Indopedia All Things Marijuana
Over the last five years, an often forgotten piece of U.S. federal legislation—the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, also known as the 2018 Farm Bill—has ushered in an explosion of interest in the medical potential of cannabis-derived cannabidiol, or CBD.
After decades of debate, the bill made it legal for farmers to grow industrial hemp, a plant rich in CBD. Hemp itself has tremendous value as a cash crop; it’s used to produce biofuel, textiles and animal feed. But the CBD extracted from the hemp plant also has numerous medicinal properties, with the potential to benefit millions through the treatment of seizure disorders, pain or anxiety.
Prior to the bill’s passage, the resistance to legalizing hemp was due to its association with marijuana, its biological cousin. Though hemp and marijuana belong to the same species of plant, Cannabis sativa, they each have a unique chemistry, with very different…
