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Homepage


CALIFORNIA HEMP PRODUCTS CAN GET YOU AS HIGH AS CANNABIS. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? |
OPINION

By Tom Philp
March 21, 2024 5:00 AM

Jeff McPhee holds a tray of month old hemp plants in Oakdale California on March
8, 2019. John Westberg jwestberg@modbee.com


In 2016, Californians voted to legalize cannabis products, limiting the buzz
factor of products like edible gummies down to the milligram and restricting
their sales to adults-only dispensaries. But so much for regulation: These days,
across the state, a shadow industry of similar hemp-based products is fast
emerging with no state regulations on how potent the product may be, how old the
buyer must be or where these products can be sold.

Previous state legislation intended to advance a non-intoxicating hemp industry
did not set hard limits on the intoxicating potency of actual products or
mandate regulations by the California Department of Public Health. The
subsequent proliferation of intoxicating hemp is prompting the author to advance
a new bill this year to tighten controls.

“The bottom line is if it gets you high, it should not be sold outside of a
(cannabis) dispensary,” said Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters).
“It shouldn’t be sold on a corner store.”

Opinion

While hemp and cannabis as plants are closely related cousins to one another in
the same botanical family, California and the U.S. have tried to regulate them
quite differently. But the real-world market, legal or not, is defying the
distinction. There are multiple reasons for this, from loopholes in laws to
regulations never written to cities not clamping down on their own.



There was bipartisan support in Congress back in 2018 to advance a hemp industry
featuring non-intoxicating products — or so Congress thought. It passed a farm
bill legalizing hemp while limiting its THC by weight to 0.3%. THC, or
tetrahydrocannabinol, is the psychoactive ingredient naturally inside these
plants.

Aguiar-Curry said she became concerned that the federal legislation could lead
to hemp products in California that back a psychoactive wallop. So, in 2021, she
authored Assembly Bill 45 to seek limits on the THC contents of hemp products.

“We considered it one of the tightest bills in the entire nation,” she said.

AB 45 said the state’s public health department “may adopt regulations” on age
requirements or THC potency for specific products. Inside Sacramento’s
legislative process, there is a huge difference between “may” and “shall.” A
legislative directive to an agency that is discretionary with the verb “may” can
make it easier to pass.



Asked why it has not imposed THC potency or age limits on hemp products, a
health department spokesperson said via email that the California Department of
Public Health “continues to monitor industrial hemp products to protect the
public.”

Aguiar-Curry’s followup legislation this year, AB 2223, would require Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s administration to do more than monitor. It would direct them to
regulate hemp products advanced by her first legislation.

“I need them to be an active player in this as well,” she said of the health
department.

For opponents of marijuana legalization and mind-bending THC products, the
California hemp landscape is a nightmare come true.



“This is the most extreme thing I have ever seen,” said Jim Keddy, executive
director of Youth Forward, a group that promotes youth training and empowerment
programs with tax revenues from cannabis sales.

Keddy and his team do scouting trips to see where they can buy hemp that can get
them high.

Keddy recently purchased hemp gummies with THC at a store within eyesight of
Sacramento’s Inderkum High School in Natomas. Later, I did as well. His jar of
tropical-tasting fruits looked like a knock-off of Hawaiian Punch. My blue
gummies were shaped like an ear.

“They all mimic popular candy and snack brands,” he said. “Legally, stores can
be selling them to kids. And they are.”



The public health department said that industrial hemp products with high levels
of THC can only happen with the addition of illegal “synthetic cannabinoids” and
urges reports to be submitted to the department by email, at FDBIH@cdph.ca.gov.

Pediatrician Lynn Silver, whose Public Health Institute has tracked the cannabis
and hemp industries, contends that California’s hemp bill legalized some pretty
powerful products. How? The active THC ingredients in legal cannabis gummie
weigh next to nothing — no more than 10 milligrams. An ounce of water, by
comparison, is more than 23,000 milligrams. So even if a teaspoon of hemp
extract has only 0.3% of THC in it, that is more than enough to create a
mind-bending gummy, Silver said.

“A hemp edible can have more THC in it than a cannabis edible,” she said. The
state public health department has “the authority to regulate appropriately.
They didn’t use it for whatever reason. Which is why we need a fast legislative
fix now.”



Aguiar-Curry said she is trying to work with the legal hemp industry as well as
critics like Silver and Keddy.

“Everybody has an agenda when they walk in here,” she said. “Stirring up the pot
and not trying to work with us is not the best.”

I count my blessings to have two children who are now adults. I can’t imagine
being a parent navigating this modern-day minefield of intoxicants for sale
these days throughout California. Changing this would require a lot of effort by
state and local governments that so far hasn’t happened.



It’s never been so easy in the Golden State to get so stoned. Welcome to our
under-regulated Wild West of Weed.



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December 12, 2023 5:00 AM
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LIKE THE FRENCH LAUNDRY SCANDAL, GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM HAS TO EAT IT ON
“PANERA-GATE” | OPINION

March 01, 2024 11:41 AM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOM PHILP

twitter email phone 916-321-1004
Tom Philp is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist who
returned to The Sacramento Bee in 2023 after working in government for 16 years.
Philp had previously written for The Bee from 1991 to 2007. He is a native
Californian and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern
University.



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