Image from NYPD Twitter
Health Impact News
Hemp, the non-psychoactive cousin of marijuana that has been legal for sale in the U.S. for many years, and was recently given clearance to now be grown in the U.S. also after the passage of the last Farm Bill, was recently seized by New York police from a FedEx truck where it was bound for a shop that makes CBD products used by millions of people for things like pain management.
The 106 lbs. seized by NYPD was certified organic and a very high quality variety, and its seizure could put the Vermont growers out of business, as its value was over $17,000.00.
Jahala Dudley and Buddy Koerner said their first summer spent trying to grow and harvest commercial hemp in Vermont was an eye-opener.
But nothing prepared them for the incident that unfolded over the weekend, which still has them shaking their heads.
The two business partners at Fox Holler Farms in New Haven had just completed the labor-intensive job of processing, packaging and shipping 106 pounds of organically grown hemp flower to a commercial customer in Brooklyn, New York.
They said they dropped off nine boxes at FedEx in Williston on Friday and made clear what it was. Dudley said they’d used FedEx many times before with no problem.
“It’s all legal,” Koerner said. “We did everything by the books.”
The boxes never made it to their destination.
Officers at the New York Police Department’s 75th Precinct in Brooklyn, apparently acting on a tip, seized the shipment, believing it was marijuana.
A representative of the Green Angel CBD shop was then arrested as he arrived to pick it up.
The NYPD appeared pleased with its handling of the case. On Monday, the department posted a photograph on Facebook showing their officers posing with the cache. On Twitter they congratulated the two cops for their “relentless follow-up” that helped confiscate “106 pounds of marijuana that was destined for our city streets.”
Dudley was flabbergasted.
“I’m looking at it. It’s the stuff you see in movies,” Dudley told NBC5. “Like, these two cops are holding our hemp, like it’s an awesome drug bust! This is hemp!”
One detective who Dudley said she spoke with by phone seemed unaware of the distinction between marijuana, which is illegal under federal law, and its cannabis cousin, hemp.
Read the full article at NBC5