Austin hemp entrepreneur Shayda Torabi is looking at a year filled with uncertainty. For the six years they've been in business, Torabi and her two sisters have operated Restart, their hemp dispensary, in a modest neighborhood in North Austin within an entirely lawful framework — evolving as the laws changed, and staying comfortably and legally off the radar of state lawmakers who authorized the sale of consumable hemp in Texas in 2019. But all of that is about to change.
Some Texas lawmakers have marked hemp dispensaries for what could be some radical changes in regulations next year. Since their products were legalized, there's been an overnight proliferation of shops offering baked goods, gummies, oils, and smokable buds made with cannabis derivatives — some containing small amounts of psychoactives.
Once the darling of a burgeoning wellness industry, the purveyors of legal cannabis products now face questions from critics who remain unconvinced of the safety of their products and want tighter regulations — or even partial bans. Consumable hemp products come in forms that include smokable vapes and flower buds, oils and creams, baked goods, drinks, gummies and candies.
They contain industrial hemp or hemp-derived cannabinoids, including the non-intoxicating cannabidiol known as CBD. They may not contain more than 0.3% concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the intoxicating part of the cannabis plant that comes in forms known as delta-8, delta-9 and THCA. The difference in the legal and illegal products lies in the plants from which they come. Hemp and marijuana plants are both cannabis plants. Marijuana plants have high THC. Hemp has low THC.
Read more at texastribune.org