On Friday, California's governor announced emergency regulations to ban THC-containing hemp products with the intent to "create stronger state protections to safeguard California's children from the dangerous effects of unregulated THC," reads a press release.
The new regulations require that industrial hemp food, beverage, and dietary products intended for human consumption have no detectable THC or other intoxicating cannabinoids per serving, create a minimum age to purchase hemp products to 21, and limit the number of servings of hemp products to five per package.
"Intoxicating industrial hemp products can cause illness and injury to California consumers," said Tomás Aragón, CDPH Director and State Public Health Officer. "We are working to ensure products in the marketplace comply with state laws that protect consumers against these public health risks and have proposed emergency regulations that will improve protections for consumers."
"The Department of Cannabis Control welcomes these regulatory reforms," said Nicole Elliott, Director of the Department of Cannabis Control. "These rules are a critical step in ensuring the products in the marketplace align with the law's original intent, and we are committed to working with our state partners to enforce state law."
"We will not sit on our hands as drug peddlers target our children with dangerous and unregulated hemp products containing THC at our retail stores. We're taking action to close loopholes and increase enforcement to prevent children from accessing these dangerous hemp and cannabis products," said Gavin Newsom.
Humboldt County supervisors too expressed satisfaction with the new emergency regulations. "Hemp was never meant to intoxicate. That is why the state went through years and years of hard work, thousands of hours and meetings with every agency and stakeholder under the sun to develop a thorough program to regulate the intoxicating nature of THC through cannabis. Allowing companies to bring in intoxicating hemp products across state lines, and potentially internationally, flies in the face of everything we have done in Humboldt and throughout California to get this right. The emergency regulations announced today are a good first step towards a more comprehensive solution," said Rex Bohn, Humboldt County First District supervisor:
"From seed to sale, the lack of parity in regulation between hemp and cannabis has become completely untenable. While only the federal legalization of cannabis can truly solve these problems, we applaud the Governor for taking a meaningful step forward to close intoxicating hemp loopholes and move towards a more rational cannabis policy," said Ross Gordon, Humboldt County Growers Alliance Policy Director, Origins Council Policy Chair.
During the governor's press conference, Newsom explained how such an emergency measure turned out to be necessary because of the state of the hemp space in California's cannabis industry. "None of us expected the kind of exploitation that we've experienced in the hemp industry," Newsom said. "What we're doing today, as relates to emergency regulations, is because of that exploitation, because of the greed of many folks in the industry."
The hemp industry certainly wasn't happy about this announcement, pointing out how it could significantly hinder the economic growth of this space in the state. "Today's "emergency" action by Governor Newsom is a betrayal of California hemp farmers, small businesses, and adult consumers," said Hemp Roundtable's General Counsel, Jonathan Miller. After having supported AB 45, which created a sound regulatory framework for the manufacture and sale of hemp products, Newsom's Administration fell on the job and failed to take any steps to enforce it. Now, instead of addressing legitimate regulatory concerns shared by all good actors in the cannabis space – such as establishing reasonable policies to keep intoxicating products out of the hands of children -- Governor Newsom instead has proposed a complete retail prohibition on 90-95% of popular hemp products for adults, including most non-intoxicating CBD products that he purports to support in his public communications. And in the middle of massive California budget deficits, he is unnecessarily throwing away nearly a quarter billion dollars in tax revenue from legitimate small businesses. We will be exploring all legal options in the coming days with California hemp farmers and businesses that comprise the multi-billion-dollar industry that this action would destroy. "