CFO: Why intoxicating hemp is a growing threat to regulated cannabis businesses

SOURCE: CFO.com

EXCERPT:

“Licensed operators are not fighting to ban those products, but to require regulation across the board,” she said. “If the legal industry has to follow these strict rules, then so should everyone else. The issue isn’t that hemp-derived Delta-9 is inherently bad — it’s that there are no guardrails, and people think it’s the same thing as regulated cannabis.”

She brought up how the image crisis caused by unregulated cannabis can help resurrect old narratives around cannabis that companies and activists have spent lots of time and money trying to redefine.

“Especially here in Missouri, a very conservative state, there’s still a lot of stigma,” Bader said. “To many people, a drug is a drug, it doesn’t matter if it’s cannabis or cocaine, it’s all the same in their minds, so this push isn’t just about protecting the business, it’s also about educating the public and keeping dangerous and unregulated products out of the hands of kids.”

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Hoffman also explained how legislation on these products is coming from states regardless of their stance on cannabis’ legality. “In fact, all of the cannabis-legal states are doing it because they don’t want it competing with their regulated cannabis markets, and the states that don’t have legal cannabis are now also moving to ban it — because these intoxicating hemp products have become a back door,” he said. “People are using them to get high in states where cannabis isn’t legal.”