Russell Dowden and Coleman Hemphill discuss the end of the 87th Legislature and address the bills that did not pass, and what did pass.
ILISSA NOLAN serves as the Executive Director for the Texas Hemp Coalition. Ms. Nolan was one of the few lobbyists that worked to pass HB 1325 which made it legal to grow and process hemp in Texas. She also serves as a government affairs consultant for Booth & Associates P.C. where she works to build policy through stakeholder collaboration and educating clients on cutting edge issues surrounding state and federal environmental matters, especially topics involving agriculture, rural affairs, and environmental issues.
Live from The Lucky Leaf Expo at the Austin Convention Center (May 15, 2021 ) we interview Nishi Whitley board member at Foundation for an Informed Texas (FIT) is a 501c3, tax-deductible, educational nonprofit focused on educating Texans about cannabis through tools, resources and outreach. We also speak to Joe Pedraza TPS Lab who talks with us about soils and farming, Nathan from Hempliance also says hello, and finally actor Daniel Villarreal stopped by for a quick chat. Daniel works with PAKALOLO PLUG in San Antonio and is best known for his work with landing his first acting part in Stand and Deliver playing Chuco, the finger man. Best known as Little Puppet in American Me.
Nishi Whiteley (pronounced Nee-sha), is the COO of CReDO Science, LLC, a biopharma IP holding company dedicated to commercializing patented products generated from CReDO’s investigation of the cannabis plant and the endocannabinoid system (ECS). She is also the VP of Business Development at Breeder’s Best, a cannabis IP genetics company, a cannabis educator, speaker and author.
Jesse, Russell & Coleman talk about the existing bills with the 87th Legislature that remain on the chopping block; while they also interview H-empirical CBD CEO John Long and head Medical Director Dr. Wendy Askew.
John Long is CEO for H-Empirical, Inc. He is also the CEO for Agronomics of Texas and investor for Totally Happy Cows, LLC (An CBD Agriculture company for cattle and horses). He’s has been a nurse for 28 years specializing in ER, ICU, Rheumatology, Gastroenterology, Neurology and Dermatology.
Dr. Wendy Askew is a board-certified Obstetrician-Gynecologist in private practice in San Antonio, Texas. She is also board certified in Functional and Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Askew is the Chief Medical Officer for H-Empirical, Agronomics of Texas and Totally Happy Cows LLC.
Jesse Williams of Texas Cannabis Collective hosts this week with Coleman Hemphill of the TXHIA as co-host. This weeks guest is Eddie Velez founder and CEO of Oak Cliff Cultivators. Oak Cliff Cultivators strives to engage with the community, educate, and inform on hemp cultivation and the alternative solutions it brings to everyday life. Oak Cliff dominated the Taste of Texas Hemp Cup awards with their hemp products this past year. For more information on Oak Cliff visit Oakcliffcultivators.com
Jesse Williams hosts this week. Russell takes a phone call DJ spot from home as he recovers and discusses various topics with Dan “Taxation is Theft” Behrman. The podcast covers Behrman’s run for governor of Texas, his line of hemp products Nugg of Knowledge, and cannabis advocacy in both Texas and the nation. Check his brand out at nuggofknowledge.com
Live from The Lucky Leaf Expo at the Austin Convention Center (May 14 , 2021 ) we interview many colleagues from the Hemp and MJ space in Texas. Jax Finkel of Texas NORML along with Heather Fazio Director of Texans for a Responsible Marijuana Policy join in along with Coleman Hemphill of the Texas Hemp Industries Associates as we all get together and talk about the new wave of growth in the Lone Star State!
The hemp industry in the United States, after years of lobbying, is back in business. While not all states have yet made it legal, the federal government has, with much help from former Congressman Rand Paul in Texas and his son Ron, a Senator in Kentucky.
The time that I spent writing “Hemp for Victory: History and Qualities of the World’s Most Useful Plant” was not in vain, but there is still much to be done.
Cultivation of Cannabis sativa in the US is mainly for THC and CBD oils. The former acronym needs no introduction, while the latter is still rather new to some people. In New York, the latter was a grey area for the law, and when it was illegal to sell, one could see vendors openly proclaiming the wonders of CBD oils. The scene reminded me of snake oil salesmen. Some used very little CBD in their product, but put high prices on what was often olive oil with a few drops of CBD.
No one knew if it cured viruses or caused hallucinations. No one knew whether to make an arrest or make a sale. But dealers knew CBD was a good sound byte that resulted in profits.
While much money has been made from, and much legislation has been enacted regarding THC and CBD, I feel no need to enter at large upon that field but rather to give some insights about the more industrial products.
Rope, textiles, paper, are among the many items that use hemp as their raw material. The outer part of the stem, the hurd, is removed by processes known as retting, while the inner part, which constitutes about 25-30% of the stalk, known as bast, is what is primarily used. Both are mainly composed of cellulose.
For the bast to be processed into rope, textiles and paper, there must be infrastructure in place. Presently, this is not the case to any great degree. Factories have long since closed. Paper, which is the simplest to produce, is made mostly in Asia, with only a few small mills in existence in the US.
In some small mills, hemp is used for specialty papers which command a premium. In the UK, I had made 3 tons of this, and I was mobbed by hempsters asking me to sell. Most was used for the aforementioned book. Since, I have found very little that I could buy.
At times, campaigners have tried to get factories to use hemp, but they lacked the experience and patience to succeed. Revamping infrastructure may take government assistance, which I encourage, as jobs would be created from the hemp industry.
While we await change, there are ways that a farmer can sell their product, one of which includes selling stalks for simple uses such as pyrolysis and insulation.
A much more lucrative market is that of the seed for oil, or, better yet, the sale of the oil pressed on the farm by the grower. In the UK I saw small local distributers as well as national brands, such as Mother Hemp, Nutiva and Viridian, and an international brand, Good Oil.
The last brand attracted my ire, as I learned that a chemical defoliant was used to wilt the leaves so as to separate the seeds. Good Oil was on the shelves at Whole Foods in 2011, but after I wrote about the chemical defoliant, it ceased to be stacked.
In dry climates, leaves shrivel more easily. In humid climates, they stay on longer and there is more possibility of mold damage, for which reason farmers use large screens, drying them in spread out layers.
Hemp seeds (technically ‘achenes’) contain 30-35% oil, which commands a high price. I wrote about it on my site (hempforvictory.blogspot.com) in 2006:
“Hemp oil is considered to be one of nature’s healthiest oils. It is known to contain therapeutic compounds, and for this reason is used both in medicine and in cosmetics. It has a high antioxidant quality and contains linoleic acids. These acids, along with eicosanoids, tocopherols, tocotrienols, Omega 3,6,&9 EFAs and all eight essential amino acids, make hemp oil a top item in health food shops.”
The majority of buyers of hemp oil are urban dwellers; in New York City, it sells well at Whole Foods and other natural food stores.
There is another contingent of buyers of hemp oil: artists. Since hemp oil was used in for centuries as a drying oil, along with linseed, poppy and walnut oils, there is a demand, though limited. I use it, and have over the years made experiments to see how clearly it dries, comparing it to linseed, walnut and poppy oils.
From these I note variation, with the clearest being that of the Ukranian brand Golden Kings.
As hemp lends itself to genetic variation – a fact noted by no less than the great geneticist Ivan Vavilov – this is was to be expected.
cannabis oil cbd
Clarity is determined by the amount of glycerides of linoleic and linolenic acids, of which linseed oil, which is known to yellow, contains the most. In hemp oil, the content thereof varies according to the variety.
As a clear drying hemp oil would add value, and it is well known that levels of linoleic acid vary with varieties, rainfall and temperature, thus it is possible to improve and refine it specifically for artists’ oil. A 2005 article in the Journal of Industrial Hemp, [Vol. 10, #2, 2005, Bertrand Matthaus et al.], in which over 50 varieties are studied, gives specific analysis of linoleic acid content.
Much as I see a benefit in this niche product, it is obvious that edible oil has a much larger market, and is part of a simpler strategy of growing hemp for a cash crop of oil, with the hemp seed cake sold to cattle or fish farmers, while stalks are sold to whichever market is in place to use them.
The hemp industry is an emerging, or rather, re-emerging one, which needs people with experience, rather than just political zeal, to guide it.
With such persons at the helm, taking on board the present limitations and working to increase public awareness along with manufacturing infrastructure, hemp farming will be one of the most profitable sectors in American agriculture.
African Leader Marcus Garvey prophesied in the 1930’s “look to Africa where a black king will be crowned, he shall be your redeemer.” Obviously that referred to Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia. Bob Marley (unbeknownst to most of the public) did not use marijuana recreation-ally yet as a religious rite. Other native American tribes did utilize marijuana and other psychotropics as spiritual tools.
The first groups of “rastas” in Jamaica are attributed to followers of Leonard P. Howell. These people also began to board ships going back to Africa from Jamaica.
It was the rise of reggae music, largely rooted by Island Records originally, that brought Rastafarianism to an international audience and cultural explosion. It is reggae music that gave rise to the only known international format of music: world music.
Early Rastafarian leader L.P.Howell created a large community that grew ganja as a cash crop. The word “ganja” meaning hemp is actually a Hindu word, east Indians bringing the plant to Jamaica during their colonization of the island. Although the plant may have grown there naturally, probably brought from the American mainland by native nomadic tribes.
Coleman Hemphill and Jesse Williams host this week with Guest Shayda Torabi of Restart CBD. Discussions include delta 8, bills in Texas House, quality assurance with consumer products, 3rd party testing and more.
In our May financial edition of the Texas Hemp Reporter Magazine. This issue profiles aspects of the banking industry as it relates to merchant processing, finance, compliance and lending. Our recap of the NOCO 7 Expo, we also preview the Lucky Leaf Expo, discuss Delta 8 after the Hemp market boom, and many new changes in Texas law in the 87th Legislature are also covered. Tips on indoor versus outdoor growing, our possible new radio show, and Hemp oil taste as well as the hemp oil business.
The Magazine will be available on the streets of Austin May 6-7 at all smoke shops and CBD stores as well as All Austin Area HEB & Randal’s. If you hold a permit in Texas you will receive one the following week by mail like usual. Stay tuned for upcoming alerts on our Radio Show the Texas Hemp Show and the next issue will be out July 1st 2021.
Jesse Williams of Texas Cannabis Collective and Coleman Hemphill of TXHIA and Ionization Labs talk about recent events in Texas to Include HB3948, HB99, HB3722, the federal Safe Banking Act passing congress and much more. Russell Dowden is out this week as he recovers from getting a new grill.
The Texas Hemp Reporter is seeking advertising support and sponsors to take the Texas Hemp Show podcast to the next level ; “on air”.
The producers of the local podcast in Austin are seeking help from advertisers to make the leap to the local Airwaves on Talk Radio 1370 AM here in Austin or KLBJ 590 AM.
The team has approached both local stations and are seeking an on-air weekend talk program format for the Texas Hemp Show. The podcast now has 26 shows already profiling growers, laboratories, seed companies, soil experts, genetic engineers, and financial professionals in the Hemp Industry.
Co-hosted by Coleman Hemphill of the Texas Hemp Industries Association, Jesse Williams senior contributor of the Texas Cannabis Collective and Russell Dowden Publisher of the Texas Hemp Reporter magazine; the trio recently attended the NOCO 7 Hemp Expo in Denver where they networked and did two podcast from the event last March.
With guest from around the U.S. and the state, the weekly radio show will profile farmers, processors and professionals from the growing hemp industry while taking calls from the public.
If your business would like to be a part of one, if not THE first hemp talk show on “Radio” in the Lone Star State, contact Russell with the Texas Hemp Reporter to advertise your product or service on the upcoming new local radio show format.
A couple of family-owned farmers on the program this week, one from California and a local Farmer here in central Texas.
Aaron Owens – The Tejas Hemp family combines these longstanding friendships and business relationships to realize our vision of providing the highest quality of Made In Texas hemp products. Tejas Hemp is a privately held corporation headquartered in Dripping Springs, Texas, just west of Austin. Visit https://www.tejashemp.com/about
Landon Currier: Procurement & Sales for Imperial CBD Extraction and is owned by Andrew and John Currier. Andrew and John Currier have over 30 years of produce and hay growing experience in the Imperial Valley and are two of the first farmers to grow hemp in the area. John Currier is currently an acting Board Member of the California Hemp and Advisory Council. Both Andrew and John Currier are active members of The Imperial County Farm Bureau. Visit https://www.imperialcbdextraction.com/our-team for more info.
Cannabis activist and pioneer Steve DeAngelo discusses how hemp can literally save the world, about its likelihood as an industry disrupter, and what cannabis legalization may look like under President Biden.
Don’t at all be fooled by his mellow demeanor or by his trademark pigtail braids and pork pie hat, because Steve DeAngelo is all business. A pioneering activist for the cannabis reform movement, Mr. DeAngelo has dedicated his life to advocating the cannabis plant first and foremost as a connoisseur, but also as an author, educator, investor and entrepreneur.
He is credited with co-founding Harborside in 2006 as a nonprofit medical cannabis dispensary, when the company was granted one of the first medical licenses in the country. His other achievements are quite impressive: the Discovery Channel miniseries Weed Wars; he was the lead organizer and fundraiser for I-59, Washington D.C.’s medical cannabis initiative; also, Mr. DeAngelo, who studied at the University of Maryland School of Law, successfully litigated against the Department of Justice’s last-ditch effort in 2011 to shut down California’s medical cannabis dispensaries; and he also played a major role in the passage of Prop 64, which legalized recreational cannabis for adults in California.
The Texas Hemp Reporter caught up with the legend himself earlier this year, not long after he parted ways with Harborside Inc, a California-focused cannabis enterprise that is currently a publicly listed company on the Canadian Securities Exchange, where he was co-founder and, most recently, chairman emeritus.
TEXAS HEMP REPORTER:Is the legalization of cannabis on the federal level likely to happen during the Biden presidency?
STEVE DeANGELO: We are likely to see some significant reform at the federal level. I’m not sure that’s going to include what we would call complete legalization. President Biden and Vice-President Harris have a long history of working with law enforcement. They both have a record ‒ not a good record ‒ of passing and enforcing laws that really hurt a lot of people. Kamala Harris, when she was the attorney general of California, oversaw many, many, many cannabis prosecutions. There are still people in prison today because of her prosecutions for something that is legal now. And after she was elected with a lot of the help from the [medical] cannabis industry, she failed to come to our assistance in 2011 when the federal government tried to shut down the California industry. In fact, in a TV interview, she basically laughed about the idea of cannabis reform. So, with that said, I think both Biden and Harris are creatures of a political center. That’s where they want to position themselves; and now the whole Democratic Party is in favor of cannabis ‒ as well as a big chunk of the Republican Party. And, really, cannabis is the only bipartisan consensus issue between the two parties today. Sixty percent of Americans are in favor of legalization. So I do have faith that Biden and Harris will figure out where the political center is on on this, and the more help we give them to do that, the sooner we’ll see reforms and the more likely they’ll be complete.
THR: Now that you’ve cut ties with Harborside, what’s going to be your biggest focus going forward?
SD: I’m really interested in the ESG space, which to some means “Equity, Sustainability, and Governance.” Some people call it “Environmental, Social, and Governance.” There’s a whole sector of investors for whom the whole sector of ESG investing is a growing and increasingly important sector ‒ probably the most rapidly-growing investor sector today. And on the company side, we have many cannabis companies that are going to be headed up by licensees who receive social-equity licenses. And those licenses frequently have a really difficult time finding financial resources that they need to develop their licenses. So that’s a problem I would really like to help solve, and I think there’s a win-win solution there for equity licensees and for investors who are interested in making an impact.
THR: Of course you’ll be focusing on the Last Prisoner Project, too. Tell us, essentially, what the nonprofit is fighting for.
SD: The mission of the Last Prisoner Project is really narrow. We hope someday to put ourselves out of business. Its mission is simple: And that’s to make sure that, as this new, global, legal cannabis industry is built, every single person on the planet who’s imprisoned on cannabis charges is released. It comes out of a basic notion of fairness. We shouldn’t keep punishing people for it. In today’s atmosphere, it’s just completely unacceptable for white guys with Ivy-League degrees working on Wall Street to come into legal cannabis and get licenses and grow and sell tons and tons of cannabis at the same time that there’s mostly black and brown people who are imprisoned for cannabis crimes involving far, far smaller quantities. Eighty-seven percent of cannabis prisoners in the federal system are people of color. Our mission is really focused on cannabis prisoners; it becomes a social-justice mission just by virtue of the fact that so much of the prohibition in the United States is racially driven. … What we do is work for the release of prisoners, and then we also work to make their reentry [into society] productive and fruitful.
THR: On your website is a very compelling, convincing video of you saying how hemp can save the world, how it could replace all the materials that are sickening us as well as the planet. Can you expound on this?
SD: For me, it’s all one plant. There’s this unfortunate confusion of terminology that’s come into place, largely because there’s a loophole under hemp regulation to allow ‘hemp to be grown for human consumption’ as long as it doesn’t contain THC. I think that’s really the wrong way of looking at it. For me, there’s just two kinds of cannabis: cannabis that is produced for human beings to consume, whatever its cannabinoid and terpene profile is; and cannabis that’s produced to make something out of. I don’t muddy those definitions up with THC, because THC is just one of 140 different cannabinoids that prohibition has an obsession with. But that doesn’t mean that we should. I absolutely see industrial hemp as being a critical part of the revolution that’s underway here. Mother Nature was incredibly kind to us. She gave us one plant that wakes up our minds and brings us closer in touch with nature, and at the same time gives us the raw materials that we need to build the new economy, a life-affirming economy. Part of it is raising the consciousness with cannabis, and part of it is just the raw material. Hemp is such an extraordinary raw material. Not only can you make everything and anything out of it the way you could with petroleum, trees or cotton; there’s all these other amazing things you can make out of hemp that you can’t make out of petroleum, trees or cotton, like graphene. There’s a company now that’s making hemp graphene, a semiconductor critical in making cell phones. It’s currently mined in Africa at an extraordinary cost, both financial and social. And now a company has figured out how to make it out of hemp. They’re talking of making houses and airplanes and cars out of hemp graphene. The whole outer parts of our buildings and our cars, maybe even our clothing, could be solar-collection devices. Let me be clear: I’m not talking about CBD. I’m not talking about consumable cannabis. That for me is a different conversation. When we look at industrial hemp in the United States, it is underdeveloped for one major reason, and that is because there is no infrastructure in existence to make sure the hemp crop is turned into the products that the market wants. I’ll give you one example. One of the greatest uses for hemp is in textiles. You can make these absolutely super high-quality textiles out of hemp. You can blend them with cotton, you can make it 100 percent hemp. Levi’s right now is making a jean that is 30 percent hemp fibers and 70 percent cotton. They would like to increase the amount of hemp in there. But the hemp fibers, they’ve had to cottonize them. This is an example of infrastructure. Hemp is the longest, strongest natural fiber on the planet, but because cotton has been such a dominant textile fiber in the United States for so long, we don’t have bast-fiber spineries. We don’t have a way to turn hemp fiber into a hemp yarn without doing what Levi’s is doing, which is basically blowing it up and making it into very, very short, and hence very weak, fiber, rather than trying to take advantage of the full qualities of hemp. Just because the infrastructure is not there. So once we have a sufficient commitment of vision and capital to build that infrastructure, then we’re going to see hemp disrupt every single kind of industry you can imagine. Just about anything that is made, hemp is going to disrupt. Because it’s such a great raw material when done at scale. Anything you can make out of other raw materials can be made out of hemp and it’s usually a much higher-quality product and no more expensive. Then there’s all these things that hemp does that nothing else does. Hemp sequesters 20 tons of atmospheric carbon for every hectare that you harvest. That means that we could stop Global Warming just by planting enough hectares of hemp and harvesting them. And then it makes really simple products like hempcrete, a remarkable material that is as strong as concrete, lighter than concrete, more mold-resistant, more fire-resistant, and less expensive, and not only carbon-neutral but carbon-negative. The hempcrete also sequesters carbon as it dries. Hempcrete is probably the place where we have the least infrastructure problem. I would say that the construction-materials sector is probably the place where we will see the disruption of existing industries by hemp in the shortest period of time in North America, because you don’t really need the complicated infrastructure to produce and use something that most builders can use on the building site.
THR: It’s been a pleasure, Mr. DeAngelo. Good luck to you and thank you for all you do for hemp and cannabis.
Morris talks with Jesse, Coleman and Russell about their recent visit to NOCO 7 in Denver. ( listen podcasts 21-22) Expectations in the coming years with the Texas Market as it relates to Industrial Hemp. Also discussed are HB 99, Texas HB 1535 by Rep. Stephanie Klick and other related bills for Hemp or Cannabis in the Lone Star State.
Texans deserve medicine like many other states citizens who have legally made the plant available. In fact, 15 states in the U.S. have decriminalized its use. In addition, a total of 36 states, District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands have approved comprehensive, publicly available medical marijuana/cannabis programs.
Texans are hoping that this current 87 Legislature at the very least expands on its current medical marijuana.
Cannabis/hemp advocate and entrepreneur Morris Beegle is Co-founder and President of the WAFBA (We Are For Better Alternatives) family of brands, including the NoCo Hemp Expo, the world’s most comprehensive hemp-centric exposition, trade-show and conference, and Let’s Talk Hemp Media.
WAFBA also includes Silver Mountain Hemp Guitars, maker of hand-crafted hemp guitars, cabinets and components; the Tree Free Hemp paper and printing company, and more.
Spanning education, advocacy and entertainment, Beegle engages audiences around the world through podcasts, digital and print media, radio, and live events.
Heather Fazio joins in on the conversation about Texas Legislation live from NOCO 7 in Denver.
Heather is a strong advocate of individual liberty and personal responsibility, Heather Fazio has worked toward limited government since 2009. She served as Executive Director of Texans for Accountable Government from 2011-2014 and has served as an advisory board member of Texas NORML since 2012.
Heather served as Texas Political Director of the Marijuana Policy Project from 2014-2018. Now, she utilizes her passion for grassroots activism and coalition building as Director of Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy, an advocacy-focused coalition.
