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A multi-section bill targeting an array of fixes to Connecticut cannabis regulations was passed by the Senate this week that also included language intended to close loopholes in existing law that allow hemp-derived intoxicants to be sold at unlicensed stores, but which critics say will have a deleterious impact on existing hemp farmers in the state. The bill, HB6699, passed by a vote of 32-4 late Monday and will now go to Governor Lamont’s desk for signing.
Simply put, the bill limits hemp-based products sold outside of licensed cannabis dispensaries to 1 mg of THC per serving and 5 mgs of THC per package. Wednesday, however, both houses of the General Assembly rushed through another bill that purportedly contains fixes to the language in HB6699 that prevents hemp farmers’ from selling the products they currently produce. HB6700, which was passed by the Senate shortly before the legislative session ended for the year, permits the sale of so-called high-THC hemp-derived products in licensed dispensaries, but only “from a location within the dispensary facility that is separate from the area within such dispensary facility where marijuana is sold, and labeled as hemp products that are not subject to marijuana testing standards.” The bill also extends from July 1 to October 1 the deadline for hemp farmers and producers to make the changes outlined in HB6699, which include alterations to packaging.
That last date change was the least that Becky Goetsch, co-owner of Running Brook Farms in Killingworth, Connecticut, was looking for from the state. In the immediate aftermath of the passage of HB6699, the producer of hemp-derived teas was deeply disappointed but resolute in her determination to stay the course as far as fighting for a future for hemp farmers in the state.
“We have had a lot of dialogue [with legislators] regarding [HB6700] and trying to get hemp farmers cultivation licenses for the recreational market, and I knew that was a big lift,” said Goetsch Tuesday, before the votes approving the bill. “And of course, it is a big lift, but we were just trying to mirror what New York State did. We’re existing cannabis farms, and we’ve invested a lot into this industry, so we felt like we deserved some access to the recreational market.”
The dialogue on HB6700 was in sharp contrast to that not had with the other bill. “In this last year, never did they seek our guidance or our input from the broader CBD industry on the language for 6699,” said Goetsch. “So, as soon as the General Law [Committee] put forth its bills, we were elated that they brought [HB6700] to a vote. That was their promise to us, and that was their only promise to us. They told us it was going to be an uphill battle, but they fulfilled their commitment to us in that regard.”
That uphill battle was still in play Monday when the Senate passed HB6699, which in addition to reworking hemp-derived products with problematic formulas regulating THC, also contains more than 50 different sections updating cannabis law on everything from testing labs to social equity partnerships and to the social equity lottery, background checks, removes certain drug convictions as a disqualifier to become a caregiver, the transportation of products, creates an office of cannabis advocate within the Office of healthcare advocate, and creates a task force to study whether or not to authorize outdoor bazaars, among many other provisions.
When faced with an amendment that would have made fixes to HB6699 that would have allowed the sale of full-spectrum hemp products that in aggregate would exceed the .3 percent THC threshold by allowing 20-1 non-intoxicating formulations, the sponsoring legislator, Senator Maloney, told the gathered senators to vote the amendment down because HB6700 contained equitable fixes. At that point, two days before the session’s last day, HB6700 had not seen any action since March, and was considered a long-shop to make it through to final passage, which it did last night, when it was passed at 11:52pm by a 36-0 vote.
As much as that may be a relief to farmers like Goetsch, who is also president of the Connecticut Hemp Industry Association (CHIA), HB6700 does not fix the harms caused by HB6699. “It doesn’t for two reasons,” she explained. “One, myself and most other hemp farmers I’ve spoken to in no way shape or form want to be aligned with the MSOs that are operating the dispensaries. That’s really important. It takes away our liberty to sell our farm-raised products. These are Connecticut-grown products. I’m certified organic, and it subjects us to having to only wholesale our products, which none of us can afford to do, and it also takes our craft boutique products and forces a state tax on them. It’s going to be treated as a marijuana product and all that entails.
“And it completely diminishes the appeal to our customers,” she added. “The thing I’m most passionate about is that I’ve built a loyal community-oriented customer base. My customers want to talk to me, give me feedback on my products and really get to know their farmer, and they trust me. That relationship between the farmer and the customer is what the industry in Connecticut has been built upon, and it’s the only way that those of us who are still cultivating hemp have been able to stay successful.”
The goal of hemp farmers like her, she noted, is to differentiate themselves by “creating craft products that are wholesome, non-intoxicating, and really effective.”
The problem with bills like HB6699, she added, was that they essentially throw out the baby with the bathwater. “Just to be clear, we all fully support addressing the issue of high-THC hemp products,” she noted. “That’s definitely something we can support. What we can’t support is the way they wrote the language basically decimating the CBD industry. You probably know about this better than I do, but I feel like it’s following a nationwide trend where heavy MSO lobbying is pushing every cannabis product into the dispensary, even our CBD products. It’s happened in numerous states across the country, and Connecticut, from what I understand, has some of the worst language. They phrased it so that a full-spectrum tincture that people are consuming that is completely non-intoxicating winds up becoming an illegal product?”
The loophole they and others are trying to address, and which many people have exploited, was the result of the poorly crafted 2018 Farm Bill championed by Senator Mitch McConnell, which defines hemp as a cannabis plant that has .3 percent THC or less. Cannabis is anything above that threshold.
“So, hemp-manufactured products must also contain .3 percent THC or less,” explained Goetsch. “But if you make your gummy heavy enough or your beverage in a big enough can, you can actually make that .3 percent THC intoxicating.” That allowed politicians to rail against the dangers of unregulated products that are potentially lethal. “There’s a clip that’s been circulating of Connecticut Rep. D’Agostino holding up these gummy bears that are 25 milligrams, and it got a little bit of play on the internet and social media sites,” said Goetsch. “The prohibitionists and the child’s safety people are basically saying that a kid can go in and get an intoxicating THC product at a gas station or at a smoke shop or somewhere like that. I believe that they did not intend to necessarily harm our industry as much as they have. I think what they did was to take some really bad language – and I’d love to know where it was proposed, who proposed it, and who got it in front of them – and adopt it under a child safety banner.”
Under the new language, she added, “If you’re used to buying a 1500 milligram tincture from me to go to sleep, and I say, ‘I’m not allowed to make it that strong, so you now have to take twice as much, which means you’re ingesting twice as much oil and it might make your stomach sick, and you can only buy five servings at a time instead of a one-month supply bottle, doesn’t that impact your experience?” It was a rhetorical question with only an affirmative answer as the correct one.
Cannabis Business Executive has not spoken with Goetsch since the passage of HB6700 late Wednesday evening, but as relieved as it may make her in that it will give farmers a few more months to face the music, as she put it the day before, the entire trend in Connecticut paints a problematic picture for her.
“Maybe I’m upset today,” she said Tuesday, “but I think what’s really going on is there’s sort of a nationwide influence by these large marijuana companies, the MSOs, to try to capture the entire cannabis market into the dispensary. And there are incentives for the states to like this, too. It’s appealing to them, because then they can get the marijuana tax revenue from it and meet their objectives with their marijuana program, and it’s at the expense of the consumer and the farmer.”
Running Brook Farms is a full-service operation with many profit centers, she said, and hemp is just a small slice of the pie, but it’s an important one. “In my little microcosm of the farm, I grow two acres of medicinal herbs for tea blends, and my hemp gets used in my tea blends,” she explained. “I grow everything from basil and rosemary to akinesia and valerian, and California poppy. I grow probably just shy of 3000 varieties of herbs, and cannabis is only one of them. So, I will continue to fight for some revisions to this bill and I will continue to fight for full-spectrum hemp products because I believe in them as medicinals, and I believe in them as medicine.”
In the meantime, she may or may not choose to continue cultivating hemp. “I don’t consume THC products, so I had no real dog in the fight for the marijuana industry,” she added. “But my colleagues did, so I’ll continue to work on behalf of Connecticut hemp farms. I built some good relationships up in Hartford this year, and hopefully next year we’ll be able to talk some sense into them. I think it’s going to be a challenging year for the CBD industry, so hopefully next year we can make some changes that will reverse some of the damage that’ll be done.”
As it is, there are 77 licensed hemp farmers in the state. “I believe that’s an accurate number, and I believe the number that harvested last year is about 38,” said Goetsch. “So, people have their licenses but didn’t grow, and those numbers are subject to change, because we just had another round of USDA compliance that we had to go through as farmers. We’ll see how many people have bothered to or have the interest and the motivation to complete that paperwork, but I think that number will shrink again.”
It’s a depressing possibility, but one that is not unique to Connecticut and groups like VCHIA that are trying to hang on to membership. “It was founded back in 2018 after the passage of the Farm Bill as an organization to try to support the hemp community, the hemp farmers as well as the CBD industry as a whole – manufacturers, product makers, and consumers – and we do it through outreach and education,” said Goetsch of the non-profit. “We host events throughout the course of the year to try to bring the community together, and we try to represent the interests of the community up in Hartford as best we can.”
With her focus squarely on Connecticut, Goetsch is aware that the issues she and her fellow hemp farmers face are not unique. “I haven’t looked outside of the state as much as maybe some other people have to know exactly what the landscape is like everywhere, but just since 6699 has come to my attention, it’s become clear to me that this is a nationwide fight.,” she said. “I think that there’s a lot of momentum and while I don’t know who all the stakeholders are, I can’t help but feel like the large MSOs have a lot of momentum behind them to try to capture the entire industry, and I do think that this is a nationwide fight. For me, it’s a local fight for my friends and my community, but I think that it is a greater issue for the whole CBD community, absolutely.”
She reiterated the basic request she had made from the beginning. “What we really need is a seat at the table so that we can help draft bills. They need to put together a legitimate working group. We were supposed to have a task force last year and it never met. The powers that be said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. We’re going to put a bill together. We don’t need to meet a task force.’ But we need to get the key stakeholders in a room so that we can draft language that ensures mutual success for everybody.”
Do people not see or appreciate the true potential of hemp-derived products? “That’s a hot topic right there,” replied Goetsch. “I think the MSOs realize the entire potential of the plant, and that’s exactly why this has happened. I don’t think they’re lobbying just to get CBD products in there. I think they’re lobbying for this to capture the full potential of the plant.”
What about the legislators? “They probably don’t have the bandwidth to be as invested as I am in that kind of information,” she said. “That’s what I’m saying. We need to be able to be at a table where we can explain to them what we do, how we do it, and why we need to preserve the right to make these products. We operate with integrity, and we operate with passion. We’re putting our farms on the line for this, and it’s our families. I’m a third-generation farmer. My daughter has been growing hemp with me since she was 14 years old, and she’s witnessed how it has changed lives and what it can do. We have this one woman who is incapacitated with PTSD, and since she started drinking my tea blend she no longer suffers. Now she can leave her apartment.”
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