Mass. legislators push for more forceful action on intoxicating hemp-derived products
BOSTON — State lawmakers session are looking to take hemp-derived intoxicating products – which contain the same active ingredient as cannabis but are not regulated the same way – off shelves in gas stations, convenience stores, and vape shops across Massachusetts.
The hemp products, which are generally edible and intoxicating like gummies or candies, have already been declared illegal in the state by several state agencies but continue to pop up in certain stores outside of dispensaries. Most of these products come from out of state.
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 cannabis are the same plant, but this law removed hemp from the classification of cannabis as long as it contains less than 0.3% THC – the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis – by volume.
Four bills have been filed on Beacon Hill to bring any consumable hemp-derived products like edibles, concentrates, tinctures, oils, and capsules, under the purview of the Cannabis Control Commission or give local boards of health oversight to remove these products from stores other than dispensaries. Hemp products that are sold in dispensaries like CBD gummies are already regulated by the commission. These bills would specifically target intoxicating products being sold outside of dispensaries.
'[Hemp products] face no additional tax impositions, no host community agreements, no recall process, no FDA testing requirements, no age limits,' said Rep. Dawne Shand, a Newburyport Democrat, at a Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy hearing on Wednesday. 'The intoxicating hemp industry makes a mockery of cannabis laws.'
Shand, a member of the committee, is pushing a bill that would prohibit intoxicating hemp products from being sold without an endorsement from the Cannabis Control Commission.
Rep. Michael Soter, a Republican from Bellingham, has two bills that would address hemp-derived products.
The fourth bill, presented by James C. Arena-DeRosa, imposes an excise tax on the sale of hemp products in addition to the existing state tax and directs that money to be used to empower local health board to remove certain hemp products from stores.
'I think [hemp] should be up to the control of the Cannabis Control Commission,' said Soter, in an interview before the hearing. '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. Some of this stuff is really geared towards kids, and that's not a good thing.'
Soter emphasized that he wants to be very careful in creating legislation to deal with hemp products because he doesn't want to inadvertently harm businesses that sell non-intoxicating hemp products, like oils or creams that contain CBD and are meant to be applied topically.
'What scares me about regulating this is that sometimes we over-regulate and we put more problems on an industry,' said Soter. 'We've got to walk that fine line. I want to keep us on a straight path of going after what we need to go after and what we don't need to go after and make sure when we do this regulation, we do it correctly.'
At the hearing, Jesse Alderman, a lawyer who specializes in cannabis, and Peter Gallagher, the CEO of the cannabis company INSA, brought a bag of intoxicating hemp products that they said they collected from over 20 different gas stations, convenience stores, and vape shops.
Many of these products had high concentrations of THC. One of the packages contained 10,000 milligrams of THC. For cannabis, the state allows only 100 milligrams per package and 5 milligrams per serving.
They passed the bag around to the legislators, who commented that the products smelled like cannabis.
'If it smells like it, looks like it, I think it is it,' said Adam Gomez, the Senate chair of the cannabis committee.
Gallagher said that they tested these products and that over 90% of them would qualify as cannabis products because they contained well over 0.3% of THC. About a third of the products wouldn't have passed the regulatory testing required on cannabis products because of the presence of microbes, pesticides, heavy metals, and residual solvents. None of the establishments where he purchased the hemp products checked for identification to enforce age limits, he added.
'This really looks a lot like what we saw in 2019 with the vape crisis where illegal, unregulated, untested vape cartridges [were] being sold with cutting agents in them and [that] ultimately led to people harming themselves,' said Gallagher. 'A lot of consumers today don't understand that what's being purchased in these gas stations, convenience stores, vape shops or even online is different and potentially more damaging than what you're able to purchase in the regulated dispensaries.'
In Massachusetts, several state agencies issued guidance in May 2024 that said that these types of products are illegal. The Alcohol Beverage Control Commission warned its licensees that their licenses could be suspended or revoked if they were caught selling hemp-derived products.
Soon after, many of these products were taken out of liquor stores, smoke shops, restaurants, and many other places that were selling them. But the crackdown on these products has remained uneven because the enforcement on these products has largely remained in the hands of local boards of health, which are already overburdened and don't have the resources to go from store to store.
Last session, legislators decided not to intervene on the issue of hemp-derived products, but representatives of local boards of health said that they are unable to get these products out of stores and out of the hands of children without more resources allocated to them for this issue.
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 also expressed concern about the Cannabis Control Commission's ability to actually regulate hemp products effectively. The commission has had internal conflict, allegations of misconduct, and a slow-moving regulatory process that has frustrated many within the cannabis industry.
'The CCC has barely enforced their existing hemp regulations and guidance is as it stands,' said Nathan. 'The cannabis industry is in turmoil. There's over saturation, struggles for bill payments, layoffs, competitive and low-paying job market, what seems like monthly closures. I feel effort should be directed towards supporting the existing market and coordinating to fix these issues, rather than disrupting the supply chain in an effort to make something already illegal illegal again.'
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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