Browsing: Hemp

Heather DeRose realized she had to take a hard look at her lifestyle and eating habits after college. She was forty pounds overweight and routinely felt sick after eating. A doctor told her she was allergic to eggs, dairy and wheat, which she found on the label of nearly everything in her pantry.

During that overhaul, DeRose found hemp. Now, she and her husband, Antonio, run MJFITNUT, a website that promotes using cannabis to supplement a healthy and active lifestyle.

John Lyons was set to retire from four decades of training horses and sell his seventy-acre training facility in Parachute, Colorado. Instead, he started one of the country’s first nutraceutical and medical hemp research and treatment facilities, the Colorado Hemp Institute.

“I was retiring, selling the place, taking the money and running,” Lyons says. “[But] God had a different plan for my life than that.”

Fourth-generation farmer Randy Taylor has watched potential income disappear as a hailstorm obliterated plants on the 7,000 acres that he oversees. But having to destroy crops himself is a tougher pill to swallow.

In December, on what he calls “probably some of the hardest days in my life,” Taylor mowed down eighty acres of hemp that had spiked THC levels. The Colorado Department of Agriculture had told the Yuma farmer that his hemp was too hot, above the 0.3 percent THC limit that defines industrial hemp under state law. Taylor’s crop measured at 0.47 percent THC, over the limit by just 0.17 percent.

Cannabis businesses took over the Colorado Convention Center this week as the National Cannabis Industry Association held its Seed to Sale Show on February 7 and 8. Made up of nearly 1,600 members, the NCIA is one of the largest industry groups in legal cannabis and has been holding annual events in Denver to showcase industry trends and technology for over five years.

The technology around legal cannabis has evolved rapidly since its commercial awakening. Consumer trends and products are constantly changing, and events like the Seed to Sale Show often offer a glimpse into what the future of retail pot will look like. Here are five of my favorite up-and-coming consumer trends from the NCIA convention.

There were thirty of us, all women, practicing our breathing in very specific ways for two minutes. Some breathed in through their tongues, rolled like straws, and then out through their noses slowly, while others breathed in and out sharply, using their diaphragms. Both systems felt odd, but the final result left me less skeptical than when I’d first walked in the door.

I felt calmer and less anxious, a common goal of breathing practices and meditation, but that is just one part of the puzzle that Becca Williams solved with cannabis, changing her life in the process. Williams, who describes herself as a “ceremonialist soulcraft practitioner and plant medicine integrationist,” has been performing cannabis elevation ceremonies with a combination of high-CBD flower and Eastern meditation practices for over a year, to “enrich and heal” the lives of others, she says.

Ernest Misko was using medical marijuana to treat his chronic back pain when his elderly cat, Borzo, started having difficulty walking, so he decided to feed the cat a cannabis tincture. Within a few days, he reported that Borzo was moving around much better and seemed to feel less pain.

Misko’s story was published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, along with similar success stories of pet owners giving cannabis to their dogs or cats for ailments. But while there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that the plant seems to help our furry companions in ways similar to those in which it can help us, there’s little research to prove it. To help push the thirst for more information, the Wheat Ridge Animal Hospital held a free forum for pet owners and veterinarians on Tuesday, January 23, to discuss how medical marijuana and CBD products can help pets.

After launching a line of CBD-infused products this month, Kim Koehler is making her debut at the Indo Expo in Denver on Saturday, January 27. Her star product? CBD-infused lube.

Koehler says she was inspired to create her brand, Privy Peach, to empower women after dealing with pain and trauma in her own life. After experiencing a sexual assault and living through an abusive marriage, she faced pain and anxiety during sex. Her doctors recommended physical therapy, but she didn’t feel comfortable with that.

Colorado can now claim production of the first certified hemp seed in the United States after the Association of Official Seed Certifying Agencies officially validated one of its varieties. Fort Collins-based New West Genetics submitted its trademarked ELITE hemp genetics for AOSCA certification and received approval in 2017, according to an announcement from the Colorado Department of Agriculture.

“The farmer can now have confidence that what he is buying is what he expects it to be, which is below 0.3 percent [THC] and true to type,” says Duane Sinning, assistant director of the division of plant industries at the CDA.

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