Politico: Kids are buying pot-like drugs from corner stores. Lawmakers want to stop it.

SOURCE: Politico

EXCERPT:

The spread of freewheeling drug gray markets like the one in Mississippi is an unintended consequence of Congress legalizing hemp under the 2018 farm bill, hoping it would be a boon to struggling farmers. But the nascent industry for non-intoxicating products like CBD oil and hemp milk has floundered.

Instead, an increasingly large share of the hemp being legally grown — exact figures are impossible to pin down — is now converted into legally hazy psychoactive products.

The proliferation has led to growing concerns that this largely unregulated industry presents a looming public health crisis, with both children and adults accessing drugs that face little of the rigorous testing requirements and purchasing limits that typically apply to state-legal cannabis markets. More than one in 10 high school seniors reported using Delta-8 THC products in a recent national survey, according to a study published earlier this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

And some public health experts are even warning that the wild west hemp market (i.e., pot-like drugs) poses a threat to the marijuana legalization experiment that’s spread rapidly across the country over the last decade.

“The longer cannabinoid hemp remains unregulated federally, the more likely it is that we will see a major public health event that could put the entirety of legalization at risk,” said Gillian Schauer, executive director of the Cannabis Regulators Association. “Regulation is urgently needed to ensure a baseline of consumer safety across the industry.”