Ask a Stoner: Smoking Hemp Buds

Dear Stoner: Are hemp cigarettes or joints a thing? Like, all hemp?
Justine

Dear Justine: Smoking hemp is turning into very much of a thing, as well as a headache for law enforcement. Since the feds legalized hemp late last year, state and local prosecutors have had to drop hundreds, if not thousands, of low-level marijuana cases because of how hard it is to tell the two plants apart. (Hemp is supposed to have under 0.3 percent THC, but that measurement takes weeks and resources to verify.) And police are getting pissed off about the similarity, because it’s forcing them to back off marijuana enforcement, even in states where pot is still illegal, like Texas.

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Checking out the plants at Veritas Farms, a hemp cultivation in southern Colorado.

Jacqueline Collins

But are people actually smoking lots of hemp flower? Not as much as the concentrate, but the short answer is yes. High-CBD hemp buds, which look strikingly similar to pot, and hemp cigarettes are now sold in smoke shops, CBD stores and even online, while rolling papers and blunt wraps made of hemp leaves are sold by the bagful at dispensaries. Hemp-marijuana spliffs are even a thing, too. Welcome to 2019.

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• Marijuana