Letter to the editor: Assisting medical marijuana farmers

Pennsylvania has embraced the opportunity to establish an industrial hemp program. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has seen a significant increase in the request for new permits; Pennsylvania has been home to 885 hemp-growing permits over a four-year period.

Ninety percent of Pennsylvania’s hemp farmers grow hemp for nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidiol or CBD. This ingredient is key to offering products sought by many medical marijuana patients, which help balance higher THC dosing schedules. Despite the success of the Pennsylvania Hemp Program and the clear need for more CBD medical marijuana products, lawmakers have not capitalized on the opportunity to develop a market for the sale of hemp-derived extract to Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana operators.

Lawmakers in the House of Representatives have recently begun to correct this oversight through an amendment to Pennsylvania’s Medical Marijuana Law — Act 16. This amendment would help stabilize the market for Pennsylvania hemp farmers, allowing them to sell hemp-derived raw material to medical marijuana operators and allow medical marijuana operators to deliver top quality, high CBD/low THC medicine to patients more readily and at a lower cost.

Let’s provide opportunities to Pennsylvania farmers in the existing medical marijuana market now to ensure they have a market for their products and patients have better access to more medicine at a lower cost.

Meredith Beuttner

Ron Kander

Harrisburg

Beuttner is executive director of the Pennsylvania Cannabis Coalition. Kander is on the Pennsylvania Hemp Steering Committee.