The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) has labeled products containing intoxicating hemp substances as “adulterated” and ordered their removal from the market, in the latest development in a battle over the illicit compounds.
Republican Gov. Mike Parson directed the DHSS to use its enforcement authority against sellers of the products under the state’s food code after the governor’s executive order to ban the products, issued last month, was rejected by Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft.
Parson has urged getting the products off the street over health concerns and lack of research on the hemp-derived psychoactive substances and their wide accessibility to children. Ashcroft said he rejected the original ban because the executive order failed to demonstrate an emergency under state statute.
Political tussle
Observers attribute the conflict to an internal struggle in Republican politics. Parson charged that Ashcroft’s refusal to approve the executive order sprang from the governor’s support for rival Republican Mike Kehoe, Missouri’s lieutenant governor, who defeated Ashcroft, also a Republican, in the recent gubernatorial primary. Parson’s term as governor ends this year.
The DHSS began an embargo of the products Sunday, Sept. 1 without any administrative rules in place. But absent Ashcroft’s approval the department is acting without the enforcement authority and support of the state’s Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control.
The lack of enforcement support means DHSS regulators must go to each retailer individually and put an embargo tag on products deemed “adulterated, or so misbranded as to be dangerous or fraudulent.” Also, DHSS must go before a circuit court judge to petition that individual products need to be embargoed.
Destruction ordered
DHSS will prioritize individual enforcement actions based on health and safety concerns and in cases where products are marketed to children, according to a memo issued to food retailers and wholesalers. Referrals could come from poison control centers, clinicians, local public health agencies or law enforcement.
Inspections that uncover illicit products will prompt requests for voluntary compliance, including destruction of the products. If retailers do not comply, products will be held pending court orders for their destruction, according to the memo.
The Missouri Hemp Trade Association (MOHTA) late last week filed a lawsuit against the state over Parson’s enforcement order to the DHSS.
Meanwhile, the governor’s original non-emergency version of the order that was rejected by the attorney general is undergoing the state’s administrative rules process, which could take months.
Federal loophole
Variously referred to as “gas station pot,” “diet weed,” “marijuana light” and other slang terms, “high”-producing compounds made from industrial hemp were not understood or envisioned by the U.S. Congress when it passed the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized industrial hemp by removing it from the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.
That lack of vision left a loophole that unscrupulous operators have taken advantage of, and along the way re-associated non-drug cannabis (hemp) with psychoactive cannabis (marijuana) – to the consternation of many hemp industry veterans, whom have worked for decades to separate hemp from marijuana in the public’s mind.
In the absence of federal restrictions, Missouri and many other states across the USA are working to reign in the illicit hemp products, with some banning them altogether and others imposing strict rules. Officials in some states have come out strongly against the intoxicating hemp products because they are being marketed in packaging that mimics leading brands of treats that are popular among children.