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Congress wants to close a loophole that accidentally legalized almost wide-open sales of intoxicating hemp products. Today marks Phase 1 of a federal ban. But as Frank Morris of member station KCUR reports, the only real change in hemp laws today will come in states that are jumping ahead to Phase 2 of the ban.
FRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: This all started with Congress trying to give struggling tobacco farmers a new product to grow - hemp. The 2018 Farm Bill deregulated cannabis as long as the plants had very low levels of THC, the active intoxicant, weeks before harvest. Catch is that plants produce most of their THC at the end of the growing season, and there's nothing preventing hemp companies from concentrating huge amounts of THC in drinks, gummies and vapes. Cory Harris lobbies on behalf of state-licensed dispensaries.
CORY HARRIS: It literally is a wild west new frontier for folks to come in and sell products, oftentimes much, much more potent than anything that you'd be able to find in a dispensary anywhere in the country. And they sell them with no real requirements for testing or standards or labeling, package protections, childproof packaging.
MORRIS: Harris blames a documented jump in THC-related pediatric emergency room visits on easy access to hemp products. He says wide-open hemp product sales undercut heavily taxed and regulated state-sanctioned dispensaries in 41 states and the District of Columbia. Last year, Congress moved to shut down the hemp loophole as of today. But the hemp industry convinced Congress to stall the full effect of the ban by rolling it out in two stages, with the first stage today and the next one December 11. The first phase outlaws only totally synthetic intoxicants, one a marijuana plant can't produce on its own.
JOSH GLASSTETTER: The bottom line is that virtually nothing changes today.
MORRIS: Josh Glasstetter with the American Trade Association for Cannabis and Hemp says today's ban covers stuff like K2 and Spice, long-illegal truck stop drugs.
GLASSTETTER: The loophole, this very lucrative loophole, has never included those products. Everybody recognized those products as being off-limits.
MORRIS: Glasstetter says closing the 8-year-old hemp loophole will have to wait.
GLASSTETTER: The intoxicating hemp marketplace, as we understand it, will remain the same for one more month.
MORRIS: But that's not true everywhere. Several states, including Missouri, scheduled their own hemp ban to take effect today. That's why Prohibition Cannabis in Kansas City shut down.
MELISSA EIGENMANN: I get to let all of my employees go. Basically, we get to close.
MORRIS: Owner Melissa Eigenmann (ph) says she now faces crushing fines for selling what, until yesterday, was fully legal.
EIGENMANN: Because I cannot afford a $5,000 fine for every transaction. It's not worth to pay five grand to sell a $12 pre-roll.
MORRIS: Eigenmann's business may be an example for what's ahead when the full federal ban takes effect. Economist Beau Whitney figures that the federal ban will wipe out some 38,000 businesses and $28 billion in sales.
BEAU WHITNEY: This would be like removing half to two-thirds of all the chicken sales in the United States.
MORRIS: Whitney says those sales spin off hefty state sales taxes and support thousands of jobs. He's one of many lobbying members of Congress to delay and rethink the hemp ban due to take effect December 11.
For NPR News, I'm Frank Morris in Kansas City.
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