Oregon Hemp Businesses Warn Federal Changes Will Put Them Out Of Business

Pet tinctures and topicals are the most popular products sold at Oregon CBD Company, a small business located at the junction of the Willamette Valley town’s busiest roads. Pet owners use them to treat their pets’ anxiety or pain and in some cases they use similar products to treat their own. Those products used to line most of the store’s shelves.

Now, those shelves are empty as the store plans to close by the end of this month in response to a federal law that will ban most of the products it sells by the end of the year.

Muscle rubs, aromatherapy soaps and body washes make up the majority of what’s left in the store. A “for rent” sign sits outside of the building while buy-one, get-one-free flyers sit on top of the store’s mostly empty tables.

The other half of the building, Oregon Cannabis Company, is a dispensary under the same owner that will remain open. The difference between the two stores’ products is that one sells items made from hemp, and the other, from marijuana. Hemp and marijuana are from the same plant species, but hemp has much lower levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC the psychoactive component of the plant that provides a “high” feeling among marijuana users.

Hemp is most commonly used for its nonimpairing chemical compound cannabidiol, known as CBD.

What The New Law Does

The federal law will ban most of the products the store sells by the end of the year, prompting the closure. “The easiest way to explain CBD is that it is like a healthier version of ibuprofen,” store manager Leslie Frost told the Capital Chronicle from behind a cash register and an empty display case.

Impact On Customers

“The CBD products that people are expecting to be available to give to their dogs for arthritis or to give to their parents because they’re aging and have aches…they’re not going to have access to them anymore,” Mia Maldonado reported in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.