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Comment by prophesi | Hacker News Reader

Wish they delved further into legal Delta 9 THC. The Farm Bill limits how much of the activated Delta 9 products may contain.

Essentially, they grow hemp like regular marijuana, except it's grown in the shade and plucked early. This prevents the sunlight from activating the THC-A in the plant and keeps the federally regulated Delta 9 under the legal limit.

Now breed the plants so that they have a higher level of THC-A, and you get to where we are today where THC-A bud you can buy in a smoke shop will be about as potent as recreational/medical marijuana.

This is also increasing the potency of recreational/medical marijuana across the board as places will use the same plants harvested for THC-A; just grown in the sun instead.

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They just grow regular marijuana and noone is checking. There's no regulatory framework to get licenses ect.

What are you basing this off of? My state is one of the largest producers of hemp and has extremely strict regulations.

You need to a have a license to grow, license to transport, license to sell, etc.. Seeds must be registered with the state and there will be periodic compliance inspections with steep punishment if violated.

https://www.tn.gov/agriculture/farms/hemp-industry/hemp/lice...

Not to mention the difference between marijuana and THCA hemp is a legal distinction and not inherently scientific.

There is a lot of misinformation here.

THC-A is the acid form of Delta 9 THC. Marijuana has mostly THC-A that doesn’t turn into d9 thc until it is decarboxylated. Look at any test result COAs of marijuana to see what I am talking about.

THC-A hemp is just marijuana that isn’t considered marijuana until it is burnt. Hemp is just cannabis. It is all cannabis. The same cultivars are being used for THC-A hemp as medicinal and recreational. In fact, there is genetic bottlenecking going on.

As you said though, cutting early generally ensures that any cultivar doesn’t “test hot” for d9 THC. Besides sufficient heat, THC-A turns into d9THC through oxidation as well as UV exposure so the sun isn’t necessary. There is plenty of THC-A hemp flower being grown indoors too.

Happy to answer any further questions.

You are mostly correct. But there are definitely common instances where hemp that is strain specific to be low in THC is sprayed with outside sourced thca. I have found this to be the case for most brands I see in texas, unfortunately. That and added synthetic terpenes imo bastardize the legal hemp industry as it is.

It's this exactly that turned me off, especially after a sales person misinformed me that their products where definitely not sprayed with anything, when the flower brand website itself told me otherwise.

Good point! The “THCa hemp flower” that is hemp flower sprayed with THCa distillate isomerized from CBDa distillate processed from hemp flowers is a distinct product from drug type cannabis flower being sold under the label of THCa hemp flower which is generally just the same old black market stuff with a new outlook on life and a note from a lawyer in the USPS box. Add in the botanically or synthetically derived terpenes and you have a recipe for a headache in my experience.

The thing is, those fake terps are being added to both types of THCa flower and regular products on actual legal markets.

> In fact, there is genetic bottlenecking going on.

Do you have more info about this? I've never seen this claim before (not saying you're wrong) and would love to learn more.

I have research in progress I can share with you. Reach out! Same username on Twitter.

Thanks, that's why I wish they delved into the topic further as I'm certainly no expert in chemistry or growing cannabis. When I meant "activated" delta 9, I meant decarb'd as you said. Not sure where I'm giving misinformation apart from that.

Would you say that vapes and edibles in this loophole inherently have to be sprayed with chemicals, due to how these inherently must be decarb'd, and due to the very low yield of other cannabinoids like Delta 8 in cannabis?

I would not say they inherently have to be sprayed. There are plenty of regenerative farmers - think the type of hippies that dont spray anything that isn’t organically derived - that take advantage of this loophole.

Spraying of chemicals could happen during the growth of the flower, or it could be spraying of flavorants and terpenes on a finished product, you’ll have to be more specific for me to answer further.

I think I get part of your question though. For vapes the loophole is that it can remain in acid form all the way up to the point it is shipped across the country and up til it is decarbed by the consumer hitting the vape.

Edibles would need to be decarbed but because of the loophole, you could have 10mg of straight decarbed d9THC in a regular sized cookie and per total weight of the product, it has less than .3% d9THC.

D8 distillate production is largely from a supply glut of cbd distillate which can be converted to d8 distillate OR d9 distillate with a process which has been widely publicized since 1971.

Can someone explain to me what the attraction is to THC-A, since it's not psychoactive? Is it because it is anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective?

It's psychoactive when it's decarboxylated (smoked, prepared as an edible). From what I can tell that turns it from Delta 9 THC-A to Delta 9 THC. I first went down this rabbit hole because I found what looked like normal flower in a smoke shop, and it does indeed get you high.

I've looked at the lab results for various medical/recreational products and even they tend to have a lot of THC-A, with THC hovering around or higher than the federal limit of 0.3%.

For instance, a quick look at a Chicago dispensary: https://www.sunnyside.shop/product/3439284

THC: 0.61%

THCA: 29.91%

Edit: Wild, ninja'd on a several hour late reply!

Not psychoactive until you heat it (vape or smoking it), then it decarbolyzes (sp?) to THC D9. That’s true even in dispensary grade and the reason you can just eat it directly and get high.

>THC-A bud you can buy in a smoke shop will be about as potent as recreational/medical marijuana.

Except it tastes like dog farts, on account of its growing irregularities (e.g. lack of sunshine, as you pointed out).

As a personal annecdote, test-sample size of only a few ounces (of "legal weed" [THC-A]), my Volcano vaporizer filter/screen looks entirely different when running illegal/legal products through it:

For THC-A, the screens cake-up quickly with a dense, black, tar-like substance; no green is left within the plant even after fewer runs/hits; the vapoo (depleted marijuana, thrown out) is left lifeless, stunk.

For full-grown marijuana, the vaporizer screen is still dirtied brown, but it's fluffier (cottonlike) and accumulates much. more. slowly. The vapoo still has flecks of green, and nothing appears charred. It smells like popcorn instead of shit-stained bedsheets. "Trim" & "ditch weed" sublimate similarly, albeit for not as long/strong (but tastes better than legal weed, still).

Perhaps the temperature needs to be lowered for THC-A? I don't know, but I ask the few friends I know that buy local (legal THC-A) weed to "bring me a gram of the next `good ounce` you buy from that store, and we'll see what Volcano can do." I have yet to see much deviation from my above-observations.

----

Combusting THC-A ("legal weed") has never been an enjoyable experience [no sunshine == no terpines/flavanoids], but vaping it does still deliver some "high" so I know there must be some weed in there.

Anecdotally, some of the THC-A flower I’ve tried wasn’t anything like what you’re describing in terms of taste/aftermath, but does seem to stress the particle filter on my Storz & Bickel Mighty.

I suspect this has a lot to do with the particular strain and grower. I was experimenting with products from Wildflower Hemp based out of Bend, OR.

I’m in a legal state and prefer the predictability and quality of the “real” stuff, but was surprised by how decent the pure hemp experience was since I’ve heard people describe a range of experiences/results.

I think it depends on the grower. Fairly certain some take some liberties like growing one of the plants under insane conditions to make this happen and then get their lab sample from it. My experience has been that the THC-A stuff I've gotten from high quality sellers (WNC for example) is substantially richer in terps than the stuff I can currently buy legally in my state, largely because that THC-A bud is grown in organic living soil, while the legal stuff is grown under insane regulations (common to medical-first states) that renders most of it dry, straw smelling, and leaving next to nothing in the kief collector. I would avoid buying from gas stations and similar outlets and look at user feedback online (r/CultOfTheFranklin on reddit is a good source)

And since I'm replying here, I'll point out that the parent comment calls it "Delta 9", which is misleading because "Delta 9" is the common phrase used when people extract Δ9 THC from "hemp" plants and then distribute it in edibles, which makes it legal because the bill specified "less than 0.3% Delta 9 THC on a dry-weight basis", and 10mg of THC is well below that for any gummy (or similar product like can of seltzer) that is > ~3g. The "THC-A" stuff makes use of a similar loophole in a very different way.

> depleted marijuana, thrown out

Cook it! It remains pretty potent if you save up enough of it.

> It remains pretty potent if you save up enough of it.

That's... not what potent means

Dog farts taste terrible.

[citation needed]

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