It has been an open question—until now—whether registered hemp retailers in Minnesota are selling raw cannabis flower that crosses the line between legal hemp and illegal marijuana.
Marijuana use is legal in Minnesota, but legal sales haven’t started yet outside of tribal reservations. That means a raw cannabis flower purchased in the Twin Cities that recently tested above the legal limit isn’t supposed to be sold in the state.
Because of a gap in the state’s new recreational cannabis law, no state regulators had either the legal authority or the inspectors to sample the flower being sold to check whether it exceeded the federal and state definitions for hemp. That is, is the flower being sold in some stores legal or illegal? Does it contain more than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC, the intoxicating compound in marijuana?
Turns out, it does. The sample purchased from a registered hemp store by a private person tested at levels that are illegal under the law, according to the results from a California-based cannabis testing lab. MinnPost agreed not to name either the raw flower purchaser or the lab but has verified the identities of both.
The lab reported the flower showed a potency of 1.1 percent delta-9 THC, three times the limit under state law. The same sample showed that the bud had total THC content of 29.99 percent. Total THC is a measure of all different types of THC in the flower and 29.99 percent is similar to the types of flower sold in legal recreational marijuana states.
The retail sample tested is actually more potent than a cannabis sample purchased on the illicit market in Minnesota and tested by the same lab. That sample showed 1.38 percent delta-9 THC and 25.36 percent total THC.
Hellbound and Down 