CANNABIZ
BRIAN CHILSON
HEMP HIGH: Available at c-stores.
GETTING HIGH THROUGH A LOOPHOLE DELTA-8 IS A WIDELY AVAILABLE WEED ALTERNATIVE, BUT REGULATION MAY BE COMING. BY LINDSEY MILLAR
T
here is perhaps no industry more regulated in Arkansas than medical marijuana. State laws and rules restrict who can buy it, how much and what types of products qualified customers can buy, how and where it can be sold — even how it can be advertised. So you might be surprised to learn that a similar psychoactive product, also derived from the cannabis plant, is widely available in Arkansas convenience stores, tobacco and vape shops and elsewhere, and is produced and sold entirely free of regulation. Most commonly known as delta-8 THC, but also sold in a seemingly ever-expanding array of other varieties — THC-0, delta-10, HHC — the products come in a range of forms: vape cartridges, gummies, tinctures, cookies. How delta-8 compares to marijuana depends on whom you ask, but the unscientific consensus is that they’re at least intoxicating cousins. The crucial distinction between the two is a legal one. Marijuana is another name for the flowers of the Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica plants
76 MAY 2022
ARKANSAS TIMES
that are rich in THC, technically known as delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol. Delta-9 THC remains federally illegal and legal in Arkansas only to certified medical marijuana patients. Hemp, at least defined by the 2018 federal Farm Bill, is any cannabis plant or its byproducts that contain less than 0.3% delta-9 THC. Because delta-8 THC products meet that definition, they’re legal, goes the argument. Many state legislatures, including Arkansas’s in the 2021 legislative session, passed legislation to align local hemp laws with the Farm Bill. Rep. David Hillman (R-Almyra) sponsored the bill that updated Arkansas’s hemp program. Delta-8 wasn’t on his radar at the time, he said. He’s not ready to concede that the law, passed overwhelmingly by his colleagues, legalized hemp-based THC products, but he acknowledged that the statute is at least ambiguous. “It’s something that’s going to have to be addressed” in a future legislative session, he said. At least 17 states have banned delta-8 and similar products, but several of those are being
challenged in court. The federal government hasn’t provided clear guidance. The Food and Drug Administration has warned that delta-8 hasn’t been evaluated or approved by the agency and may not be safe to use. The Drug Enforcement Agency, in an interim rule, said that delta-8 is not a controlled substance as long as the product is derived from hemp rather than synthetically or chemically synthesized THC. But the DEA did not define what “synthetic” means. The typical way to make delta-8 is by extracting cannabidiol, aka CBD, from hemp, refining that into an isolate and then synthesizing that with heat and solvents into delta-8. In other words, chemistry! (HHC is created by adding hydrogen molecules to delta-9 or CBD; the hydrogenation process is similar to how vegetable oil is converted into margarine, the popular cannabis website Leafly helpfully explains). Whether that process runs afoul of the DEA’s stipulations depends on whom you ask. In any case, the federal enforcement agency has not aggressively targeted delta-8 manufacturers across the country.
