Houston saw a boom in drinks infused with THC over the past several years, with bars and restaurants seizing on the products as an alternative for people who don’t drink alcohol.
Now that trend might be at risk. As part of the package to reopen the federal government earlier this month, Congress included a provision that will ban the sale of hemp-derived products with more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container, a threshold that almost all consumable hemp items exceed. It won’t go into effect until next November, but local businesses are already assessing their plans.
At the combination dispensary and coffee shops Wild and Grinder’s Coffee Bar, owner Adyson Howard said the new law could be devastating. After all, much of his business runs on drinks like CBD- and THC-infused coffees, plus “hemp elixirs” in flavors like Maui Mango and the citrusy Pink Loco.
“It would be terrible for us,” Howard said. “That’s what Wild and Grinder’s is. You know, we are Houston’s first cannabis coffee shop, and that’s our brand. That’s our identity.”
The national law also comes just after Texas’ multi-billion dollar hemp industry survived another existential threat over the summer: an attempt at the state level to ban their products.
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“We don’t know what implementation is going to look like,” said Katharine Harris, a fellow in drug policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “But it’s very difficult for me to imagine that the federal authorities will be willing to commit the amount of resources necessary to enforcement of this particular law in all 50 states.”
Further, Harris said, the new law will treat products with more than 0.4 milligrams of THC similarly to marijuana — which, though federally illegal, is a thriving industry in many states.
And with a year before the law goes into effect, Congress has time to change its mind. Houston business owners — Howard among them — are trying to use that time to lobby to their advantage.
“This 365-day pause, as we call it, isn’t a ban,” said Ben Meggs, CEO of the distillery-brewery-cannabis business 8th Wonder and its parent company Bayou City Hemp. “It’s a constructive pause to build fair, consistent regulations that protect consumers and responsible businesses alike.”
Meggs’ company provides many of the city’s bars and restaurants with their hemp-infused beverages, like a canned sweet tea with 5 milligrams of THC and the hemp-derived spirit Ocho Verde Agave. Now, Meggs said he’s working with legislators to introduce “legislation that is positive for low-dose drinks and edibles,” while still getting rid of what he terms bad actors.
He hopes altered legislation would regulate THC products like alcohol, without anything as extreme as a total ban.
See here for some background. None of this is for me, but I agree that it would be bad if this backdoor ban were allowed to take effect. You can hope all you want, but my advice would be to get informed about who supports or opposes what at the federal and state level, and work to elect more of the good guys and defeat more of the bad guys. That information is readily available – I’ll give you a hint, one of the biggest bad guys in the state has a name that rhymes with “Schman Schmatrick” – so get looking. There’s a lot at stake.
IMHO, if there is anyone who really really needs a hemp-infused drink, it’s Schman Schmatrick! Leave the rest of us alone.