NEW YORK (AP) – The CBD craze is leaving the war on drugs a bit dazed and confused.
The extract that’s been showing up in everything from candy to coffee is legally derived from hemp plants, which look and smell a lot like marijuana.
New York City police boasted this week about what seemed like a big bust: more than 100 pounds of plants that officers thought were marijuana. They also arrested the man who came to pick up the plants.
The Vermont farm that grew the plants and the Brooklyn CBD shop that ordered them insist they’re legal industrial hemp.
The shop owner says if they’re seized for too long, he could go out of business.
Since the U.S. government removed industrial hemp last year from the list of illegal drugs, a number of similar cases have cropped up.
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