Hemp companies backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in his bid to defeat pro-marijuana legislation are selling illegal high-potency “intoxicating hemp” products that are sometimes tainted, an investigation by the Miami Herald/Times newspaper has revealed.
The political contributions of such producers reflect a cynical alignment this election season among DeSantis, the Florida Republican party and the makers of the synthetic hemp products, who are teamed up to fight Amendment 3, which would establish a recreational marijuana market in Florida. They say the amendment, as proposed, will crush the state’s many “small hemp cannabinoid operators” – the slugs peddling unregulated hemp intoxicants such as delta-8 THC.
Floridians are to vote tomorrow on the pot Amendment to the state constitution when they go to the polls in the general election.
Razor’s edge
Legalization of recreational marijuana in Florida is on the razor’s edge, according to recent polling. Amendment 3 needs 60% of the vote to pass. The latest poll from the Florida Atlantic University Political Communication and Public Opinion Research Lab (PolCom Lab) and Mainstreet Research USA, showed 60% of voters favor the pot law, with 34% of citizens opposed and 6% undecided.
The cannabis stakes are high. Already the country’s largest medical marijuana market, estimated at more than $2 billion annually, Florida’s recreational marijuana market could be worth $7 billion, according to estimates. Meanwhile, the state’s market for hemp – mainly CBD and intoxicating products made from CBD – is already believed to be greater than that by some estimates.
Cozy
The Florida Healthy Alternatives Association, one of those hemp “trade groups” that doesn’t seem to include any human beings, paid $155,000 to lobbyists during the first three months of this year, according to a CBS Miami report. While the association doesn’t identify any of its members publicly, one of its key lobbyists is Evan Power, chairman of the Republican Party of Florida.
Political contributions to DeSantis and the Republican party worth more than $500,000 came from companies whose hemp-derived products were found to be above the state regulatory limit of 0.3% THC. Those making donations that had non-compliant products on the market were:
- Lifted Liquids, which gave $125,000 to the GOP. Urb, a parent company to the Wisconsin-based Urb, said the donation was unrelated to Amendment 3. The company’s disposable vape pen contained 5.92% total THC.
- Oklahoma-based Mood Product Group, which donated $50,000 to the Republican party. Their Pluto-brand flower purchased online had a total THC of 10.3%.
- Highly Concentr8ted, a Sarasota company, gave $10,000. Its Phantom THCA flower had a total THC of 16%.
Pesticides inside
Some products sold by companies that gave to the Republican Party of Florida also tested positive for unregistered or banned pesticides. They are:
- Hidden Hills Club LLC, Las Vegas, gave $20,000. The company’s THCA Pinkonade Razzberry vape cartridge contained chlordane, a pesticide with links to cancer that has been banned by the federal government since 1988, and myclobutanil, a fungicide banned for inhalation by a Florida rule.
- Uplift Health and Wellness LLC, a St. Petersburg company, gave $2,500. Uplift makes a Kush Cake pre-rolled joint that contained nearly 62 times the regulation limit of chlormequat chloride, a pesticide that can cause shortness of breath, or even death, when inhaled.
- Qilo Company LLC, gave $2,000. The company’s Peanut Butter Blitz pre-rolled joint was found to contain myclobutanil.
The companies disputed the results of the Herald/Times testing or didn’t comment.
Newspaper’s analysis
For its research, the Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau bought 41 hemp products from physical and online shops. Products, including flowers, vapes, and edibles, were tested by Modern Canna, a state-certified lab, for potency, pesticides, and mold, with some sent to Cambium Analytica in Michigan for validation. Testing followed Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services guidelines, which require hemp products for human use to contain under 0.3% total THC.
Some intoxicating hemp producers argue that only delta-9-THC is expressly limited in state and federal law, and that the compounds they produce are alternative cannabinoids derived from legal hemp-derived CBD.
‘Our end’
Intoxicating hemp products have flooded Florida since the governor signed legislation establishing the state’s hemp program during his first year in office. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) says there are more than 9,500 hemp retailers in the state — “so many that Starbucks could move half its North American locations to Florida and still be outnumbered,” according to the Herald/Times.
Florida regulators have repeatedly flagged intoxicating products on the market, and the state legislature passed a bill earlier this year to limit their sale. But DeSantis vetoed the legislation in June. After the veto, hemp executives reportedly discussed needing to raise $5 million to defeat the marijuana amendment to “keep our end of the veto,” the Herald/Times reported, noting that DeSantis’ office said there was no quid pro quo.
DeSantis signed a law in 2023 that allows the intoxicating hemp products but prohibits marketing them to children, sets an age limit of 21 and over for sales, and carries packaging requirements.
Safety concerns
Florida lawmakers who drafted this year’s law that was struck down by DeSantis said they intended to eliminate the risk of over-ingestion of the substances, variously referred to as “diet weed,” “gas station pot,” or “marijuana light.” In committee meetings ahead of the 2024 legislative session, lawmakers heard reports from health officials about children having ingested such products, sometimes leading to hospital visits.
FDACS said more than 1.1 million packages of hemp products have been pulled from shelves since June 2023 over violations of state law. Meanwhile, nearly 1,000 calls were made to Florida’s Poison Information Centers in 2022 after children were exposed to high-potency THC products made from hemp.
The agency said it has uncovered more than 107,400 packages of hemp extract products targeting children since July 1, 2023. That’s when the state began tracking the dangerous products through “Operation Kandy Krush,” a statewide inspection sweep by the FDACS that started when DeSantis signed the law banning such marketing practices.
Unfair competition
Most of the intoxicating hemp compounds at issue are made by putting hemp-derived CBD through a synthetic process to produce the highly concentrated psychoactive substances. They produce effects similar to those produced by delta-9 THC, the common intoxicant found in marijuana.
Products containing the substances emerged after the 2018 Farm Bill legalized industrial hemp and its downstream products across the U.S. The federal law created a loophole by not accounting for synthetically produced psychoactive products that can be made from hemp flowers.
In states where recreational marijuana is already legal, weed stakeholders have fought against the hemp intoxicants, arguing they represent unfair competition because they are not subject to licensing fees and regulations.
DeSantis’ cynical policies
DeSantis’ position while in office, since 2018, has been to project his distaste for marijuana and its “putrid” smell while quietly working with the industry on the medical side, which in Florida meant aligning with Trulieve Cannabis Corp., one of the country’s largest pot companies.
Trulieve, which holds a significant share of the state’s medical marijuana market, reportedly received regulatory advantages as DeSantis’s administration streamlined the medical marijuana industry, removing restrictive limitations that had initially hampered its growth. The company stands to gain a near-monopoly if adult-use legalization moves forward.
But DeSantis is working against Trulieve’s efforts to open up the recreational market – aided by the makers of the unregulated hemp-derived intoxicants.
Trulieve, meanwhile, has put more than $140 million into supporting Amendment 3, more than 90 percent of total contributions. (For comparison, the two sides in Florida’s Senate race have raised only a combined $73 million).
So the governor is all for legal medical marijuana. And he’s against recreational marijuana yet is siding with the shady producers of hemp intoxicants — essentially sanctioning a parallel market for cannabis that not only could leave unsafe products on the market, but also skirts the intended purpose of the Farm Bill, which was to promote non-intoxicating hemp.
By backing these unregulated hemp products, which carry potential risks to consumers, DeSantis reveals his true self on cannabis; his idea is to use it (not literally), and ignore public safety.