15-04-2025
Delta-8 regulatory qualms go unaddressed as Indiana House approves homelessness, DEI measures
From right: House Republican Floor Leader Matt Lehman and Minority Leader Phil GiaQuinta count lawmakers to resolve "division" over changes to a "craft hemp flower products" bill on Monday, April 14, 2025. (Leslie Bonilla Muñiz/Indiana Capital Chronicle)
On the cusp of key legislative deadlines, GOP-led regulations for a marijuana-like drug got more edits Monday — despite vocal opposition from fellow Indiana House Republicans.
Legislation cracking down on homelessness and diversity initiatives, plus promoting high-speed internet access, also passed muster. They return to the Senate for consent to the House's changes, or to kick off negotiations.
Products with legally low concentrations of delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol have proliferated in Indiana, alongside those containing delta-8 THC and other isomers. Attempts to regulate the nascent industry, which is booming on shaky legal footing, have failed repeatedly.
After third committee vote, delta-8 regulations head to House floor
Senate Bill 478 has gotten further than its predecessors, but its journey hasn't been smooth. It has been revised at every opportunity possible: during two Senate committee hearings, on the Senate's floor, in each of a whopping three House committee hearings and, Monday, it was the subject of 17 wide-ranging amendments filed for discussion on the House floor.
The measure sets out advertising, age-limit, licensing, packaging, testing and other requirements. It authorizes the Indiana Alcohol and Tobacco Commission to regulate.
Provisions defining 'craft hemp flower products' and setting out high milligram limits have sparked opposition from Indiana's chief attorney and others, but weren't changed Monday. Instead, lawmakers took up just two of the amendments.
One, removing a new tax that was only partially removed last week, was adopted easily. Rep. Jake Teshka, R-North Liberty, reminded his colleagues that new taxes must go in House bills.
But the other, raising the cap on retail permits from 9,400 to 20,000 and allowing permits for convenience and drug stores, prompted blowback from Teshka's own caucus.
House Speaker Todd Huston presided over a first, then a second voice vote, but both sides were just as loud. Representatives from both caucuses counted up supporters and opponents instead: it was accepted on a vote of 63-21.
Other complaints weren't addressed.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita's office wrote that the legislation 'expands' a loophole for 'high-potency, intoxicating THC products under the guise of hemp,' in a letter to lawmakers. The missive — signed by Legislative Director Erin Tuttle — was included in a Monday morning alert from the American Family Association's Indiana chapter.
A 2018 federal law defined legal hemp as containing 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight or less, but the letter observes lawmakers didn't apply that limit to other isomers. Only 'very high' caps of 100 milligrams per serving and 3,000 milligrams per package would apply.
The legislation also allows THC potency to be measured by weight or volume — without limits on the product's size or mass — instead of by dry weight, Rokita's office continued.
That means manufacturers can increase the milligrams by 'manipulating a product's volume.'
'By allowing these products to be sold, SB 478 effectively creates a parallel cannabis market in Indiana — one that operates entirely outside the state's marijuana laws at a time when marijuana remains illegal at both the state and federal levels,' the letter said.
It urged lawmakers to instead consider any product containing more than 0.3% total THC by dry weight as banned marijuana.
House Democrats also spent about an hour apiece attacking proposals they maintain criminalize homelessness and undo progress born out the Civil Rights Movement.
Rep. Andrew Ireland, R-Indianapolis, said Senate Bill 197 is 'not about punishing people for being homeless.'
'We are never going to arrest or jail our way out of this problem,' said Ireland, the bill's sponsor in the House. He said the goal is to keep public spaces 'accessible and clean, while offering individuals every reasonable opportunity to access the services and the shelter they so desperately need.'
The bill stipulates that 'a person may not camp, sleep, or use for long term shelter a public right-of-way or public land unless authorized for that use by the state or political subdivision, as appropriate.'
Before they can make an arrest, officers must first determine 'if there are reasonable grounds for an emergency detention of the person.' If not, they must warn the person to leave within the 24- or 72-hour timeframe and offer transportation to a shelter or other form of 'temporary accommodations that provide respite and offer access to services and permanent housing options,' within five miles, as long as one exists and has a spot available. If the person refuses or there's no space, officers must call a local crisis intervention team, if there is one.
Those who have not moved from a public right-of-way within 24 hours of a law enforcement officer's warning — or from public land within 72 hours — could be arrested and charged with a Class C misdemeanor. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 60 days in jail or a $500 fine. Legal proceedings would be referred to a problem-solving court.
'This is a bill grounded in principle,' Ireland told the House.
'It defends the rule of law, respects property rights, brings compassion to public safety, ensures fairness before fines, offers help before punishment, restores dignity through due process,' he added.
Democrats remained staunchly opposed.
'This is not a compassionate bill. This is a cruelty bill,' Rep. Cherrish Pryor, D-Indianapolis, said in response to Ireland's assertion it represents a 'compassionate response.'
'If you don't abide by these rules, then you are going to be criminalized and penalized, and you might have a record simply because you don't have a place to lay your head,' Pryor said.
Her colleagues also criticized the process.
Rep. Maureen Bauer noted there was no testimony taken when a House committee co-opted a building safety bill to revive homelessness language from a dead bill.
'It wasn't vetted properly before the public,' said Bauer, D-South Bend. '… And it adds a new criminal penalty without ever going to (the) Courts and Criminal Code (Committee). If this was about connecting people to services, there would be no criminal penalty.'
The House approved Senate Bill 197 in a 52-40 vote — a narrow margin featuring more than a dozen Republican defections.
Legislation outlawing 'discrimination' in state education, employment and licensing 'based on a personal characteristic of the person' advanced in a 67-27 vote along party lines.
Senate Bill 289 sponsor Rep. Chris Jeter said 'discriminatory' programs have 'crept their way into our government institutions' and created 'division.'
'This current version of this bill avoids legislating words because words can be manipulated; words can be weaponized,' Jeter, R-Fishers, said. 'This bill instead focuses on actions and behaviors.'
It would also allow Rokita, the attorney general, to impose hefty civil penalties for violations: $50,000 for a first offense and $100,000 for a second or subsequent offense.
But Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, said pro-diversity policies came into existence for a reason. In a lengthy speech from the House floor, he recalled how his mother faced racist attacks when forced into an attempt to integrate the former Emerson High School.
She and the other Black honors students 'were called all kinds of names. They were pushed, they were spit on,' he said. The white teachers refused to let them enter their classrooms, locking the doors instead, while the white students walked out.
Smith further described how he himself wasn't allowed to eat at certain restaurants, go to certain events or enter certain parts of the city in his younger years. As a 12-year-old, he got off at the wrong bus stop and 'got stoned by white children because I was not supposed to be in that neighborhood.'
'I never thought, when I was fighting (in) the Civil Rights Movement, that we would be reversing ourselves in this country,' Smith said.
Senate Bill 289 could also create a 'serious problem' for the South Bend Community School Corp., per Rep. Ryan Dvorak, D-South Bend. He feared the district could be on the hook for damages.
'I believe (it's) the last school corporation in the state that's under a (federal) desegregation consent decree,' Dvorak said. It requires each school to mirror the district's overall Black student population.
Jeter said that federal law reigns supreme in conflicts with state statutes.
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Other Democrats said the changes would harm veterans. Jeter said they wouldn't.
The House also unanimously approved legislation offering a compromise between electricity and telecommunications providers in a bid to speed up the buildout of high-speed internet in rural and other underserved areas throughout Indiana.
Senior Reporter Casey Smith contributed.
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