BALTIMORE (WBFF) — The dreary day matched the uneasy mood inside Andrea Grant’s Bethesda Health and Wellness store as she opens for business one Wednesday morning, awaiting the customers of the day while also awaiting news on what could come next for her store.
While sharing her store, Gov. Wes Moore signed Maryland’s recreational cannabis plan into law. In the language is a small carveout for the hemp industry, allowing store owners to sell tinctures after the July 1 start date of the recreational industry.
That would basically mean we could sell only about 15% of our products, leaving the majority of people who use gummies or capsules without an option,” Grant said. “It would mean closure unless we pivot in some other direction to try and salvage it. For me, it would be catastrophic. Who can survive on 15%?”
Grant said she started her business with her late father in mind; he lost his battle with pancreatic cancer in 2017.
She said her father was “a health and wellness kind of person, and when she learned about hemp in 2019 – after the industry was legalized in the 2018 Farm Bill – she thought opening a store would be the perfect solution. Grant said she used her inheritance from her father to help open the doors to her Bethesda business.
“I built this business for the purpose of helping people who went through similar situations that we did as a family, having a terminal illness diagnosis and having nowhere to turn,” she said.
In November 2022, voters in Maryland approved legal adult-use marijuana, and the General Assembly was tasked with setting up the industry’s regulation and infrastructure during the 90-day session.
Included in the adult-use framework system is language that caps the level of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, included in hemp-derived products, like CBD oil or Delta-8. Delta-8 is a strain of THC that’s different than the type of THC that’s included in traditional cannabis products — that’s Delta-9.
Despite the efforts of several hemp-industry business owners, like Nicholas Patrick and Levi Sellers, the cap was kept in the final language. Now, Sellers said his family farm that’s in Washington County may not survive once July 1 comes around.
“We see the small businesses and hemp industry stakeholders; they got left behind during the legislative session,” Sellers said. “We are investigating options to move our facilities out of state[but we] could potentially lose the whole farm in the process.”
Patrick, who owns Embrace CBD with multiple locations in Maryland with his wife Megan, described the future as terrifying for his family.
“Everything we’ve built over the last five years is about to be stripped in 60 days,” Patrick said. “I’ll probably have to file bankruptcy.”
Patrick also co-founded the Maryland Healthy Alternatives Association, which is a trade group focusing on providing people with alternative solutions to their health needs. He said, now that the cannabis law has been signed, he fells ‘left behind” and is looking for ways to fight the next step.
“We voted for recreational cannabis, but we didn’t have our business destroyed so what are we going to do? We are exploring all of our option as an association,” Patrick said.
Since the Farm Bill became a reality, Patrick, Sellers and Derek Spruill, another business owner in Maryland, said they have been pushing for regulation.
Spruill opened Cherry Blossom Hemp right before the pandemic began; his online retail option specializes in full-spectrum hemp products. He said he sells gummies, tinctures, lotions, pet products, and more and with the new regulations set to begin, he said he’s been asking for the hemp industry to be part of the conversation.
“We’re asking to be taxed, to be regulated. Regulate us, bring us into the fold,” he said. “Hemp is just high in CBD and low in THC, marijuana is high in THC and low in CBD.”
I could throw ice at you I could throw water at you and I could throw snow at you. They will feel differently when they hit you, but at the end of the day, they are all water, they are all the same thing, they are just in a different chemical form, Spruill said describing the difference between Delta-8, Delta-9 and other hemp-derived products.
When asked about the concerns from these hemp business owners, Sen. Antonio Hayes, a Democrat from Baltimore City, said the recreational legislation as written “establishes a framework for the cannabis industry in our state.”
“In considering this legislation we have prioritized the public safety by ensuring any intoxicating elements mixed with hemp and/or cannabis is appropriately regulated,” Hayes said. “In doing so we are closing loopholes created by the [farm bill] that has in some case enabled product availability to our constituents and consumers that may present risk.”
For Patrick, who has a book full of testing results for all the products in his store, he said lawmakers are the ones who dropped the ball on this plan since some within the hemp industry have been asking for regulations for years.
“We’ve been trying to address them in 2019. They said no, we don’t want to regulate you, we would rather erase you,” Patrick said.
Gov. Wes Moore ran on a platform of leaving no one behind. It’s one of the reasons Grant said she was first drawn to the first-time candidate during the crowded Democratic gubernatorial primary.
I thought that this was the perfect governor because our ideas and the things that we wanted for the state are aligned, Grant said. Now we have this bill that’s the total opposite.
Sellers is looking at the possibility of moving his production out of state. Patrick is re-evaluating his future. Spruill said he too is looking to leave Maryland, especially noting that if he were to apply for a cannabis license it would take months to receive it and then be able to re-open his operation.
“What they are asking for most of these people is impossible. It’s almost like a spit in the face,” Spruill said. “All these dreams that are being destroyed with this leave no one behind administration. I don’t know. There’s been a faith lost.”
When the concerns about the hemp industry were brought up to Gov. Moore in March, his press secretary, Carter Elliott, told FOX45 News in a statement that the governor “is committed to working with leaders in the General Assembly to create an adult-use cannabis market that provides opportunity to entrepreneurs in the state—specifically focusing on those who have been disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs.”
“This is why on his very first full day in office he released $40 million to the Cannabis Business Assistance Fund to provide seed funding for help to businesses in the application and upstart process,” Elliott said. “Through this funding both technical assistance and direct aid will be provided to small businesses to unleash the opportunity in communities across the state.”
Grant said she would like to apply for a cannabis license, “but it’s lottery based and there are so many requirements that would make it difficult.” As the deadline gets closer, she said short of prayer that something changes, the future doesn’t look great for her business and her customers.
“Every time I see my regular customers come in, I think I may have to have that hard conversation with them; for me to have to tell them that this will probably be the last time they see us, it’s heartbreaking,” Grant said.
“Losing this is like losing my dad all over again because this was built with him in mind, and I can’t even stomach that thought.”
H/T: https://foxbaltimore.com/
