What scares you about this regulation is sometimes, we overregulate an industry and cause more problems.
By Bhaamati Borkhetaria, CommonWealth Beacon
Massachusetts legislators this session are looking to take hemp-derived intoxicating products—which contain the same active ingredient as marijuana but are not regulated the same way—off shelves in gas stations, convenience stores and vape shops across Massachusetts.
Many state agencies have declared hemp products illegal, but they continue to appear in stores, outside dispensaries. These products are mostly imported from other states.
Some business owners who sell the intoxicating products argue that the state agencies haven’t settled the matter because hemp is legal federally—through a loophole in the 2018 federal Farm Bill which legalized hemp. Hemp and marijuana are the same plant, but this law removed hemp from the classification of marijuana as long as it contains less than 0.3 percent THC— the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis—by volume.
Beacon Hill has filed four bills to regulate hemp products such as edibles, oils, capsules and tinctures. The Cannabis Control Commission will also have the authority to take these products out of stores that are not dispensaries. Hemp-derived products like CBD gummi bear the oversight of the Cannabis control commission. These bills target products that are intoxicating and sold outside dispensaries.
“[Hemp products] Face no additional taxes, no host communities agreements, recall process, FDA testing requirements or age limitations,” said Rep. Dawne Shand of Newburyport, a Democrat. She spoke at a Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy Hearing on Wednesday. The hemp industry is a mockery to cannabis laws.
Shand is a committee member who has proposed a law that prohibits the sale of intoxicating products made from hemp without the approval of the Cannabis Control Commission.
Rep. Michael Soter (a Republican from Bellingham) has proposed two bills to deal with hemp-derived goods.
Rep. James C. Arena DeRosa’s fourth bill (D) imposes, on top of the state tax already in place, an additional excise duty for the sale hemp-based products. This money is then used by the local health board as a means to ban certain hemp-based products from the stores.
I think [hemp] In an interview conducted before the hearing, Soter said that the Cannabis Control Commission should have control over the matter. “You’ve got people who are following the rules…and then you’ve got some things that are kind of being sold in convenience stores and gas stations. This stuff has a lot of appeal for kids. That’s a bad thing.
Soter stressed that he wanted to create legislation that was very cautious when it came to hemp products. He didn’t want businesses selling non-intoxicating products like hemp oils or creams with CBD to harm them inadvertently.
Soter said, “What I find scary about this regulation is that we can sometimes overregulate an industry and cause more issues.” “We have to be careful. It is my goal to ensure that we stay on track and only pursue what we should and never what we shouldn’t.
Jesse Alderman (a lawyer who is a specialist in cannabis) and Peter Gallagher (CEO of INSA), a cannabis company, both brought along a bag full of hemp-based products, which they claimed to have collected in over 20 gas stations, convenience shops and vape stores.
These products contained high levels of THC. One of these packages contained 10,000 mg of THC. The state only allows 100 milligrams of cannabis per package, and 5 milligrams for each serving.
After passing the bag to legislators who said that it smelled of cannabis, they reacted.
Adam Gomez said that if it looks and smells the same, he believes it to be cannabis.
Gallagher confirmed that the products they had tested would have qualified as cannabis products if they contained more than 0.3 per cent THC. Around a third would have failed the cannabis product regulatory testing because they contained microbes. pesticides. heavy metals. and residual solvents. He added that none of the shops where he bought the hemp products asked for his identification in order to enforce the age limit.
The vape crisis of 2019 was a similar situation. Illegal, unregulated, and untested cartridges. [were] Cutting agents are being sold in some products. [that] Gallagher stated that the result was people injuring themselves. The majority of today’s consumers do not understand the difference between what they can buy in dispensaries, gas stations and convenience stores.
Massachusetts issued guidance on May 20, 2024, stating that this type of product is illegal. Alcohol Beverage Control Commission informed its licensees of the possibility that they could lose their licenses if caught selling hemp products.
These products were removed from many places, including restaurants, liquor shops and smoke shops. The crackdown has been uneven, however. This is because local health boards have not had the resources or time to visit all stores to enforce the laws.
Last session legislators chose not to take action on hemp-derived products. But representatives of local health boards stated that without increased resources, they would be unable remove the products from the shelves and keep them out of reach of children.
John Nathan, the CEO of a company called Bay State Extracts, which produces hemp-derived compounds like CBD, said that the legislation proposed at the hearing would be redundant because these products—as per the guidance from the state agencies—are already illegal. He expressed his concern over the Cannabis Control Commission’s capability to regulate hemp-derived products. It has been a frustrating regulatory process for many in the cannabis industry because of internal conflicts, misconduct allegations and slow progress.
Nathan said that the CCC had barely enforced its existing hemp regulations or guidance. The cannabis market is in turmoil. Oversaturation, bill payment struggles, layoffs and a competitive, low-paying market are all part of the cannabis industry. Instead of trying to disrupt the supply chain to try to make illegal things legal, I think the focus should be on supporting the market as it is and working together to resolve these problems.
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Federally funded study shows that marijuana use reduces alcohol cravings in people who drink a lot.
MEDCAN24 could not exist without readers’ support. Consider a Patreon subscription if our marijuana advocacy journalism is what you use to keep informed.
