Seeing green: ‘It’s like the wild west,’ some call for NC to regulate hemp-derived THC

By Jennifer Emert

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    ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (WLOS) — More than 20 states have restricted or banned THC, but North Carolina isn’t one of them.

We’re talking about hemp and hemp compounds that create an intoxicating buzz. The 2018 Farm Bill legalized them nationwide, but the DEA still considers them a controlled substance.

“It’s like the wild west out here for the past three years,” MariFairy owner Beau Ballard said.

News 13 digs into the legal gray area and the explosion of these products in North Carolina that has shop owners seeing green.

“Right now, we are smelling TCH-A flower,” the clerk behind Apotheca’s counter explained to Nick Sievers.

“Oh, wow. Man, I got garlic breath the other day,” Sievers said.

“This is from the same grow,” the clerk said.

In addition to THC-A flower, Sievers uses a combination of CBN and Delta-8 products occasionally.

“It helps me sleep, personally, so I don’t have to take Benadryl every night,” Sievers explained.

Those products can have psychoactive effects.

“It’s very mild. It just kind of makes me not running through my head so constantly, you know, like when you’re trying to go to bed and a million different things,” Sievers said.

These legal products derived from hemp with their intoxicating buzz are no different than illegal marijuana, so how are they legal? Attorney Rod Kight gets that question often.

“When are we going to have cannabis legalization? And I say we’ve had cannabis legalization at the federal level for a long time, it’s called hemp,” Kight said, referencing the 2018 US Farm Bill, as it’s commonly called, that legalized hemp and CBD.

“The full spectrum uses the whole plant, the broad spectrum has zero THC in it whatsoever, and then the isolate is just the CBD isolate. Those were the three big things rolling out,” said Mike O’Dekirk, general manager of Franny’s Farmacy, one of the original Buncombe County hemp growers and producers.

In 2023, it’s the derivatives also known as cannabinoids labeled as delta products whose popularity has skyrocketed.

“People choose them for different reasons. ‘Oh, Delta 8 feels a little milder. I feel it in my body more than in my head, and I think that’s helpful for relaxing or sleep.’ Where someone may say, ‘Delta 9 is what I’m used to and I like it, it’s a little bit stronger,’ or ‘I need something that’s a little bit stronger,’” Kight said.

Delta derivatives can now be found in products from vapes to chocolate bars from hemp shops to gas stations and convenience stores.

It’s also in the blenders at Café Canna on Haywood Road, where they’re pumping Delta 8 and Delta 9 into milkshakes, slushies, and coffee drinks.

“I found that a lot of my customers actually enjoy the idea of having cannabis put into their foods and drinks so they don’t have to smoke it, they don’t have to smell like cannabis,” Café Canna and Mari Fairy owner Beau Ballard said.

Still, if it has psychoactive effects, what makes it legal?

“Tetrahydrocannabinol is a molecule that the cannabis plant produces. It’s called a cannabinoid. Delta 9 THC is the most commonly known,” Kight explained.

The Farm Bill allows hemp plants to have up to 0.3% THC, a concentration amount that doesn’t have a psychoactive effect.

“Hemp 0.3, if we do that in a gram, it’s 3 percent THC in every gram. Now, if we take a large amount and we isolate that away from the hemp, it’s still tetrahydrocannabinol. It’s still the same chemical that is in marijuana. That’s why when I said we have actually legalized marijuana without actually doing it, it’s because we have,” Ballard said.

Customers choosing these products should consider the dosage.

“A gummy is not a gummy. You need to know how many milligrams of psychoactive cannabinoids are in that gummy — 10 mg, 20 mg, 30 mg, 50,” Apotheca Owner Lee VanTine said.

If it’s self-regulated, what do consumers need to be wary of, News 13 asked Franny’s Farmacy’s general manager.

“A lot of the stuff on the market will have a bunch of fillers in there, whether it’s tinctures or gummies, and that will actually not make the cannabis act the appropriate way or a different way or unintended ways,” O’Dekirk said.

“At the end of the day, CBD was not intended to give you a psychoactive effect. Delta 8, these delta variants do. And we know that they do, so that goes into the idea of are we selling this to children,” Ballard said.

All of the shops News 13 spoke to require ID for delta products and only sell to those over the age of 21. As more and more customers consume these products, some have raised concerns.

“It’s a normality to eat, a normality to drink. And we make it taste good, yeah, we make it taste good, too,” Ballard said.

They’re asking North Carolina state representatives to make the guidelines clear.

“Every day, we kind of walk this gray area to hope that maybe they don’t come in and seize all of our stuff,” Ballard said.

Some law enforcement agencies in the state have opened investigations and seized products after students were sickened by THC gummies. That’s happened in Jacksonville, Greenville, Charlotte and other areas of the state.

As News 13 explained, some of those potential regulations around delta products are now before lawmakers. News 13 will continue to follow the legislation through the end of August when the session ends.

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