Jackson Jambalaya

Ben Couey authored and sponsored this post.  Mr. Couey is the owner of Hempville CBD.  

As a retired history teacher and life-long Mississippian who owns a retail CBD store, I am concerned about the many unintended consequences passage of House Bill 1676 (legislation to regulate the sale of hemp products) will have on small business owners and consumers in our state. Not only will the bill as currently drafted put my store and most other retail CDB stores out of business, it will also make beneficial non-intoxicating hemp-derived products mostly unavailable to consumers in our state.

I opened my store after hemp-derived products became federally legal and after investigating the benefits of Cannabidiol (CBD) products for helping manage chronic conditions. Specifically, I watched people close to me suffer from cancer and the related pain and complications from treatment, and determined that legal, non-intoxicating hemp-derived products could help them and many others. In addition to pain, inflammation, and arthritis, hemp-derived products help with anxiety, insomnia, addiction, and many other conditions.

While CBD is an essential component of medical marijuana, it is derived directly from the hemp plant, a cousin of marijuana. CBD does not cause a high by itself. By federal law, CBD products must contain no more than 0.3% of Delta-9 THC. In retail CBD stores like mine, our staff is knowledgeable about what we are selling, and our products already meet the testing requirements in House Bill 1676.

This legislation would require me to convert my store to a medical marijuana dispensary to continue selling the CBD products we sell today. Like with many other store owners, the city I’m in has opted out of dispensaries. Even if I had the funds as a retired educator to move my store and get licensed as a dispensary, I would still be prohibited under this bill from selling products that make up 90% of my business due to the limits in the bill on “total THC” instead of Delta-9 THC, which is the federal standard. There are many types of non-intoxicating THC. Beyond that issue, no supplier of any of my products could conform with the limits in the bill on serving and container sizes. My customers do not want to shop at medical marijuana dispensaries, nor do they want to get a medical marijuana card to buy these federally legal products. Customers prefer hemp-derived products over medical marijuana. This law will have the unfortunate consequence of driving many customers to the black market where there are no safety protections.

Customers prefer the privacy, lower cost, and superior results of milder hemp-derived products for the conditions they are treating. Our customers want an alternative, natural medicine as opposed to prescription drugs. We have many customers treating chronic conditions who are working hard to avoid opioids or alcohol. Hemp-derived products are not designed to get consumers high. Hemp-derived products used properly do not cause paranoia or other side effects that can result from use of marijuana products.

This bill is the result of a sustained lobbying effort by the medical marijuana industry to purposefully put retail CBD stores out of business. They want to confiscate, through manipulating our legal and legislative system, over $20 million in retail sales of CBD products across our state. This will result in more medical marijuana dispensaries, is purposefully designed to drive as many consumers as possible into the medical marijuana program, and it will expand the power and influence of an industry whose ultimate goal is the approval of recreational marijuana in Mississippi.

Some have asked us (retailers of CBD products) why we are so “late to the game” in speaking out about this misguided legislation. The answer is that the lobbyists for the medical marijuana industry who wrote this bill worked hard to keep the details under wraps. Most of us are just one-store small business owners who are not employing lawyers and lobbyists to walk the halls of the state capitol every day. We simply did not know about all the problems with this bill – until now. It’s not too late to avoid these mistakes.

I urge legislators to vote “NO” on House Bill 1676 and work with CBD retailers and consumers to craft a better solution that accomplishes our shared goals of eliminating unsafe and untested products, protecting consumers, and prohibiting purchases by minors, while allowing adults who safely and responsibly use CBD products to continue doing so.

Ben Couey, Owner

Hempville CBD