This story was republished with permission from Crain’s Cleveland Business.
Ohio is among a minority of states that have yet to regulate the sale of intoxicating hemp products, but there could be some growing momentum behind changing that.
These products include items like vape cartridges, edibles or gummy candies purportedly infused with compounds like Delta 8 THC extracted from legally grown hemp – the less intoxicating cannabis relative of marijuana – and THCA flower, all of which can be commonly found today at retail stores ranging from smoke or wellness shops to gas stations and purchased online.
Production of hemp, which is defined as having a concentration of less than 0.3% THC on a dry weight basis, was effectively legalized in the U.S. with the 2018 Farm Bill.
As Craig Schluttenhofer, a research associate professor at Central State University who specializes in hemp, explains, to make products with an intoxicating effect, manufacturers increase the volume of hemp-derived THC in those products to a level that could make the person using or consuming them feel a “high” that can be similar to the effects felt from marijuana.
Hemp-derived flower intended for vaping or smoking, meanwhile, often marketed as THCA flower, is a unique animal in its own right.
THCA is a compound – which can be extracted from hemp – that converts to THC once heated or combusted. But because current federal regulations do not consider THCA levels as a distinguishing factor between hemp or marijuana, these products exist in a legal gray area, enabling their sale by common retailers outside of the licensed marijuana industry.
Marijuana companies tend to want restrictions on intoxicating hemp because those products may undermine sales in their own industry, which is heavily regulated and intrinsically expensive to operate within.
The absence of relevant federal regulations or comparable state laws means that these intoxicating hemp products are not subject to the same testing and oversight compared to the licensed marijuana cultivators, processors and retailers.
There are also no age restrictions on these unregulated products, something that has been a concern for some lawmakers and Gov. Mike DeWine, who called for “quick action” to restrict the sale of intoxicating hemp to children nearly a year ago.
Jana Hrdinova, administrative director for the Drug Enforcement Policy Center at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, which recently published a report with considerations for regulating intoxicating hemp in the state, feels like some regulations should be put in place to prevent minors from buying these products and to generally protect consumers as there presently no rules requiring hemp products to be tested to verify their contents or the presence of potentially harmful additives.
“At a minimum, we need to take care of the minimum age, and we need to take care of product safety, marketing to children and child-resistant packaging,” Hrdinova said. “To me, those are the basic four things the Ohio legislature needs to act on.”
Ohio is, in fact, behind on doing something here. According to the Reason Foundation, a California-based think tank, Ohio is among 21 states that don’t have some regulations on intoxicating hemp products. Those regulations vary by state and range from outright prohibition to regulating them similarly to marijuana.
“It is important that (intoxicating hemp products) stay out of the hands of minors, especially because, while we’re beginning to have some understanding of the long-term effects of THC, we don’t have that with these products,” Schluttenhofer said. “And it’s a very high risk for age groups that are still fundamentally developing physiologically as adults.”
There are currently four pieces of legislation in the Ohio statehouse aimed at regulating intoxicating hemp – two each in the House and Senate – but each varies in what they would accomplish.
One of those, Senate Bill 326, whose primary sponsor is Sen. Stephen Huffman, would outright ban the sale of intoxicating hemp in the state and set specific penalties for anyone caught selling the products to anyone younger than 21.
But Schluttenhofer cautions that an outright ban would have to be approached carefully as to not impact some other hemp-derived products.
“The challenge is, how do you balance (regulations) while – if they do decide to prohibit intoxicating products – not prohibiting some of these valid hemp products as well that people are buying and using for health purposes,” he said. “People don’t buy CBD products to get intoxicated, but for other health purposes.”
A group known as the Ohio Healthy Alternatives Association has voiced opposition to SB 326 based on concerns that it could impact small businesses and potentially result in the loss of some 20,000 Ohio jobs.
Not much is known about the OHAA, however. The organization seems to have only recently formed and has no website or readily available information about its purpose or members.
Crain’s reached out to the organization via email to learn more about it and request details around how it came up with its figures for potentially impacted jobs but has yet to hear back.
DEPC points out that there is “limited data on the intoxicating hemp industry in Ohio, though the Ohio Department of Agriculture reports that the number of farmers involved in hemp production is relatively small in the Buckeye State.”
And Schluttenhofer notes that while there are only a handful of hemp growers in Ohio, those who do grow the plant are primarily doing so for grain and fiber, not for the manufacturer of intoxicating products.
Whether any of the bills geared toward regulating intoxicating hemp gain traction before the end of this year, which will mark the conclusion of the current general assembly, is unclear.
“There are certainly competing interests in regulating hemp. You have a hemp industry and small businesses that sell hemp products, competing with a marijuana industry that sees themselves being undercut by intoxicating hemp products,” Hrdinova said. “But the thing I’m most concerned with is safety of products for anyone, whether 21 or 50 or 16. If you buy a product, it should be safe to use.”
