Colorado cannabis officials are tasked with figuring out how to stop marijuana and hemp pollen from mingling, but they need to learn more about the outdoors first.
Although technically the same plant genus, marijuana and hemp are grown for two different reasons in Colorado. Marijuana's intoxicating compound, THC, is still banned federally, while hemp is farmed for industrial purposes or extracted for non-intoxicating medicinal compounds, like CBD, as long as the hemp flowers have less than 0.3 percent THC. But the two plants can easily cross-pollinate miles away from each other when grown outdoors.