During the second funnel week, the House of Representative passed a bill pertaining to edible hemp.

Representative for District 23 Ray Sorensen says that there was a loophole that didn’t have an age restriction on people that could purchase hemp products, and that many products had too high a level of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC in it. He continues that many legislators and individuals across the state agreed that there needed to be more regulations to bring the law closer to others already in place in Iowa

Sorensen mentions that the bill was actually one that came through his Economic Growth Committee, and that he’s happy that they were able to pass it, though not to the extent of what he would have originally liked. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio how the bill got its start.

“We kind of built a coalition of 20 or so Republicans in the House caucus that were in favor of either raising the THC or keeping it at like a five milligram per container (serving). But everybody else in the caucus was either for completely eliminating it, putting it to zero milligrams, or at the absolute most, two milligrams.”

Sorensen explains that the opposition for the coalition he was part of had made an amendment to have the potency limit set to two milligrams, and the coalition amended the amendment so that it ended up that the limit was four milligrams. He adds that as the Chair for the Economic Growth Committee, his goal was to try and protect the businesses, as they already face heavy regulations, and that the four milligram limit wasn’t what he had wanted, but that if he hadn’t done anything, it would have been stuck at the limit that other Republicans had wanted.