In 2022, Reason reported that local police departments in Georgia were hassling vape and smoke shops for the legal products they sold. Two years later, those products remain every bit as legal as before, but cops are still making life difficult for vendors.
On March 13, officers with the Newnan Police Department Drug and Vice Unit raided Newnan Tobacco & Vapor. According to The Newnan Times-Herald, officers said the raid came after “compliance checks with local stores that sell Delta 8, 9 or THC products.”
Delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, which creates the “high” from using marijuana. Ever since the 2018 Farm Bill removed hemp from the list of controlled substances, federal law limits the amount of delta-9 in any substance to 0.3 percent.
But around the same time the Farm Bill became law, scientists discovered delta-8 THC, which produces a similar “high” as delta-9 but can be synthesized out of CBD derived from hemp. (A similar process produces a similar compound, delta-10 THC.) Since the Farm Bill specifically legalized the sale and production of hemp, it was assumed that any hemp byproducts were legitimate, as well—and in 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed.
Georgia passed a similar law in 2019, which legalized hemp in the state, as well as “all derivatives, extracts, cannabinoids, isomers, acids, salts, and salts of isomers, whether growing or not, with the federally defined THC level for hemp or a lower level.”
And yet police departments hassle smoke shops over their perfectly legal products.
Hellbound and Down 