Massachusetts House Bill Takes Aim At Hemp Edibles, But Enforcement Gaps Could Remain

*“I don’t think this will be enforced very evenly on the local level
because it will depend on who has the capacity on top of their already
extremely busy jobs.”*

*By Bhaamati Borkhetaria, CommonWealth Beacon*

The House passed a cannabis bill last week that would permit intoxicating
hemp-derived beverages to be sold in licensed Massachusetts liquor stores
while ordering edible intoxicating hemp-derived products like gummies off
store shelves, but critics say the legislation fails to address the core
problem of enforcement at the local level.

Intoxicating hemp-derived edible products have the same active ingredient
as cannabis, but are not subject to any oversight by the state Cannabis
Control Commission. Sales of hemp products have proliferated across the
state because of a federal loophole that defines hemp differently than
cannabis.

State agencies issued guidance last spring that declared the hemp products
illegal in the state, but enforcement of the ban has remained uneven, with
local boards of health complaining they do not have the resources to police
hemp products and take them off the shelves in their communities.

The House bill explicitly makes hemp-derived edible products illegal in the
state, while allowing hemp-derived beverages to be sold in licensed liquor
stores under the supervision of the state cannabis commission.

The law directs local boards of health to monitor the sale of any edible
hemp products, including taking samples from stores for testing, removing
any illegal products and providing written warnings of added steps that
will be taken for a subsequent offense.

Cheryl Sbarra, the head of the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards,
said that local health boards don’t have the resources to carry out
enforcement without added funding. “Your law is only as good as your
ability to enforce it, and if you don’t have the ability to enforce it
because you don’t have any money, then the law is meaningless,” she said.

Money from taxes on hemp-derived beverages or fines the state could levy on
stores illegally selling hemp-derived edibles would go to the state’s
general fund.

Sbarra said enforcement isn’t as simple as walking in and grabbing the
products off store shelves. The local health boards would need to do extra
inspections of stores. There would have to be a protocol for storing and
testing potentially illicit products. And many local boards of health don’t
have established relationships with labs that could test hemp products.

“I don’t think this will be enforced very evenly on the local level because
it will depend on who has the capacity on top of their already extremely
busy jobs,” said Phoebe Walker, the director of community health at the
Franklin Regional Council of Governments, an umbrella organization that
serves communities in Franklin County. “What would happen is uneven
enforcement, which is not good for public health.”

Sbarra and Walker pointed out that there was language in other House bills
that would have directed funding from tax revenue on legal hemp products to
local boards of health, but that provision didn’t make it into the
legislation that was approved last week.

The cannabis industry has been pushing stricter enforcement on hemp
products because they compete with cannabis. Cannabis business owners say
hemp products are undercutting their sales with lower priced, unregulated
products.

Ryan Dominguez, the head of the Massachusetts Cannabis Coalition, an
advocacy group for the cannabis industry, said the coalition supports
including a funding stream in the legislation for local health boards to
enforce the ban on sale of hemp-derived edibles.

“Enforcement is important for the cannabis industry because we have seen
that the all-out ban on the intoxicating hemp products, which has been in
existence in Massachusetts even prior to this bill, has not been enforced,”
said Dominguez. “We really want to focus on removing these products from
the shelves of gas stations and liquor stores, and the way to do that is to
give the local boards of health the money to do so.”

Under the legislation approved by the House, the cannabis commission would
oversee testing, labeling and other regulations for hemp beverages, which
could only be sold at licensed liquor stores.

The cannabis bill would also restructure the Cannabis Control Commission,
raise the cap on the number of retail licenses a single company can own
from three to six, increase purchasing and possession limits for cannabis
and loosen existing requirements for medical marijuana businesses.

Travis Ahern, the cannabis commission’s executive director, welcomed the
move to clamp down on hemp products. But he said the commission—which has
previously called for more funding to carry out its existing duties—will
need more resources in order to take on the added responsibility of
regulating hemp products.

“The Cannabis Control Commission has been vocal about the need to regulate
intoxicating hemp and we’re happy to see action toward closing a loophole
created by a federal law,” Ahern said in an emailed statement. But the
agency’s proposed 2026 budget “is not adequate even for our current needs,”
Ahern said. “We look forward to collaborating with the Legislature to
obtain the resources we need to include these potential statutory updates
in our mission of overseeing a safe, equitable cannabis marketplace in
Massachusetts.”

*This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
License.*

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