The Food and Drug Administration is “exploring potential pathways for various types of CBD products to be lawfully marketed,” as said in a release about its public hearing held on May 31.

In the crowded lobby of Miami Dade College’s North Campus in late July, groups of people waited in line to register for classes, secure their financial aid and ask their lingering logistical questions as they prepared for the fall term, which starts Aug. 23.

With hemp and its derivatives finally legal in Ohio, Scott Raybuck estimates his already-growing CBD company is poised for a breakout, in his home state particularly.

Retail excitement about the hemp CBD market is obvious, even if the regulatory hurdles aren't always as clear

Agency's latest move to temper CBD marketing

Hemp fields in Kentucky are multiplying. So, too, is the field of hemp-related jobs — both inside and outside the agricultural sector.

Hemp farming can work as long as state agriculture and law enforcement officials collaborate to regulate it, South Dakota lawmakers heard on Thursday.

Congress is cranking up the pressure on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to draft rules to regulate cannabis-based products.

“People still worry for some reason that they’re going to get high or potentially sick off of CBD,” says Jonathan Miller of the US Hemp Authority.

The Food and Drug Administration is holding its first public hearing on CBD, the cannabis extract that has quickly grown into a billion-dollar industry. Today's hearing will help officials determine how to regulate CBD products.

Cannabis-related products have flooded the market, making health claims about pain relief, immune function and anxiety and depression. On Friday, the US Food and Drug Administration is holding its first hearing to assess the safety and efficacy of these CBD products.

Cannabis-related products have flooded the market, making health claims about pain relief, immune function and anxiety and depression. But the US Food and Drug Administration says there is little known about how effective they are.

By 10:30 a.m., a panel of the Food and Drug Administration’s top regulators had already heard from more than 50 different people, all eager to squeeze their hopes or concerns about CBD, the booming marijuana-adjacent compound companies are suddenly adding to everything from dog food to dietary supplements, into the short speaking time they were granted.

F.D.A. hearings are usually tedious affairs. But this one — called to begin the process of figuring out which products in the burgeoning cannabis industry can be legally sold in the United States — was the hottest ticket in the capital.

Cannabidiol, or CBD, as the cannabis-derived compound is known, is enormously popular in the US, embraced as a panacea for the modern condition.

The FDA is weighing decisions on how to classify and regulate products with CBD, a compound in cannabis.

Restaurants, coffeehouses and bars are pulling back their CBD-infused items since Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black issued a warning this month that CBD remains barred from food and drinks.

Online reviews proclaim CBD a “life changer,” “the best thing ever,” and “truly incredible.” It’s a $390 million industry, expected to grow to at least $1.3 billion by 2022. Montel Williams has his own designer line of CBD products; so do Tommy Chong and Mike Tyson.

The CBD and hemp industries are growing exponentially thanks to the efforts of several notable people and organizations. Among those entities are Jonathan Miller and the US Hemp Roundtable.

At North Texas' busiest airport, the fourth largest in the country, customs officers will detain international travelers, and seize their CBD, if a quick field test shows it to contain even a small trace of THC.

Hemp farmers got a big win in the 2018 farm law, which legalized hemp as an agricultural product. Now, they’re facing another hurdle, as they await federal regulations on one of their best-selling items: hemp-derived CBD.

Few rules require CBD products to be tested for contaminants or how much CBD they contain. Here's how to stay safe.

Despite passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, hemp farmers and producers continue to face challenges accessing banking and other financial services.

CBD has shown promise as a therapeutic product, but its effectiveness is still being researched.

WHEAT RIDGE, Colo. — At Joshua Hudson’s smoothie shop, a bohemian outpost called Twisted Smoothie in a small strip mall here, customers can add a 15 mg or 30 mg shot of cannabidiol, or CBD, to their blended drinks for a few extra dollars.

Uncertainty remains over its sale, purchase and use

James Bates never had trouble getting a loan, but when he asked for money to buy equipment for his new industrial hemp farm, the bank started dragging its feet. A process Bates said usually took no more than two weeks has now stretched into a month as Bates waits for BancorpSouth's legal department to decide whether or not to issue his loan. The problem, the bank told Bates, is his hemp license. "I'm just trying to navigate some new territory and I thought that this was just a normal loan, and I was just using my property as collateral," Bates said. "Obviously my hemp license now plays a part in that. How it does, I don't understand it."

A major national hemp industry group is urging Texas law enforcement to back off on seizing CBD products in the wake of two recent police raids in North Texas.

FDA's top official announced plans this week to assemble a working group within his agency and hold a public meeting in April to examine a possible rulemaking that would allow for CBD to be lawfully sold in conventional food and supplements.

In 2018, President Trump signed a federal Farm Bill, which legalized hemp as an agricultural product. Yet, Idaho's laws consider both hemp and marijuana illegal.

GenCanna announced its first patentable non-GMO hemp genetics with 0.0 THC Monday. GenCanna President Steve Bevan said the Clark County-based hemp producer had grown significantly since 2014 while never faltering on quality. THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the substance in marijuana which produced the "high."

Farm fields across the state may soon look a bit different: Hemp is on the horizon in Indiana. After years of hemming and hawing over the prospect of expanding hemp production to Indiana — and years of not doing anything about it — politicians, farmers and experts all expect 2019 to be the year that marijuana's non-psychedelic cousin finally gets the green light.

As the legalized cannabis industry in the United States grows with nearly every election, consumers interested in these products have more and more options. But they might also have more questions, given the different sources of the products, the difference in federal and state laws, and the difference between those that make you high and those that don’t.

Joe Logan has wanted for years to grow hemp on his Northeast Ohio farm. Logan figures he could set aside about 10 to 15 acres of his 500-acre farm for the project – enough to test the new crop without losing too much if it failed.

Farmers can now grow hemp, but regulatory questions about the cannabis compound remain

I’ve come to praise Mitch, not to bury him.

Kentucky got off to a quick start toward putting its oversight strategy in place for hemp production on Thursday when its agriculture commissioner filed a plan with federal regulators — the same day hemp was legalized as a farm commodity.

"This whole six-and-a-half-year process has been about education. So many people, including myself, thought that hemp was the same as marijuana," said Jonathan Miller, a Frost Brown Todd attorney who now is the general counsel for a nonprofit that advocated for legalizing hemp.

Now that Congress has OK’d the sale of hemp — legally separating the fibrous plant from its more laidback cannabis cousin — Texas farmers are prodding state lawmakers to join the 41 other states allowing cultivation of a crop that’s now more lucrative than corn or cotton.

I’ve come to praise Mitch, not to bury him. Fellow liberals, I have not lost my mind … nor my compass. I’m still the tree-hugging, LGBTQ-embracing, immigrant-welcoming, campaign finance-reforming, pro-choice feminist that I’ve always been.

Former Kentucky State Treasurer Jonathan Miller has been working for the legalization of hemp for more than six years. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the farm bill, which includes the hemp provision, into law next week.

Yes, legal hemp is actually a really big deal.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate have reached a bipartisan agreement on a nearly $900 billion bill. To get there, House Republicans backed off demands to increase work requirements for people receiving food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The bill could come up for a vote this week.

Mitch McConnell acknowledges he’ll be one of national Democrats’ top targets in 2020 when he runs for reelection. But he’ll boast an unusual tool on the campaign trail: His success at reviving hemp, a one-time Kentucky cash crop..

Today, the House of Representatives followed the Senate in approving the 2018 Farm Bill. Cue the confetti, because this is a big deal for CBD consumers.

Several experts predict passage of the Farm Bill will unleash a wave of institutional investments in the hemp and CBD industries.

Hemp reform in the United States is all but assured following the publication on Monday evening of the final text of the 2018 Farm Bill.

Hey Mitch McConnell, what about Gatewood Galbraith? As he encouraged lawmakers to embrace his push to legalize hemp, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cited fellow Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer as the “first Kentuckian to take a major lead role in what has now developed into a national consensus.” Not so fast.

A few months ago, I was perusing the supplement aisle at Rainbow Blossom for an alternative remedy for cramps when a staffer asked, “Have you tried CBD oil?” She took me to a small glass case of tincture bottles, gummies, jars of jam — all containing cannabidiol, or CBD, one of at least 100 phytocannabinoids found in the cannabis plant. The store had several brands, including some extracted from Kentucky-grown hemp. At the checkout, a freezer contained CBD push pops. CBD soft serve was available at the store’s LIFEbar cafe.

Jonathan Miller, general counsel to the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, is bullish that a final version of the farm bill, negotiated between the House and Senate, will include the Hemp Farming Act of 2018.

Legislation that includes a measure to legalize hemp, rich in the compound used to produce numerous CBD oil products, made significant progress last week. The U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee overwhelmingly endorsed the Farm Bill, known also as the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, by a vote of 20 to 1 on June 13.

American hemp is flush with grassroots organizations working to ensure the industry rises to prominence. Now it has a “grass-tops” organization working to ensure that hemp’s fledgling federal protections gain permanence.

Commonwealth Extracts COO John Taylor talks about his business extracting CBD oil from hemp plants and his vision moving forward.

On an overcast morning on Wednesday, May 5, 2016, on the 8th floor of an office building overlooking DuPont Circle in the heart of our nation’s capitol, a group of leaders from national organizations and American hemp companies met in an historic gathering to discuss how best to move forward on a united front and make industrial hemp a fully legal crop in the U.S.

elect Kentucky farmers will be growing more hemp in 2016 than at any time since the federal government effectively banned the crop in the 1930s, along with its hallucinogenic cousin, marijuana.

Business group fly-ins to Capitol Hill are generally staid, platitude-laden fare. So when it was time for U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to address our delegation, I sat up straight and tucked away my iPhone so as not to be tempted to rudely text in front of the second most powerful man in America. The event convener grabbed the platform, adjusted the microphone, and announced: “To introduce our next speaker, here’s Jonathan Miller.”

While state lawmakers consider legalizing marijuana for medical use, some are urging the commonwealth at least allow one type of the crop for commercial use.

The Bluegrass State is eager to grow hemp for the purposes of research and commerce. Instead, its hemp seeds just became the latest casualty in the DOJ’s war on drugs.

Kentucky’s two senators, Republicans Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell, have been working to include a provision that would legalize industrial hemp into the farm bill, according to Senate and Kentucky sources, an effort that is likely to result in a floor vote on the issue this week.

If drug-war crusaders would get out of the way, the harmless cannabis product could become an invaluable cash crop.

A trio of Kentuckians who favor the legalization of hemp says a trip to Washington D.C. to meet with lawmakers and executive branch officials was beneficial.

Agriculture Commissioner James Comer returned to Kentucky confident that the federal government will act to legalize industrial hemp production in the near future. Comer’s plane from Washington, D.C., landed in Kentucky at 1 a.m. EDT, and he was back in the office hours later to report on three days of meetings with administration officials and lawmakers.

A top Kentucky official on a mission to legalize industrial hemp said Wednesday he got a warm Washington welcome from both administration officials and House Speaker John Boehner. Kentucky Agricultural Commissioner James Comer told POLITICO both Boehner and officials from the White House and Agricultural and Energy departments seemed open to legalizing the plant, which is a close cousin of marijuana and whose growth is outlawed in the United States.

A chance encounter at last weekend’s Kentucky Derby may have given the hemp industry the break it’s been looking for since the crop was banned in 1970, when the federal government classified it as a controlled substance related to marijuana. Kentucky’s Commissioner of Agriculture James Comer, a Republican, told The Huffington Post that he was at a private pre-derby party on Saturday when he found himself chatting with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his chief of staff Mike Sommers. Comer talked shop.

Will urge federal government to allow industrial hemp production in Ky.

Now awaiting the next move, approval from Gov. Steve Beshear, the much debated Kentucky industrial hemp bill, was passed late Tuesday night in the House of Representatives, officials said.

We tend to mythologize the dead; and perhaps that’s fair with politicians who’ve passed, since we use them for rhetorical target practice when they are stumping the earth. But regardless of the intended spirit, today is a very special day for the memory of my friendly acquaintance and sometimes political rival, Gatewood Galbraith.

As supporters thundered their approval, the Kentucky House of Representatives today passed Senate Bill 50, state Sen. Paul Hornback’s legislation that creates an administrative framework for industrial hemp production in Kentucky.

Expresses concerns about amended Senate Bill 50

Bringing industrial hemp back to Kentucky agriculture is a “no-brainer,” said James Comer, Kentucky’s Agriculture Commissioner, Joey Pendleton, State Senator, and Jonathan Miller, former Ky State Treasurer – each using that descriptor for the crop’s promise of economic development. They spoke at the Industrial Hemp Seminar, held last Wednesday at the Red Mile historic round barn in Lexington.

Last week, I received a very warm reception from my hometown’s Tea Party organization. Yes, you read that correctly… My regular readers know that I am an unabashed, gay-marriage-embracing, pro-choice-supporting, clean-energy-promoting, immigration-reforming, economic-inequality-battling, church-and-state-separating LIBERAL. And yet, I repeat (for my friends that may have fainted upon reading the first sentence of this essay), I was warmly welcomed and even embraced by our local lovers of liberty. I wish I could credit my soaring oratory or my youthful charisma, but I simply can’t deny that I’m a better recovering politician than an active one. The truth is that I spoke on a topic that knows no ideology, an issue that has broad bi-partisan support, and yet one that has met stiff political resistence from the powers that be: The legalization of industrial hemp

I’m not your typical pro-pot advocate. Like Bill Clinton, I’ve never inhaled; but unlike the former president — indeed, unlike most of my Gen X cohorts — I’ve never even handled a joint. Since I lost my chain-smoking grandmother to cancer at an impressionable age, the thought of sucking any kind of smoke into my lungs thoroughly disgusts me.