LEXINGTON – When the undercover state police left Smoke O’s 2 vape and smokehouses in Lexington with several labeled packages of hemp flowers in February, it would only open the last round of questions in South Carolina about what is legal and what it is not when it comes to hemp products.
The hemp industry in South Carolina and elsewhere has faced a barrage of state and federal law enforcement challenges since the 2018 Federal Farm Bill made growing the crop legal and the state of Palmetto adopted a growing program. hemp.
Shops selling hemp derivatives were raided across the state in the summer of 2019, after the opinion of a state attorney general left confusion over the legality of what constituted “unprocessed” hemp flower. That same year, a Dorchester County hemp farmer was arrested and had his crop destroyed after he switched which field he was growing the plant on without changing his permit.
The most recent items in question are products that contain Delta-8-THC.
Delta-8 is just one of 144 known cannabinoids that come from the cannabis plant. It is only slightly different from Delta-9, the banned ingredient in marijuana that takes effect. According to federal law, hemp Delta-8-THC is not explicitly declared illegal, but it is not the same as some of the more conventional CBD products sold in supermarkets.
Proponents say it helps with pain, inflammation and nausea. A close cousin of marijuana, he is also praised for a smoother and less anxious psychoactive experience.
But at a trial-like hearing held earlier this month by the Lexington City Council – which resulted in the Smoke O’s 2 business license being withdrawn – investigators from the State Law Enforcement Division testified that their lab has no way of differentiating between Delta -8 and Delta-9.
“Until you can differentiate with testing, how do you refute anything?” Benjamin Stitley, the store owner’s lawyer, asked during the meeting.
Stitley said there are many retailers selling the product now, including several in the city of Columbia.
In fact, sales of Delta-8 have exploded across the country and are considered to be “the fastest growing segment” of hemp products, said Ian Laird, chief financial officer of New Leaf Data Services, which monitors the hemp markets and cannabis, to the New York Times. . He estimated consumer sales to be at least $ 10 million, adding, “Delta 8 really came out of nowhere last year.”
Some in the industry believe the products have become a new source of income for some steam stores, which are looking for a different source of revenue, after federal regulations from the Trump Administration eliminated flavored vaporization.
Ultimately, the Lexington tobacco store was not subject to the attacks that prompted many South Carolina retailers to hastily pluck hemp flowers off their shelves more than a year ago. The store caught the attention of the state police after local police arrested a student at River Bluff High School with the product, called Blue Dream, in his vehicle. He told them he bought it at the store located near Walmart on Sunset Boulevard.
The police would make several undercover purchases in February of various hemp flower products, as well as pipes and masks used to inhale smoke.
The flower test would return with a THC content greater than 1 percent, placing it above the legal limit of 0.3 percent.
The employee who sold the products now faces two counts of distributing a controlled substance.
The problem, Stitely said, is that it is Delta-8-THC, not its illegal sister substance Delta-9 that the SLED test detected.
“I think SLED is in a difficult position to sue,” he said.
Data on the number of recent enforcement actions related to hemp products across the state were not made available immediately by SLED.
Stitely hopes that these kinds of legal issues will continue to arise as entrepreneurs in the marijuana industry continue to follow the line of what is legal. Your final recommendation to retailers is: be careful with the buyer.
“Retailers should always obtain third-party lab verification of the cannabinoid profile so that they can confirm with an officer that the product they sell is legal under state and federal law,” recommends Emily McSherry, founder of Cannabis Forward, a advocacy group whose goal is cannabis education. “There has been some talk about Delta-8-THC products not being legal, but then again, as long as they contain 0.3 percent THC or less, it is legal.”
The Federal Anti-Drug Agency pointed to Delta-8 extracted from CBD oil, arguing that it is a synthetic drug and therefore illegal. This new rule proposed by the DEA is being challenged in court by the Association of Hemp Industries.
Mused Alsaidi, owner of Smoke O’s in Lexington and other vaporizer stores in the state, said he had the products tested in a third-party laboratory to show that they contained Delta-8, not Delta-9-THC, before placing them on the shelves.
In the end, it wasn’t the hemp flower that caused him to lose his commercial license.
The city of Lexington is highly regulated by tobacco shops, and it was the sale of pipes and other smoking devices by Alsaidi that got him into trouble. He was informed before receiving his commercial license that he would not be allowed to sell these items.
Stitely said that Alsidi “invested a lot to build a store” and thought the city could have released him with a warning.
“Ultimately, that was not the path they took,” said Stitely.