Medicinal. Industrial. Recreational. It was all there at Raleigh's Southern

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Delta Variant

An alternate THC compound emerges while cannabis advocates are divided over how best to use the plant.

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

On the main stage of the Raleigh Convention Center, physician Uma Dhanabalan gestures behind a podium, talking about scientific studies, research, and the global economy. It’s Thursday morning, and the third annual Southern Hemp Expo resembles nothing so much as a business conference. The only difference is the people.

Instead of men in business suits, there are middle-aged couples, millenials, and budding young entrepreneurs. Matthew Soares, of Massachusetts, drove 12 hours south to attend the expo, he told the INDY.

“I’m starting a hemp clothing company,” Soares says. “I think there’s a business opportunity there, but I also think there’s a necessity to increase the use of industrial hemp for a variety of different things.” responsible for its characteristic high—is legal to grow and sell. That includes CBD and other compounds like CBN and CBG, which don’t have a psychoactive effect. Although research is scarce, hemp products are often advertised for their alleged calming or anti-inflammatory properties, as sleep aids or pain relievers.

On the other hand, there are compounds like delta8, an alternate form of THC often described as “weed light.” While delta-8 will give people a high, its effects are usually less intense than traditional marijuana (as long as you don’t take too much), says Tanya Durand, owner of The Hemp Store, with locations in Raleigh, Chapel Hill, and Wake Forest.

“Delta-8 THC is an isomer of cannabis,” Durand says. “So it’s naturally occurring in the cannabis plant, but in order to produce large amounts of it, they do have to process it from CBD. It turns into delta-8 THC, which is psychoactive. It’s very similar to delta-9 THC, which is the main component in marijuana.”

The legality of delta-8 is somewhat ambiguous, Paul Adams, industrial hemp program manager at the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, told the INDY in an email. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, synthesized or manufactured THC products like delta-8 are just as illegal as marijuana. But, Adams adds, “It seems that if Delta-8 THC could be extracted from a hemp plant directly in volumes large enough to use then that delta-8 would be legal.

“It is unclear if CBD derived from hemp and then acted upon to create Delta-8 THC results in a legal product,” he says.

So far, the law has given dispensaries enough leeway to sell delta-8. The new compound is definitely the current craze, Durand says, with about 70 percent of her customers looking for it when they come into the store. Not everyone, though, is looking to get high.

“That’s the surprising part,” Durand says. “We get people who are about to turn 21, waiting to be able to purchase it. We have middle-aged people coming in, older people who said they’ve never tried it but heard from a friend that it really helped them with their arthritis or whatever it was. We’re seeing all kinds of people.”

Delta-8 and other THC alternatives have divided the cannabis community into people who think the plant should primarily be used to make industrial products like clothing and biofuel, and dispensary owners who believe in the medical benefits of CBD and THC, some of whom are in favor of widespread legalization of marijuana.

From a young age, Soares says, he didn’t understand why the production of industrial hemp was suppressed. Today, he talks about how growing hemp can help return carbon to the Earth. There’s a huge need for regenerative farming, he says.

“No plant is more efficient at sequestering carbon than industrial hemp,” Soares says. “It’s a necessity, environmentally, for us to do this. It makes no sense that it’s not being cultivated on a really large scale in the United States.”

Soares’s business is a safe bet in an uncertain industry. Although some cannabis products became legal in North Carolina in 2015, many still exist in a grey area.

The line is a blurry one. Any cannabis derivative with less than 0.3 percent THC—the chemical in marijuana Industry day at the Southern Hemp Expo 2021 at the Raleigh Convention Center

PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA