Missouri’s governor ordered the state’s Department of Health & Senior Services (DHSS) to remove products containing intoxicating hemp substances from the market.
Gov. Mike Parson cited health concerns and lack of research on hemp-derived psychoactive substance as well as their accessibility to children as the reason for the order, Hemp Today reported.
Parson directed the DHSS to use Missouri’s food code to prohibit the products after Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft rejected his executive order to do so.
Without Ashcroft’s approval and support from the state’s Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control, the DHSS acted without enforcement authority when it embargoed the products beginning Sept. 1.
That means the agency must visit each retailer to put an embargo label on products that it deems “adulterated, or so misbranded as to be dangerous or fraudulent,” according to Hemp Today.
The agency also must ask a circuit court judge to get products embargoed.
In August, Missouri banned delta-8 and other intoxicating hemp-derived products, which have soared in popularity since the 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp production and sales nationwide.
The Farm Bill removed hemp from the Controlled Substances Act, but Congress didn’t foresee manufacturers using hemp-derived intoxicating compounds in their products.
Sales of the unregulated products are popular in states without adult-use marijuana programs or with consumers who are younger than 21.
But some states now are banning the products altogether while others are imposing strict rules.
And a U.S. House of Representatives committee recently added an amendment seeking to ban intoxicating hemp-based cannabinoids nationwide to the chamber’s draft Farm Bill.
