Backers of hemp regulation bill say intoxicating hemp products threaten Ohio's marijuana industry
Ohioans in the marijuana business, poison control workers, and religious organizations testified Tuesday in support of a bill that would regulate intoxicating hemp and drinkable cannabinoid products.
Ohio Senate Bill 86 would require intoxicating hemp products to only be sold at adult-use dispensaries instead of allowing them to be sold at convenience stores, smoke shops, or gas stations. The bill would also impose a 15% tax on intoxicating hemp products and ban sales to anyone under 21.
'Ohio's legal cannabis industry is facing a growing crisis,' said Joshua Smith, the owner of Southern Ohio Botanicals, a licensed dispensary in Pike County. 'Fake, pop-up, poser dispensaries are exploiting loopholes in hemp laws to sell legitimate cannabis while misleading consumers into believing they are licensed establishments.'
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Eleven people, including Smith, submitted testimony in support of S.B. 86 during Tuesday's Ohio Senate General Government Committee meeting.
Ohio state Sens. Steve Huffman, R-Tipp City, and Shane Wilkin, R-Hillsboro, introduced S.B. 86, which would only allow intoxicating hemp products to be sold at dispensaries if the products have been tested and comply with standards for packaging, labeling, and advertising. It would only apply to products that can be ingested or inhaled.
The 2018 U.S. Farm Bill says hemp can be legally grown if it contains less than 0.3% THC. Ohio is one of about 20 states that does have any regulations around intoxicating hemp products, according to an Ohio State University Drug Enforcement and Policy Center study from November 2024.
'These unregulated dispensaries demonstrate a failure in Ohio's marijuana program,' Smith said. 'Without oversight, we have no way of verifying where their cannabis is sourced from or if it has been properly tested for safety. Unlike regulated dispensaries, where all products are prepackaged and lab-tested, these rogue shops weigh out cannabis in front of customers with no quality control measures in place.'
Fadi Boumitri, CEO of Ascension BioMedical, a licensed cannabis cultivator in Oberlin, said there are 10 shops within a 1.5 mile radius of his house that sells intoxicating hemp products.
'As a small company that is a cultivation only, we are disproportionately impacted by the large and growing market for intoxicating hemp products,' he said.
Dr. Hannah Hays, medical director of the Central Ohio Poison Center and chief of toxicology at Nationwide Children's Hospital, said accidental cannabis-related poisonings reported to the Ohio Poison Centers has increased 20-fold for all age groups since 2019. Exposure to cannabinoid products, including Delta 8, has increased more than 330% for young children since 2021, she said.
'When young children access these products, they can experience severe symptoms including hallucinations, confusion, loss of consciousness, seizures, and respiratory failure,' Hays said. 'I've cared for children exposed to intoxicating hemp products who have experienced severe and prolonged symptoms, including coma.'
Chris Lindsey, director of state advocacy and public policy for the American Trade Association for Cannabis and Hemp, shared test results of intoxicating hemp products he purchased at a Columbus convenience store last year.
'There was one that was a piece of candy and that one simple piece had 500 milligrams of THC in it, so that would put a horse in the hospital,' Lindsey said. 'You literally have to take just individual small bites of this candy to avoid overdose.'
Will Kuehnle, an associate director with the Catholic Conference of Ohio, called the spread of intoxicating hemp products a threat to the 'moral fabric' of Ohio.
'These products, chemically altered to maximize intoxication, are marketed in ways that confuse consumers, evade regulatory oversight, and, most alarmingly, end up in the hands of minors,' he said.
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Three days after that, he was again transported back to Orange County Jail, his mother said. Roughly four days later he called his mother saying he had reached Alligator Alcatraz. Only his calls offered clues that let Fernandez Silva search for her son in jail databases, she said. "It's clear what the counties are doing, they're trying to create a legal loophole to a constitutional obligation to not hold people for more than the 72 hours," said Mich Gonzalez, a South Florida-based immigration attorney who called the transfers "alarming." Gonzalez said conditions for inmates who move around are different than for those housed in a single jail. "They're shackled, they're handcuffed, sometimes they're also waist-chained," Gonzalez said. "They're not provided proper food like when they're in custody at a county jail, where there are … general rules that you're going to get three meals a day and access to water. But when you're being transported and transferred, that goes out the window." In June, a Mexican man was arrested while his boss, a U.S. citizen, was driving him and his brother to a construction site. Both were passengers in the car and both had permits to work in the U.S., said the wife of one of the brothers. She spoke with the Sentinel on the condition of anonymity as she worries her comments could make her a target of immigration authorities. For weeks after her husband's arrest she did not know where he was. He would call from an Orange County number but he did not appear in the correction system's database. He told his wife he was put into a van and taken somewhere, but returned the next day to Orange County Jail. "I didn't hear from him for three days … I was so scared," She said in Spanish. "He spent so much time in Orange County Jail that when he returned he knew it was the same place." Advocates for the family met with officials at Orange County Corrections in early July to help find him. Six hours later, he was finally located in a county jail cell, they said. He had been given a different inmate number upon his return, which contributed to the confusion. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri confirmed there has been some shuffling involving his facility but defended it, saying it stems from "a capacity issue" that can prevent detention centers from accepting detainees when their 72-hour clock ticks down. "If the transportation system is overloaded or there's no room at Krome … that's when it backs up and they have to put them into the IGSA jails" such as Orange, Gualtieri said. Gualtieri serves on Florida's Immigration Enforcement Council, which has sounded an alarm that federal detention space can't keep up with the pace at which Florida law enforcement agencies are arresting undocumented immigrants. The board has called on the federal government to allow more local jails to house detainees, rather than send them to the seven jails in Florida with IGSA agreements while they await ICE detention. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
