Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And it was helpful to have a ledge counsel walk us through just some background. And while we're also thinking about it, wanted to invite the agency to come and basically do the same thing. So I don't think I don't think Steve heard Bradley had to say, which so he may end up saying the same thing, but I think it's it's not a bad thing to hear things more than once, and it will probably be a slightly different take. So thank you for joining us.

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: Sure. Good morning, everyone. Steve Collier from the Agency of Agriculture. It's good to see you all. So this committee spent a lot of time on hemp years ago, but most of you, maybe representative O'Brien, maybe representative Bartholomew were here for that, but I don't think any of the rest of you were. So I was planning on just giving you a little bit of a backstory because this topic is hopelessly complicated because of the law, because of the disconnect between federal and state law. It's very, very challenging and everybody sort of plows through and we've done okay, I think managing it, but it's it's much more complicated than it would otherwise be. If it was not for that very direct dichotomy between federal and state law. So just for a very quick background, I mean, and cannabis and marijuana, they're all the same plant. There is no difference in terms of the plant itself. The way it's differentiated is whether or not there's a certain amount of Delta nine THC in the plant. That is one of the psychoactive cannabinoids in the plant cannabis. And so the way when you're talking about any of those three things, they're all the same. However, hemp is not intoxicating and marijuana is and in Vermont cannabis is. So that's the key distinction between it. Hemp has been grown for or cannabis, marijuana has been grown for thousands of years. And as I understand it in the early United States, it was mostly an industrial product, made a lot of rope, clothing, a lot of other things. So it was grown in The United States. But as I understand it, it's recreational use for the psychoactive effects became much more popular in the early twentieth century. So it became more of an more of a recreational drug then. I'm sure it was used before that, but at least in U. S. History, as I understand it, it became more popular then. And then in '19 some states started to ban it, I believe. And then in 1937 with the Marijuana Tax Act, it was banned federally. Plant cannabis, including hemp and and marijuana. Was just marijuana is the same plant, and it was called marijuana. It was banned in nineteen thirties? 1937. And then in the the drug, the federal drug laws in The United States were drastically reformed in 1970. And it's the same framework that we still have now, where all drugs were categorized in the Controlled Substances Act. And so they're categorized by schedule. Schedule one is the supposed to be the most dangerous drugs that don't have any medical use. And marijuana in 1970 was classified as a schedule one controlled substance along with heroin, LSD, you know, a list of other controlled substances. They're in schedule one because they're not supposed to have any legal medical use. Other drugs in the different schedules, there are drugs that can be dispensed with a medical prescription, but can't be traded on the street. But schedule one, you can't use it, period. So since 1970, it was marijuana, which includes hemp, cannabis was banned. And so there really wasn't any way, there was some very narrow way to study it at all, because you can study drugs, but not schedule one drugs in a legal way. So there was not much ability to, for universities, for others to really be able to study its medicinal effects. So there was kind of a dearth of research and information, at least that was publicly funded or publicly available. People kept growing cannabis, marijuana, smoking it, using it. But legally, it was not really in use until in 1996, California legalized medical marijuana. And that was the first time. So for about twenty six years, it was illegal everywhere under both federal and state law. And then in 1996 California made it legal for medicinal uses. They can't do that under federal law because under federal law anything that moves in interstate commerce is subject to federal jurisdiction and the federal law is supreme. There's something called the supremacy clause. So a state really has no authority to override federal law in this capacity. When So California did that, it still was illegal under federal law. Still is. Nothing about that has changed. But, there was an enforcement action taken initially, and the Supreme Court of the United States was clear that federal law governs and states can't legalize marijuana and trump federal law, but states kept doing it anyway. And in 2012, I think, was the first time that any state, I think that was Colorado and Washington made recreational marijuana legal instead of just medical marijuana. And since that sort of dam broke, I think there's about 24 or 25 states that currently allow recreational marijuana. Vermont's one of them and at least 40, it might even be more more than 40 states now that allow medical marijuana. So basically all but 10 or maybe even fewer now at this point allow marijuana in some purposes, and about half the states allow it for recreational use. Vermont being one of those. Despite that, it's still completely illegal under federal law. So, you know, that creates some real challenges for people who are in the business of growing marijuana. The big distinction with hemp is that in 2014, in the Farm Bill, the Congress made hemp legal throughout the country. Was the first time since 1937 that hemp had been legal. And the way that hemp is defined, it's cannabis, the same plant, but it has to have a delta THC nine level of 0.3% or less on a dry weight basis. So we started in Vermont and I think it was in 2015 or '16 following that federal law and allowing hemp to be grown in Vermont. It was initially, it was new. So there was a lot to do to actually be able to grow hemp because people didn't have seeds or at least legally seeds that you could buy legally. So there was a real challenge. And also the market, I think at that point was more geared, the illegal market was more geared toward marijuana than hemp. So it was hard to find low THC products because everybody who was growing it was mostly growing it for the THC. So it took a while to develop, but the standards were fairly loose at first meeting that 0.3% standard for Delta nine is not that hard to do. But in 2018, you still have to do it right, but it's attainable. But in 2018, the federal, the Congress and the 2018 Farm Bill, they changed the standards and they made it, they regulated a lot more heavily than it had been in the 2014 pilot project. And probably most importantly, at least from my perspective legally, they said there's something called there's THC and then there's something called THC A. That's another cannabinoid. You THC A and is not active as a psychoactive ingredient until you burn it, and there's other ways you can do it. But basically when you convert that THC A to THC, it can make you high just like THC nine. So when and the federal government said when you're calculating THC, you have to convert that THC A. And once they did that, it made it really hard to meet that standard because you now have to convert the THC, which is what happens when you burn it or you do other things. So it became very hard to make that standard. And so there were a lot more regulations in place. We had to enforce those regulations because if you don't, then you're it's an illegal drug under both federal and state law at that time. So there was a lot of work that went into in our agency and with growers and processors to try to meet that standard. And that really became effective in about 2020, I think when we were having to meet the new 2018 standard. And we kept coming to this committee and Senate Act Committee and changing the laws to try to meet the evolution. And we had some, we're growing a lot of hemp in Vermont for a period of time and some growers at first were quite successful. Then the market got saturated and people had trouble being able to sell it. So it, a lot of that market went away, plus they were competing with, you know, across the country. But we had some processors in the state who were really doing quite well and still are. We've had some who've carved out a market, you know, really making significant much more than you can make from farming by selling some legal hemp products. And when it's a hemp product, the benefit of being hemp instead of cannabis is you've got access to The United States market, instead of to just this tiny state of Vermont. State of Vermont does not need very much cannabis to supply its population. The hemp market is vast to the extent that you can find that market. I think, Representative Brian, did you want?

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Are you mostly referring to CBD products or even more sort of old fashioned industrial products? That point? Fabric or It

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: can be anything, but I don't think many folks have had a lot of luck with the more industrial products. Some people have tried, including like making, there are there there is hope. Like, you can make apparently concrete from hemp and and other things. I don't know that anybody has found a way to make it competitive, particularly competitive, but there are people there's a lot of hope that those kinds of things could happen because you can grow it. It's regenerative. It's, you know, good for the land. So there's there's still hope. I heard a lot more about that in Vermont before cannabis became legal. So I don't know what that means. But at the time when hemp was legal, cannabis still was not. So I know this is a lot and stop me anywhere, but I gave you kind of The U. S. Breakdown. But in Vermont, Vermont's first made medical marijuana legal in 2004, And then I think it was 2018 when we made recreational marijuana legal in Vermont, but that was only possession and cultivation. It wasn't sales, and it wasn't until 2022 when we made the current retail sales available. So during that time from 2015 or so when we started with hemp until 2022, when it be when retail sales became popular, hemp was was the thing you could do legally and sell.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Steve, you're mostly referring to Vermont producers who end up with a CBD slaughter because that's where the money is on the hemp side of things.

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: I mean, they've been very creative making salves and tinctures and all kinds of I think CBD is only one of the many cannabinoids that you can make isolates. I'm not at all an expert in this, but you can sort of isolate individual cannabinoids and some people, you know, want those and buy those. The challenge is the equipment is incredibly expensive. So the people who've done it, I think have done very well, but it's hard to break into it without having the money to invest. But we still have some hemp processors who are selling, you know, successfully throughout the country. And Vermont has a certain cache for a lot of folks. We believe there's really still a way. What we would love to see is for cannabis or, you know, hemp or cannabis, whatever you want to call it, to be grown a lot more in Vermont. And that remains to be seen how for the national market, cause growing it for Vermont, you just don't need to grow that much.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: The other distinction would be that if you're doing non THC in a but no way products like CBD, you can have vertical integration. You could actually grow it, then you could process it and then you could sell it. Cannabis, you're only allowed to do one of those things. You can't be a grower a retailer. I

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: don't know. That's a great question. That's probably I'm sure that's very clear in statute, but we just haven't regulated that market. I don't know if you can't get multiple licenses, but for hemp, yeah, you could. You can do the whole thing. And that's what my understanding is the people who have been successful have mostly done that. Although there are people who are only processing too and who are buying hemp from others, including currently, think from out of state because there's not much hemp production left in Vermont, which we would love to see that return. But so the bottom line is in once. So we were very active in hemp, but once cannabis sales became legal in Vermont and giving how difficult it was to meet the heightened federal requirements, it was our understanding that most people who were processing hemp in the state when cannabis became legal wanted to be in the cannabis market. So they no longer wanted to be exclusively hemp. I think they wanted some of them wanted to do both, but they wanted to be because it's the same plant and because there's so many similarities and because it's difficult to meet the federal standards, those folks wanted wanted to be in the cannabis market. So The United States Department Of Agriculture has a has a program for folks who want to grow hemp, and their program by federal law is identical to what the program we had. It has to be. We in order for us to license hemp growers, we had to meet the exact same standards as the USDA met. So we were licensing growers in Vermont. There's a lot of work to that, including regulating it and the testing requirements were becoming a lot more onerous and we had a lab and we had expenses. And so when we when cannabis, when the CCB became an act when became enacted and had the authority over cannabis, they needed resources to be able to do that work. And so part of that transition was the people that we had doing that work went to the cannabis control board rather than creating new employees to regulate cannabis. Our folks were transferred to the CCB with our agreement. We thought it made sense for cannabis to be under one roof. And so that's in 2022, all growers were told they have register with USDA instead of with us, and it's actually free to register with them, whereas it wasn't free to register with us. And all of the processors and all of the other work would go to the CCB. So that transition was made, but the legal It wasn't it was made and the intent was for everything to go to the CCB and everybody working on it. It's my understanding. And I was here at the time had that same intent, but we sort of never memorialized that officially in statute by actually repealing our authority, which it doesn't need to be repealed, but it's there's no reason to have it in there because we're not doing it anymore. And it's arguably misleading, but more importantly, specifically giving the CCB the authority to regulate hemp processors because it was designed to regulate cannabis. The idea being high THC cannabis and they were hemp processors have been going to the cannabis control board and sort of registering with them, but the Cannabis Control Board didn't feel comfortable that they really had that authority. So what we've been talking about in the other chamber and what may come to you all, and I think it will, is this proposal to repeal our authority and give all of the authority over the plant cannabis, whether it's hemp or marijuana, to the cannabis control board so that the hemp processors have a home really. And it's important that they have a home under state law because if you're growing marijuana instead of hemp, then you have a lot of challenges, including you can't deduct your expenses when you fire. You have to pay federal income taxes, but you can't deduct your expenses. You can't, it's very difficult to get loans from people. Managing money is very hard to do. And so that it's just, they need a place where people who are insuring them, people who are giving them loans can know whether they are insuring hemp or cannabis. So it's important they have that. So and it's also important they have the oversight because currently they're not there isn't oversight. And the other big reason, the biggest reason from my perspective legally why the agency of ag can't regulate hemp is because it's if if it's not hemp and sometimes it's not and sometimes in the intermediary stage when you're making hemp products, actually have cannabis. You might start with hemp, get the process intermediary with cannabis. Your final product is hemp. It violates federal law. The Agency of Agriculture gets a lot of money from the federal government that we give the farmers and to other people. We cannot if we have if we have controlled schedule one substance in our workplace or are working with it, that violates the federal drug free workplace act and all of the money we get could be taken from us if we have if we're working with controlled schedule one controlled substances. So that's always been my biggest concern. That's the that's something that could do. The federal government did that. It would be hard to get it back because under the law it's correct even though the federal government's been ignoring these laws for thirty years, but the law is you cannot have drugs in the workplace and get federal money. So that's why that's the, from my perspective, the key legal reason why it really has to be the cannabis control board that regulates all of this because they don't get federal money. So it would be less of a direct connection.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: So along those same lines, heard anecdotally that a farmer in Stratford who had a farm following the wraps then got a license to grow marijuana. But I think FSA and NRCS grants and loans then were put at risk. Absolutely. So same sort of tension there between federal and state. Yeah, it's tricky. My personal opinion,

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: this is not a state position. It's it's an example of really bad government between the between the federal and state government. It's I don't know, there's no one to blame. It's what we have, but it's really difficult to navigate it properly. Even when you're trying to do everything right, it's really, really challenging. And that's unfortunate because the market's there, the commerce is there, people are doing it successfully, but it's everything is much more complicated than it should be. And my know, at this point, 40 states, my opinion, congress should act to they don't have to legalize it, but at least allow states to do what they want on their own instead of continuing this law. I think I mean, I think that's why the federal government hasn't acted because they understand that they've sort of allowed this to to happen, but it still puts producers in a really difficult situation because under the law, it's illegal.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Really nothing. No. Then, yeah, just the opposite of that last year with the senators from Kentucky or the senator from Kentucky, you know, protecting the bourbon market.

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's there are it's it's better when in state and local and state and federal government are compatible. And there's a lot of instances where that's not happening very well right now. But that's what it's hard to operate when that doesn't happen.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So federally, and I guess it sounded like the state law has to be consistent with federal law. If somebody wanted to grow hemp, as we heard earlier, Irprenant Nelson did at one point, you can't just scatter some seeds in your backyard. That's against the law. You need to be licensed.

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: Yeah, the only way you can legally grow it is to be registered with a program and that used to be us. But USDA has the same and they had the same program before too. But those programs are very now there's a rule that outlines a lot of requirements, including you need a criminal record check beforehand. You have to test the what's that?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I said, wow,

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: that was under the pilot project that wasn't required. But when the after the 2018 farm bill and it took until I think 2020 or so before that interim, first it was an interim final rule and then it became a final rule, but it ratcheted up the requirements in a number of ways. And that's when we and given that plus the recreational market became legal, it just didn't make sense for us, in our opinion, to continue to run that program when the USDA ran the same program for for free. And it made more sense for our folks who are doing that work to go to the cannabis control board and help them administer the cannabis market.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Any other questions yet? Steve, I

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: can't remember the details, but

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: do you know one of the last

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: cannabis related bills we passed, I think Senator Star was the push behind it was small scale outdoor cannabis grows on farms that were following the wraps. There were certain rules, maybe municipal regulation that were exemptions for farmers who had relatively not six plants, but relatively small grows. Do you recall this?

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: I do, and there was a lot of discussion about because if it wasn't for federal law, growing cannabis would be farming plainly. Because of federal law and the reasons that we just talked about especially the federal money it can't be or at least it can't be regulated by us and called farming. So rather than there was a lot of discussion about whether it should be farming but rather than calling it farming and have it be regulated by us, which would jeopardize federal money, a lot of the same protections that farmers get were created in Title VII, which is a title that regulates cannabis, but they were to be administered by the Cannabis Control Board instead of us. So as an example, people growing cannabis, I don't know the exact terms, but they get the same municipal exemption that farmers get that we've talked a lot about in this committee. They get they do get there's a couple of tax breaks I think they get as well. I think they I can't remember all, but there were, four things that were given to them under the authority and as implemented by the cannabis control board, but not by us. We we don't do anything with cannabis now intentionally. We could with him, but the but the problem is resources and also that intermediate stage where the intermediate, when you make hemp products, necessarily have to concentrate the THC. And at that time, that process intermediary is no longer hemp. And so it's

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Can just fill us in too on sort of post tax rate what municipal regulation of cannabis growing is? Has it changed?

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: You know, I didn't I haven't looked at their regulation in a while. I have talked to the cannabis control board about it, including just yesterday and just said, really need to look at this to make sure it's going to work for you moving forward because we've been quite clear in all of our discussions that what we're trying to do is restore the exemption for farming and not related to cannabis. And so I don't, I think they're in the same stead that they were, but I don't know that for sure because I just haven't tried to, I've suggested that needs to be carefully analyzed, but not my authority to do it. So, Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Representative Nelson. Yeah. Thank you. I guess I'd forgotten that we had to get a permit back in 2019 when we had the great hemp experiment state, but it was easy. With moving hemp into the cannabis control board, will that make that more onerous for the farmers or would it? And of course back then we didn't have to get a background check or anything, you just had to show where you're growing at, how much you were growing.

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: No. The answer is no, because currently to grow hemp in the state of Vermont, you already have to do all of that through USDA.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And if

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: and if it goes the language that's in the other chamber would just say you need to register with USDA and with the cannabis control board. So you just have to you have to let them know you're there, but it will still be the same program that's run by the USDA. You won't

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: have to ask if you can be a lot in the quota or whatever.

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: You just have to register. There's no there didn't used to be I haven't looked at the program in a while, but there was no limit on what you could grow with the USDA. You just had to meet all these requirements and all of it was geared to make sure you are or almost all of it was geared to make sure you're growing hemp instead of cannabis. Because remember, you cross that threshold. It's it's schedule one controlled substance and you have to destroy it. There's no other crop that I'm aware of where if you grow it acceptably, you can sell it. If you if you if you're off, which you can't perfectly control, you have to destroy it. So it's it's yeah.

[Unknown Representative (Committee Member)]: Representative Brookhelm? I'm still trying to get the the terminology straight. I asked earlier and didn't really get a good answer. So we have a plant that's all cannabis. Some of it we call hemp, but then there's this other category of cannabis that has high THC. Do we have terminology to distinguish between those?

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: The plant

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: itself is cannabis sativa something. That's that's the plant. That's the plant.

[Unknown Representative (Committee Member)]: It's all known to the genius cannabis. So what do we call the psychotropic psychoactive

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: plant?

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: Well, now people the cannabis people want to call it cannabis, which is fine. It's it traditionally is marijuana. So it it is confusing. But we so I'm wondering to get the terminology right to make the distinction when we're talking about the different cultivars. I think if you're if you were discussing it colloquially now to say hemp and to say either cannabis or high THC cannabis is probably the way to differentiate. We don't have a new word. I don't. I I find it. I mean, marijuana and hemp is pretty easy, but people don't want to call it marijuana, which is fine. But that's that's the easy way for me to keep in my mind what's what.

[Unknown Representative (Committee Member)]: Well, you know why marijuana fell from favors the word is because it was the the drug wars and the it was to make the those people is this, like, non American sounding word, and those people are causing this problem. So that's kinda where that came historically. Yeah. There's a really good book. But, anyway, the question I was trying to get to sorry. Yeah. I got off my tangent. So if the cannabis control board is going to be overseeing hemp, hemp is grown very differently from the other type of cannabis. Clearly, hemp is grown as a farming operation. So how will the agency oversee the farmers and protect the farmers in their interests if the cannabis control board is now in control?

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: We won't. I mean, we just we won't be regulating hemp. I mean, most farms are not going to only grow hemp, so anything else they do would be us. But to the extent that they're growing and that's true right now, the USDA is regulating hemp growing on farms right now. That will continue. I mean, we can still, they would still be open to opportunities that we have grants or other things that are appropriate. But in terms of us going on the ground, making sure they're doing it correctly, it won't be us. Think with the RAPs, if there were a violation, so if there was something we specifically had to enforce for water quality, we'd probably do that for hemp. We can't for marijuana because of the Drug Free Workplace Act. But I think for hemp, we would.

[Unknown Representative (Committee Member)]: I was thinking more of my concern, I guess, is more not so much with the regulation, but advocacy is part of the role of the agency is to advocate for farmers and farming. You would lose that.

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: Well, I don't, We want people to be able to grow hemp and to the extent that we have any influence in that in promoting farming, that wouldn't our perspective on that doesn't change. We very much want people to be able to grow any crop they can sell. It's good. You know, food is. Probably is the most important, at least in my estimation, but we want any any land that can be productively used for farmland is in our estimation is a benefit to Vermont. So that includes hemp includes cannabis too. It's just that we can't be involved in cannabis. So I don't think it will change our perspective at all. We would. The reason we want hemp processors to have a home is because they're successful businesses and we want them to be successful businesses. But we also think that nexus between them and farming in Vermont could be very helpful. If, you know, farmers know this much better than I do, but if you can have any crop that's successful, that helps you when the other crops are not. So the more you can diversify, the more you can have different differentiated income streams, the better chance you are to remain viable. So we would love it if if hemp can be successful national marker market and every farm could grow hemp to supply our our Vermont processors, that would be wonderful. So nothing about the cannabis control board, you know, regulating hemp would change our perspective on that. If it helps farmers and it's using the land to maintain it in farming, that's always going to be something we support.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Is the agency's market division I'm not

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: sure

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I got the name. Agricultural development? Yeah. They supported with either financially or technical help, the CBD industry in Vermont since a decade ago.

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: I'm sure we've given grants. I mean, they would be eligible for working lands grants. I don't remember. I'm I don't I'm not they don't let me touch the money that much. So I I usually not don't know exactly who's who's getting grants unless I ask.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We we just informationally, at least we could ask Abby to come in and talk I about

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: mean they certainly wouldn't have been excluded nor would they be now. Mean it's

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: That was really what I was getting at.

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: Yeah, no they wouldn't be. It's marijuana, yes. High THC cannabis, whatever you wanna call it, but hemp, no, it is. And even in the language that's in the Senate right now, it's still defined as an agricultural commodity, which it is. It's just that it doesn't make sense in this case from our perspective to split the jurisdiction for both resources and because of that intermediate stage where it's not actually happening.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Let's get one more question and then we'll move on, think. And we will come back to this issue when and if we get the language and the bill.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Going down, or you were going down, Dave, what happens then with hemp derived products, say CBD, etcetera, that you want to sell in your farm store or farmer's markets, do those also have

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: to now come under USDA regulations? USDA only regulates growing, not processing. So the products would be there. I mean, they have to meet the federally defined. They have to still meet the Delta nine level where that's gotten to be really messy as there are other cannabinoids in marijuana like Delta eight, Delta ten that are also psychoactive. So there's been a lot of quote unquote hemp products crossing borders and buying in gas stations that can get you high, don't have any age restrictions, don't have any other restrictions, because they're called hemp. They just don't have Delta nine, but they have other things. So that's been a big issue. We we address that directly in Vermont. We stopped that in our rule, said he can't do that, but other states allow it. And the federal government, the way they define hemp, it doesn't include other psychoactive ingredients in the plant. So when I say quagmire, I'm not kidding.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Retailers or accessory on farm businesses that might deal in hemp derived products, they should be okay, right? They don't have to watch out for some new federal?

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: No, anything that's legal under federal law, you should be able to sell. Had in our rule and I think the cannabis control board will do certain things where text test, they had to test it. So the products as well as the the plant itself. And there there are a list of things, including toxins and metals and other issues that had to be tested for other than just Delta nine. So there will be, I think testing requirements. That doesn't mean you test everyone, but you have to have your lab testing and it's so to make sure the product's safe. But as long as you meet those thresholds, you'll be able to sell it in Vermont and anywhere. The federal government last year, you'll probably hear about this from James Pepper, I won't get into it a lot, but put a cap on the hemp products could only be zero point four milligrams, which is a very small amount, which kind of makes all of this more challenging. And a lot of people think that'll be repealed. That doesn't go into effect until December, but no one really knows. That's apparently that's such a small amount that you couldn't sell like a bottle of tincture as an example. You'd have to sell like a drop you know, or something like that, which so it it remains complicated. There are some political interests that are in Washington that very much want the hemp market, but as we all know, Washington is not easy to get a lot accomplished. So I don't know what's going happen, but that's another wrinkle that you sort of we just need to put it in place and whatever hemp is, it's going to have to follow federal law, whether or not that'll be tenable kind of remains to be seen. But meanwhile, we've got all these processors who've been doing a great job, who've been following the law as well as they can, who've been creating products, who've been employing people, who've been helping farmers, and we wanna give them whatever home that they can have.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Steve, this has been very helpful. Thank you for And sharing we do have the cannabis control board coming in tomorrow morning after the hour, so we'll hear their perspective as well. And then hopefully, when and if the bill comes into our committee, we'll be well versed in that piece of it.

[Steve Collier, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets]: Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thanks, Ruth. I wanna just take four or five minutes before we move into the next section. So Patricia, we'll we'll take a very brief break.