Philp: Getting high on hemp? How did this happen?

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 nonintoxicating 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.”

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 nonintoxicating 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 follow-up 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 knockoff 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.

Tom Philp is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee.

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