Ohio hemp businesses say enforcement of the state’s adult-use cannabis rules unfairly targets their industry while favoring “Big Marijuana” companies, Statehouse News Bureau reports. The businesses say dispensaries backed by publicly traded corporations operate under different rules, even though both industries deal with the same plant.
Wesley Bryant, owner of a craft beverages distribution and hemp manufacturing company, told Statehouse News that an investigation by Ohio hemp businesses found the state is using rules created in Senate Bill 56 to go after them. He said marijuana dispensaries are meanwhile allowed to sell products with higher concentrations of THC, as approved by voters in 2023’s Issue 2.
“Ohio has created two different standards one standard for big marijuana and the other standard for Ohio’s hemp industry and its consumers,” Bryant told Statehouse News. “I don’t accept the idea that one group of businesses gets the full weight of the government brought down on them, while the other group gets a different standard. I don’t accept that, and neither should any small business owner in Ohio.”
“What Senate Bill 56 was did was strip my ability to do that and push all of our products into the medical recreational dispensaries, therefore putting me out of business and not opening licenses,” Bryant told Statehouse News. “And the cost to actually enter into one of those businesses via licenses is unattainable for most.”
A spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Commerce, which oversees the Division of Cannabis Control, said in a statement to Statehouse News that the voter-approved cannabis legalization law didn’t legalize intoxicating hemp.
The spokesperson said the Division of Cannabis Control “is simply enacting the initiated statute that was approved by voters in 2023, which included a very strict regulatory system for marijuana in Ohio.”
“The initiated statute did not include any provisions governing hemp and therefore the Division’s role is confined to marijuana regulation,” the statement said.
The state maintains its role is confined to marijuana regulation because the initiated statute contained no hemp provisions.
The disagreement between hemp businesses and the Division of Cannabis Control remains unresolved as enforcement continues.
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