GRANTS PASS, Ore. — A state agriculture official says Oregon’s hemp industry is not turning out the way lawmakers envisioned, so the department will recommend changes to the law regulating how it is grown.
Lindsay Eng, who oversees the hemp program for the Oregon Department of Agriculture, said Tuesday the law authorizing industrial hemp production in Oregon was written to regulate it as an agricultural crop, with large fields of densely planted hemp grown for fiber, seed and oil.
Instead, the nine operations inspected by the department this year seem more interested in producing compounds known as CBDs, which don’t get people high, but are believed to have some medical benefits. They are also found in marijuana.
As a result, Eng says the current law does not work well to regulate growers, who are growing small plots, sometimes in greenhouses, with the emphasis on producing buds that contain the CBDs.
Hemp is related to marijuana, but contains very low levels of the compound known as THC, which gets people high. It has a long history as an agricultural crop, but was outlawed along with marijuana in 1937.
