careful doing it.’ He warned a bunch about it. I didn’t listen to him.”
Voiers said he took out a line of credit to pay for labor and infrastructure to grow his hemp, including a new water line. While he said he did get paid for a single bag of hemp, because there isn’t any language in his contract on when farmers are required to get paid, he’s not sure when his full payment will come for the more than a dozen of other bags of hemp he harvested.
Kevin Burton, another farmer in Mason County who grew 1.5 acres of hemp for Acela, said he’s considering selling other parts of his farm if he doesn’t get the full payment he’s expecting.
Burton said in his experience raising cattle, stockyards have escrow accounts to pay farmers immediately when they bring cattle in, instead of waiting until cattle are marketed.
“I may have to sell some cows or sell some equipment. I got payments I have to make.” Burton said. “They contract you to raise the crop. You raise the crop and deliver it, and they say ‘well, you’re going to have to wait on your money.’”
He believes something similar should be set up for the hemp, and that farmers shouldn’t have to wait for payment. “That’s a bad job. That should not happen,” he said.
Acela CEO Andrew Culbertson confirmed that contracts with their more than 100 growers did not have language on when payments have to be made. He said their company is still paying out contracts to farmers.
But he said a reason the payments to farmers might be delayed is because of the glut in supply. Other competitors to Acela are also trying to sell hemp in an already flooded market, making it difficult to sell Acela’s hemp and reimburse farmers.
“We cut checks last week, we’re cutting checks this week, and I’m sure we’ll be cutting checks next week,” Culbertson said.
Over-Hyped?
As contract disputes and court battles continue, some farmers feel led on by processors, the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, and other stakeholders in the industry.
“Ain’t that one hell of a selling point for your industry if you’re going to go out here and spout off all this stuff about how it’s gonna be the agricultural savior of the state,” said Jamie Shaddock, a Shelby County farmer contracted with Bluegrass Bioextracts. “And then at the end of it you say ‘but don’t invest more than you can lose.’ Now what kind of bullshit is that?”
Shaddock said he doesn’t raise burley tobacco anymore because the prices for the crop have stagnated for decades, and he isn’t sure what he can raise now that will be profitable. He’s currently sitting on 25,000 pounds of harvested hemp that he’s invested at least $140,000, weighing his options.
The Burley Tobacco Growers’ Cooperative in August voted to purchase $1 million in hemp to sell CBD oil, as a way to diversify and save the faltering organization. Now, an attorney is pushing to have the cooperative dissolved and $30 million of its assets distributed to growers.
Others in the turbulent industry also believe hemp’s financial potential was overhyped and the risk underplayed, but the answer of who is responsible is less clear.
“That hype came from all over the place. I mean, even Kentucky legislators and regulators who were excited about hemp maybe inflated the value of what the crops would be,” said Katie Moyer, owner of hemp processor Kentucky Hemp Works and member of the state industrial hemp advisory board.
Moyer believes that farmers, processors, and the Kentucky Department of Agriculture all had a role to play in overhyping the industry.
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Huff (left) and Fuller (right), next to some of the thousands of pounds of hemp that Fuller has been struggling to sell.
She said many farmers came into the industry without having backup plans or an idea of what to do with the crop when it was harvested. While she considers some processors like herself acting in good faith in building honest relationships with farmers, other companies did not. She said certain regulations, like the prohibition against selling raw hemp, also hampered options for farmers.
“Some of that fault does lie with the regulators and KDA, who forced us into having to sell to processors,” Moyer said. “Because we can’t take that crop straight to market, we can’t just go sell hemp as flower, as animal feed. There’s no backup plan.”
Sale of raw hemp is prohibited because police are concerned the crop may be mistaken for its botanical cousin, marijuana. But Moyer said she still is optimistic the industry has a positive future ahead of it, and that the industry will stabilize on its own.
“In the free market, those processors that screw over one farmer, or they dropped the ball for one farmer, they won’t ever get another contract,” she said. “I think if we saw less government regulation and less intervention in the market, we would have less of these problems to begin with.”
Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles said he understands the anger that hemp farmers are feeling, and that his department is considering ways regulators could force processors to obligate contracts. Quarles instead puts the blame for industry turmoil on federal regulators.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been in the process of considering how to categorize CBD, whether as a more tightly regulated pharmaceutical or as a nutritional supplement. That decision has substantial financial implications for the industry.
“The biggest cause of this is the federal government’s lack of response towards giving an indication of how they’re going to regulate this product,” Quarles said. “We’re entering year number seven of products being on the shelf, and the FDA has yet to give us a framework in which our processors, innovators and entrepreneurs can expect to operate.”
Quarles also said the dramatic crash in hemp price is a part of the “price discovery” process that comes with a new industry. Once the true demand is found for CBD, then the industry can more easily stabilize. He said his department did emphasize risk appropriately, particularly in orientation sessions he said that licensed farmers and processors take.
But little of that matters to farmer Bobby Huff, who’s looking at the potential for big losses.
When Quarles ran for re-election as Agriculture Commissioner last year, he advocated repeatedly for the potential of hemp. Huff feels like that campaign rhetoric led on farmers like him.
For now, he’s done with it.
“It’s going to shit,” Huff said. “I’m not gonna make anything. There’s no doubt about it.”
This story has been updated to clarify Marty Voiers has received partial payment from Acela.
Tony Silvernail swings a heavy machete at a stalk of bushy hemp and chops the plant near the root, grabbing the five-foot-tall shoot with his sun-weathered hand.
It’s an unusually hot October day on his farm, Beyond The Bridge LLC, tucked in the hills outside of Frankfort, Kentucky. But the heat doesn’t faze Silvernail, sporting a sweat-soaked shirt, a huge smile, and a fat cigar between his teeth.
Silvernail and hundreds of others of farmers across the Ohio Valley are finally getting to harvest thousands of acres of hemp, the first harvest since the federal government legalized hemp cultivation last December.
“Oh, I’m happy as hell,” he said with a laugh. “We’re all like little kids, Shawn and I, getting all excited when we’re sitting here harvesting and talking. This is actually the glory part of being a farmer, as anybody whose livelihood depends on this. When you’re harvesting, it’s a happy time.”
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Tony Silvernail picks up a stalk of hemp he chopped during the harvest.
He’s been an organic farmer for decades in Kentucky, and it wasn’t until last fall when he and his business partner, Kentucky State University professor Shawn Lucas, decided to try their luck at growing organic hemp for cannabidiol, or CBD. Silvernail said when he first became an organic farmer in the ‘90s, he appreciated the advice experienced farmers shared with newcomers in the industry. But he said that hasn’t been the case with hemp.
“I’ve really adopted that sense of helping, and you didn’t really get that with the hemp industry. The hemp industry is still very closed,” he said. “So, I got in a bad mood and sitting there eating lunch with Shawn downtown, and I really came into a moment of ‘you know, we just got to do our own thing.’”
They co-founded an organic hemp cooperative for smaller hemp farmers. The cooperative purchases hemp seed and other supplies in bulk to get a better deal. It sells the members’ collective hemp harvest to processors, using the strength in numbers to bargain for better prices. And the cooperative helps farmers figure out how to even grow the crop in the first place.
Their cooperative is starting out small – 15 farmers in central Kentucky growing about 30 acres – and has already seen some challenges. They unknowingly purchased faulty seed and have had thieves stealing the crop right out of the fields. But Silvernail said it’s all part of the learning process.
“Ask us in November where our sales were at, how we all did,” Silvernail said. “We can cry on each others’ shoulders over a beer when we realized how badly we may have screwed up or what we didn’t do, but hopefully next year will be better.”
Cooperatives aren’t a new idea in farming. But they’re new in the hemp industry, and many Ohio Valley hemp growers are choosing to join cooperatives to share supplies and give small growers a better shot in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Regional agriculture leaders are championing hemp’s potential for farms of all sizes. But these hemp farmers worry that the sort of corporate consolidation they’ve seen in other agriculture sectors will soon come to the new hemp industry.
Consolidation Concerns
Hemp farmer J. Morgan Leach has already seen attempts by larger corporations to corner the hemp and CBD market.
Leach, founder of the West Virginia Farmers Cooperative, said he testified in 2017 against initial versions of a state bill, that he said would have prevented the sale of CBD products in the state unless the product was approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
That portion of the bill was supported by lobbyists from the British company GW Pharmaceuticals, the proprietor ofEpidiolex, used to treat epilepsy-caused seizures. It is currently the only CBD-derived drug approved by the FDA. Other CBD advocates that year in other states also worried about similar state legislation being pushed by the company.
Leach said initial versions of bill could have closed off a lucrative market for West Virginia hemp farmers.
“So that was one of the, I think, apparent instances where you get kind of these bigger companies that come in and try to monopolize the market,” Leach said. “We were able to overcome that and preserve this market opportunity.”
Leach doesn’t want the new hemp business to follow the route some other agricultural sectors have, such as the poultry industry.
Large poultry companies often have extensive control over a farmer’s production and pricing. That has led to amassive class-action lawsuit alleging that large firms use data to keep prices for poultry high while payment for farmers remains low.
Leach sees that as a cautionary tale about the effect larger corporations can have.
“The company owns those birds from the time they hatch to the time they purchase them, and then the farmer is stuck with the bill for raising those and the chicken house to do it. I think that’s a poor example,” Leach said. “Some are making money, but they’re totally hamstrung to the price that the company gives them, because it’s just how it goes in that industry. [Hemp] is a new frontier.”
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Hemp sprouts from the ground at a farm near Frankfort, Kentucky.
Leach founded his co-op in 2015 in part because he doesn’t want a similar situation to happen with hemp.
“That’s our goal, is to be able to keep the five-acre farmer in business even when the bigger companies move into this space,” Leach said. “A co-op is a one member, one vote organization, so all of my members hold shares of stock. That stock is restricted only to farming members. So, farmers are the entirety of the makeup of our organization.”
Leach said it’s ultimately up to the individual farmer whether they want to grow in a co-op, grow independently, or grow under contract for one of many hemp processing companies entering the business.
“I think it’s just kind of a difference in philosophy,” Leach said. “I’d just rather be part of a farming co-op where I have a voice and I have a vote.”
But Leach said he’s worried about the potential for future large-scale hemp production that could push smaller hemp growers out. By banding together, small farmers can compete with larger-scale production.
Booming Growth
Jeffery Young is an agriculture economist with Murray State University’s Center for Agricultural Hemp in west Kentucky. He agrees the potential is there for future hemp consolidation.
“I don’t want to say ‘join or die,’ but it would definitely be in a smaller operator’s best interest to join in on that,” Young said. “They wouldn’t have the acreage, or the volume or the clout that a larger operator would have.”
Young said the new industry is still years away from reaching a level of large-scale production that would pressure smaller hemp farmers. But the nascent industry is booming, and the amount of hemp grown in the Ohio Valley continues to skyrocket.
The number of hemp acres planted in Kentucky this year, compared to last year, nearly quadrupled to about 26,500 acres. West Virginia saw a similar jump with 641 acres planted, according to state agriculture officials. With zooming demand for hemp to turn into products like CBD, prices for the crop are far from set in stone.
“It depends on things like geography, what kind of processors are there nearby, how many are nearby, what variety is being grown, what quality of product is being produced,” Young said. “The market is still trying to get its sea legs, if you will. There’s a great deal more risk with hemp…and so through sharing of risk, that would would be a key benefit from forming a cooperative.”
Much of the risk comes from the learning curve many new growers face. Pesticides are still being tested to control weeds and insects, federal crop insurance for hemp won’t be available until next year, and in some cases, THC levels in hemp can spike above the federal limit that classifies the crop as hemp. THC is the psychoactive compound in marijuana, and is also present in trace amounts in hemp. Hemp with THC levels above 0.3 percent is reclassified as the crop’s illegal cannabis cousin, and has to be thrown out.
While cooperatives can shelter hemp farmers from some risk, the set-ups can bring on new perils for farmers as well. Aleta Botts, Executive Director of the Kentucky Center for Agriculture and Rural Development, works with cooperatives of all kinds to help them become sustainable.
She said because most hemp farmers are still learning how to consistently grow the crop, there’s a chance that a co-op might promise a hemp processor to grow a certain amount of hemp and fall short because of crop failures.
“We’re going to get to harvest and not have those pounds to market. So we’ve built our financials on a level that we’re not gonna be able to achieve,” said Botts.
Unlike in the rest of the Ohio Valley, Ohio farmers aren’t harvesting hemp this fall because the state only legalized growing hemp in July. But that hasn’t stopped widespread interest in growing hemp, something that was apparent at arecent summit for potential hemp farmers in southern Ohio.
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Tony Silvernail with a handful of crumbled hemp, on his farm near Frankfort, Kentucky.
“I printed off, I think, 480 some lunch tickets, and they were all gone. So the interest is huge,” said Julie Doran, who founded the Ohio Hemp Farmers Cooperative in December.
She was also one of the few critics who panned parts of the state legislation legalizing hemp cultivation in Ohio. She feared that the bill’s language setting “financial responsibility” standards could limit in-state participation in the state’s hemp program and instead favor out-of-state companies with more experience and access to capital.
Doran said she believes there’s a place for smaller farmers alongside larger investors, but she also cautions that farmers need to learn how to grow the new crop reliably before working with bigger companies that might want to grow larger acreages more quickly.
“It’s not like any other crop that they farmed,” Doran said. “Yes, corporate is going to come in and we are going to need them for an outlet to sell all this stuff, too. But we need to learn ourselves first. And, you know, get our feet wet before we jump in.”
Inside the Bluegrass Hemp Oil store in Lexington, Kentucky, the CBD oils and lotions lining the walls have an origin story — a story of a family’s struggle.
“We took a huge risk, to be perfectly honest, because we didn’t know. We weren’t trying other people’s CBD products that were out there,” Bluegrass Hemp Oil Co-owner Adriane Polyniak, said.
Polyniak’s son, Colten, began inexplicably having violent seizures in 2009 when he was three. He was diagnosed with idiopathic generalized epilepsy.
“Essentially what that means is that he went from zero seizures to hundreds of seizures in a week, and the doctors didn’t know what was causing it,” Polyniak said. “We started a game called ‘pharmaceutical roulette’ — a lot of epilepsy parents are familiar with it — where we try a lot of different types of epilepsy medication to bring seizure relief to our kids.”
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Adriane Polyniak, posing by her products inside Bluegrass Hemp Oil in Lexington, Kentucky.
The various prescription drugs controlled Colten’s seizures but caused harmful side effects including hair loss, weight gain, and cognitive delay.
Adriane’s family saw on online forums that CBD might be of help for seizures. CBD, also known as cannabidiol, is a compound commonly sourced from the flowers of hemp, a type of cannabis related to marijuana. CBD doesn’t get a user intoxicated, unlike the better known cannabis compound, THC.
CBD is commonly put into oils and lotions, but some novelty products like CBD in water and vaping CBD have recently been put on the online market.
When Kentucky began growing hemp under a pilot program in 2014, Polyniak’s family tried it. And she said it worked: Colten’s seizures disappeared.
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Adriane Polyniak’s son, Colten, who suffered from seizures when he was younger.
The Polyniaks now want their business to help others with what they say are benefits from CBD.
“I think a lot of people are seeing relief with CBD products, and I think it goes a long way to prove the efficacy of what’s going on and what people are saying,” Polyniak said.
People across the country say CBD is helping them with a wide variety of issues including sleep problems, mental illness, arthritis, skin conditions, Crohn’s disease, and more.
But there is little to no scientific evidence to support these claims. Clinical researchers in the Ohio Valley say there’s still not a lot known about the substance, and some express concern that the CBD business boom is moving faster that the scientific research.
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Adriane Polyniak poses with a picture of her now 13-year-old son, Colten.
Lacking Research
“I think there’s a lot of concern amongst physicians, medical providers and research scientists like myself, that we’re moving too fast without proper evidence or information,” said Dr. Anup Patel, Section Chief of Pediatric Neurology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Dr. Patel has been involved in several studies the past five years to look at CBD’s effect on various forms of epilepsy. The promising results of those preliminary studies led to a more intensive, groundbreaking study in 2018, where he worked with patients who have a severe form of epilepsy called Lennox–Gastaut Syndrome.
The study results showed patients saw a median reduction in seizures of more than 40 percent. Months later, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first CBD-sourced drug, Epidiolex, because of that study. It remains the only FDA-approved CBD drug.
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Yet beyond epilepsy, CBD research is still very new.
“There is potential benefit for certain types of patients with seizures or epilepsy. Beyond that, we have no idea. There aren’t any good studies using CBD in other areas,” Dr. Patel said.
Dr. Patel is referring to the current lack of “double-blind” studies, which are considered the most legitimate among researchers. Double-blind studies are where both the researcher and patients don’t know who is and who is not receiving the drug being studied.
This helps control for the placebo effect, a phenomenon where an individual may experience benefits because of their belief in a treatment, not because the treatment is actually working.
Dr. Alex Straiker, an Indiana University professor whose primary focus is studying cannabinoids’ effects on the brain and eye, is one of many researchers who think the hype and media coverage surrounding CBD could contribute significantly to the placebo effect.
“There’s a lot of enthusiasm on one hand, from the public and manufacturers, to market this. It’s kind of a bonanza mentality,” Dr. Straiker said. “The whole process of science is that you have to have multiple studies, and they have to be well done. A lot of [the claims] you have to take with a grain of salt.”
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Bottles of CBD Oil on display at Bluegrass Hemp Oil in Lexington, Kentucky.
Studies Underway
In the meantime, researchers worldwide are getting busy. Human trials, some of them double-blind, are being conducted to determine CBD’s effects for a variety of issues, from cancer therapies to Parkinson’s disease.
Some preliminary CBD research has shown promising results toward CBD’s potential anti-inflammatory properties and how it affects brain chemistry, helping people with issues including anxiety disorders, rheumatoid arthritis and quitting tobacco.
Yet research on CBD’s potential side effects is also surfacing: a recent Indiana University study that Dr. Straiker led indicated that CBD could increase the risk of glaucoma.
West Virginia University dermatologist Zachary Zinn helped conduct one of these new studies. His study looked at CBD’s effect on three patients suffering from a rare skin condition called epidermolysis bullosa that causes severe blistering and extreme pain.
“The improvements the patients noted was marked,” Zinn said. “It wasn’t, ‘Oh, I’m having a little less pain.’ It was, ‘I no longer require morphine for my dressing changes.’”
Zinn thinks CBD is relatively safe to ingest in small doses, and he’ll tell patients that if they inquire about it. But he isn’t actively recommending it to patients because there’s still little clinical research.
“To think that it’s going to be a wonder drug for all the things patients are reporting, that benefit in, is probably not going to happen,” Zinn said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not effective, but it equally does not mean that it is effective.”
Pushing Forward
The expanding Ohio Valley hemp industry is pushing forward despite a lack of scientific backing. Roger Hayes of Louisville-based Green Remedy, a CBD product wholesaler, said clinical studies matter to verify their products’ value.
Like other CBD companies, Green Remedy doesn’t make any claims about CBD’s effects because they’re not approved by the FDA. But he said the company doesn’t necessarily need clinical studies or the FDA’s approval to be confident the products work.
“The [studies] on what the therapeutic effects are going to be, that takes years,” Hayes said. “America doesn’t need to wait that long to determine that something that has been around for thousands of years that people take for various reasons — we shouldn’t have to wait that long.”
Many in this expanding industry, including Hayes, want the federal government to hurry up with regulation, regardless of studies.
The FDA said in December that CBD in food products is still illegal without FDA approval. Ohio stores selling CBD food have been raided.
Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles is one state government official in favor for approval of CBD-infused food because of the boost it could give to regional hemp farmers.
“We don’t want to regulate hemp to death in America now that it’s finally legal,” Quarles said. “Because a lot of folks are making investments right now, we’re hoping CBD can be marketed as a healthcare supplement.”
Credit Alexandra Kanik / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Yet some in the industry are more hesitant. Matthew Smith is a licensed massage therapist in Parkersburg, West Virginia, who uses CBD oil to ease muscle pain and arthritis in his clients.
“Anecdotally, there’s a lot of people that it’s helped,” Smith said. “It is possible that we’ll find that it’s overblown, or that there are a lot of cofactors that go into making it more useful, or making it more safe. There’s still a lot of science to be done.”
The first FDA public hearing on CBD-infused food is scheduled for late May.
ReSource reporter Mary Meehan contributed to this story.
A U.S. attorney is suing a West Virginia hemp farm and others, saying they violating the federal Controlled Substances Act.
U.S. Attorney Mike Stuart has sued Matthew Mallory of CAMO Hemp WV, and Gary Kale of Grassy Run Farms. Grassy Run Farms owns the land, The Charleston Gazette-Mail reported Saturday.
The lawsuit charges the farmers with manufacturing, cultivation, possession, and intent to distribute marijuana and not hemp, the newspaper said. Hemp and marijuana come from the cannabis sativa plant, but by state law hemp must be comprised of less than 1 percent THC, the psychoactive compound that gives marijuana users a high.
The complaint says the farmers purchased their hemp seeds in Kentucky and brought them over the West Virginia state line. A state pilot program only allows hemp producers to obtain seeds internationally, via the state Department of Agriculture, the lawsuit said.
The complaint also said the defendants indicated they would install security measures around the farm. However, that allegedly hasn’t happened.
If Stuart prevails in the lawsuit, the farmers’ plants, property, equipment and seeds could all be seized and forfeited to the government. His complaint says the federal government could receive either $250,000 in civil penalties or twice the sum of the defendants’ gross receipts.
The farmers’ attorneys argue the Agricultural Act of 2014 protects their right to grow hemp under state laws. Also, the Farm Bill and related provisions of a federal appropriations bill together state that no congressional appropriated funds can prevent the transportation, processing or sale of hemp under a state program authorized under the federal legislation.
Norman Bailey, chief of staff to the state agriculture commissioner, said in a written statement that West Virginia’s laws and regulations are silent as to the source of seeds for participation in the program.
Bailey said Kentucky and North Carolina have both concluded that buying seeds over state lines isn’t a violation of federal law. The department is monitoring the situation and has not yet decided whether it will intervene in the case, he said.
Stuart said the lawsuit isn’t a statement of a position for or against hemp, but really is about an issue of lax regulatory oversight from the West Virginia Department of Agriculture.
“Based on the action we filed, I think it’s plain that this dispute doesn’t center on a public policy debate about industrial hemp, but on the dangers of lax regulation (and) oversight by a state agency which is trusted by the people of West Virginia to enforce its regulatory scheme,” he said.
J. Morgan Leach is the CEO of the West Virginia Farmers Cooperative, which includes the defendants in the lawsuit.
“We are confused on why the U.S. Attorney’s Office is working so diligently to thwart a growing agricultural industry in the state,” he said. “Especially, one that Congress has clearly shown its support for, and when there are so many other serious issues affecting West Virginia.”
Each legislative session, the state’s Constitutional Officers, or the heads of government offices who are elected by the people, bring their priorities to lawmakers and ask for support for various legislative changes.
This year, newly elected Commissioner of Agriculture Kent Leonhardt is hoping to change the structure of government, expand a growing program that’s been controversial in some parts of the country, and incentivize the purchasing of West Virginia-grown products.
Elected in November, Leonhardt ran on a platform of finding new niche agricultural products to put West Virginia on the map. And House Bill 2453 just might provide a boost for that product.
During the 2015 legislative session, lawmakers, including Leonhardt who was a member of the state Senate at the time, voted to make it easier for researchers in the state to get a permit to grow industrial hemp.
It’s a plant in the cannabis family that is illegal to grow because of federal drug laws. Hemp has a much lower level of THC, the mind-altering drug of other cannabis plants like marijuana, and can be used to create any number of products.
“They make purses out of it, they tell me that the body armor you make out of it can be stronger than Kevlar,” Leonhardt said. “There are thousands of products out there that people talk about using.”
But state law currently only allows researchers taking part in university studies to grow hemp. House Bill 2453 would change that though, allowing the agriculture commissioner to provide licenses to commercial growers as well.
West Virginia-grown hemp that’s going to be turned into a variety of products has to stay in West Virginia, though. Because the plant is an illegal substance under federal law, it can’t be shipped across state lines.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing though, according to Leonhardt, who said a fresh crop could attract new businesses and manufacturing jobs, but it poses a small problem.
“It’s a little bit of the chicken and the egg and the cart before the horse kind of thing,” he said. “You have to get the growers to grow it, but then you also have to have the manufacturers come in.”
“So, there’s going to be a little bit of a challenge there, but I believe we can work our way through it.”
Leonhardt is backing another bill that he says poses a similar problem, — the West Virginia Fresh Food Act. The bill will also be discussed by members of the House Agriculture Committee today and would require all state-funded institutions, like schools and prisons, to purchase 20 percent of their fresh produce from in-state farmers.
“It’s helping create a market for fresh foods in West Virginia,” he said. “We’re obviously importing more than we’re growing.”
Leonhardt’s interview begins at the 20 minute mark.
But Leonhardt said that could change if farmers had steady buyers to produce for. Again, the chicken and the egg, but Leonhardt said he’s working with privately owned regional aggregation centers to make sure those supplies are there should lawmakers choose to move the bill forward.
Leonhardt is also asking lawmakers to consider restructuring state government to bring the Division of Forestry under his authority. The commissioner said trees should be considered a crop, one that just takes slightly longer to grow.
“When you look at what’s happening with our state’s resources, we’re one of the most forested states in the nation, we’re number 3, and we’re number 2 in hardwoods per square mile,” he said. “We’re growing trees at a rate of 2.5 times the rate of harvest, which means we could harvest our trees at twice the rate we currently are and not lose our natural beauty.”
The bill is likely to draw pushback from some environmental groups who disagree with Leonhardt’s assessment that trees are a crop, but Gov. Jim Justice has also pushed to increase timbering to revitalize the furniture manufacturing industry in the state.
