The legislation, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli, would keep the regulation of hemp and hemp-derived products under the jurisdiction of the Arizona Department of Agriculture — and away from the stricter scrutiny that marijuana faces by the state Department of Health Services. Hermansky, a board member of the Arizona Dispensary Association, was ready to testify against the bill during a hearing before the House Land, Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee.
Currently, legal hemp is defined as a cannabis plant containing less than 0.3 percent of THC; any cannabis plant with levels greater than that is categorized as marijuana. Unlike the highly regulated marijuana industry, which determines potency by testing the final byproduct of the plant, only harvested hemp stalks are tested to ensure they are below the 0.3 percent THC threshold.
So, while the cannabis concentrates, flower, and edibles you purchase from a dispensary have been extensively tested, the hemp-derived CBD products you can buy at your local grocery store have not been. And that is fueling a raging debate in Arizona and elsewhere over whether hemp products should get a closer look from regulators.
“The topic overall, it's so shockingly horrible that we feel like if we can just say our piece and explain what's really going on here, then it wouldn’t be passed,” Hermansky told Phoenix New Times. “We just haven't had a chance to say our piece and explain what's going on. Senator Borrelli won't even meet with us.”
Some synthetic hemp-derived products have been independently tested and were shown to have THC levels that exceed 1,000 times the legal threshold, according to the ADA and the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center. Although the ADA has offered to share these findings with Borrelli, it said that he continues to refuse to meet with the association. The influential Republican lawmaker declined to respond to questions from New Times.
At the heart of the spat between Borrelli and the marijuana industry are unregulated delta-8 branded products. Delta-8 consumables are created using highly concentrated hemp-derived CBD, which can have intoxicating levels of THC.
The FDA has warned that delta-8 products can be risky and that poison control centers across the U.S. have received 2,362 exposure cases of delta-8 THC products between January 1, 2021, and February 28, 2022."
Borrelli said during the committee hearing on March 13 that “expecting to get high off of hemp products is like drinking a case of O’Doul's [non-alcoholic beer] and expecting to get drunk. You’re just going to waste your time.”
Borrelli was the only person allowed to testify at the hearing as he requested that further discussion about SB 1271 be tabled. Committee Chair Republican Representative Lupe Diaz and other lawmakers voted in favor of Borrelli’s request.
‘It’s Really Complicated’
Although the issue with unregulated hemp-derived products is clear to Hermansky and the ADA, not everyone agrees.Democratic Representative Nancy Gutierrez asked a telling question at the hearing. “Just to be clear, this amendment will include testing all of the deltas, not just 8, or 9, or 13 — there are several deltas, right? I mean, all the deltas except Delta Air Lines,” she asked Diaz.
In response, Diaz said that he would have to get back to her, and that “it’s really complicated.”
Hermansky said part of the difficulty with the legislation stems from the order in which bills are being heard. “I mean, when we were down in session on Monday, the bill that was heard before SB 1271 was about horse racing. So, you have these nine [lawmakers] talking about horse racing, and then it shifts to ‘let's talk about high-level chemistry and extrapolating delta-8 and delta-9 from hemp,’” he said. “It’s clear their heads were spinning around.”
But a working knowledge of high-level chemistry largely is beside the point. “Our problem is that we know that there are unsafe products being sold. And we're sitting here trying to understand how is this possible — how is this thing not being stopped immediately,” Hermanksy told New Times.
The House committee did not consider SB 1271 during its latest meeting on March 20. The Senate Natural Resources passed the bill 7-0 on February 9. It passed the full Senate 29-0 on February 20.
