JEFFERSON CITY — A fight is brewing under the Capitol Dome over whether Missouri should allow the sale of hemp-derived cannabis products at gas stations and other outlets across the state.
The conflict is pitting the state’s convenience stores against representatives of Missouri’s legal marijuana industry, which operates a network of more than 200 dispensaries licensed by the Department of Health and Senior Services, following voter legalization of marijuana.
While the licensed dispensaries sell traditional cannabis products, a separate market in Missouri pushing hemp-derived “delta-8” cannabis products has emerged in recent years following federal hemp legalization.
The hemp-derived delta-8 products currently for sale at Missouri gas stations are unregulated by the DHSS. There are also no specialty taxes on the delta-8 products or official age restrictions.
St. Louis Public Schools officials reported last week that four Sumner High School students were hospitalized after consuming edibles that may have contained THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, that one student had purchased from a nearby convenience store.
Ronald Leone, executive director and longtime lobbyist for the Missouri Petroleum and Convenience Association, said Monday his organization supports restricting sales to customers 21 and older, as well as adequate testing and reasonable taxes on the hemp-derived products.
But he said convenience stores oppose legislation currently under consideration because it “unfairly increases the power of the marijuana monopoly, it interferes with the free market, it picks winners and losers and it only allows the sale of these products … in marijuana dispensaries.”
Legislation by Rep. Chad Perkins, R-Bowling Green, would place the delta-8 products under the DHSS’s authority and would only allow state-licensed dispensaries to sell the products.
The state already limits the number of dispensaries, and those facilities must follow strict security regulations.
Leone testified against Perkins’ plan on Thursday in the House Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee.
A Senate committee heard testimony Monday on that chamber’s version of the cannabis control measure.
Both proposals would place the delta-8 products under the DHSS’s authority, only allowing state-licensed dispensaries to sell the products.
State health officials limit the number of facilities allowed to sell cannabis, and those facilities are required to comply with numerous security regulations.
Eric Walter, outside general counsel for the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association, testified in favor of Perkins’ measure at the House committee hearing last week.
“Some of these convenience stores have been around for decades,” Walter said. “They all did just fine before they had the ability to sell these other products that are very, very lucrative, and that have giant margins because the producers aren’t subject to regulation.”
Walter said that in the same way one body regulates alcohol products because they all contain alcohol, “this is all THC intoxicant. … It’s all THC, it all comes from cannabis and it would be ridiculous if it wasn’t regulated by the same body that already regulates cannabis.”
Chris Lindsey, representing the American Trade Association for Cannabis and Hemp, said Thursday federal legalization of hemp was never intended to create the intoxicating products proliferating across the country.
“The phrase of the day was ‘rope, not dope,’” Lindsey said. “It was really intended to be fiber or feed. You will not find a member of Congress that thinks that they legalized intoxicants made from this plant.”
He said that chemists, after the federal government allowed hemp production, “creatively figured out they could take the non-intoxicating parts of the plant … the molecule in particular called CBD” and convert it into intoxicants normally found in marijuana.
“We don’t want to ban these products outright,” he said. “We just think that they need to be treated with the same care that voters have adopted when we’re talking about marijuana.”
Lindsey said he’s been speaking with lawmakers across the country trying to rein in the hemp-derived products, and that models have varied. He said the Missouri legislation offers the best approach “because you already have a system in place that handles intoxicants produced from this plant.”
Members of the legal cannabis industry weren’t the only supporters of the measure. Justin Alferman, a former Republican state representative who now lobbies for SSM Health Care, said SSM Cardinal Glennon houses the state’s poison control center.
“We believe that the cannabinoid products that are currently on the market are not regulated and therefore their content, quality and safety are not assured,” Alferman said.
“The poison center has concerns over the accessibility, the standardization, quality control and adulteration of the various litany of products that are sold in the state of Missouri currently,” Alferman said.
Perkins, the House bill sponsor, faced skeptical members of the crime prevention committee, including state Rep. Lane Roberts, R-Joplin, the committee chairman.
“I don’t necessarily oppose this bill. However I would feel a lot better about it if I thought there were some specifically well-defined protections for the hemp industry,” Roberts said.
The state’s current marijuana program has faced criticism over how it awarded a limited number of licenses following the 2018 passage of medical marijuana.
Winners of those medical marijuana licenses were first in line to begin fully legal sales following recreational legalization in 2022.
“Basically you’re taking an entire industry it seems and enveloping it into an existing industry,” said Rep. Kyle Marquart, R-Washington.
“I don’t think any of us want one of our children walking into a convenience store and purchasing something that could intoxicate them. All kinds of bad things could happen,” said Rep. Brad Banderman, R-St. Clair. ”How to do that is the question today.”
H/T: www.stltoday.com/
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