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