Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway has ordered 33 stores to stop selling intoxicating hemp products, but many shop owners say the products remain legal under federal law and plan to keep selling them until new federal restrictions take effect Nov. 12.
They also question the basis for Hanaway’s crackdown, which relies heavily on lab results gathered by the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association, a marijuana-industry group whose members compete with hemp retailers.
About half of the smoke shops and hemp stores targeted by the attorney general argue they’re in compliance with the federal law until November, according to the Missouri Hemp Trade Association.
“Missouri follows federal law, which we follow as well,” J.C. Cirese, owner of Dr. Smoke in Kansas City. “When I started in this industry in 2019, that was what we followed, and nothing has changed — not until Nov. 12.”
Hanaway’s office issued 33 cease-and-desist letters last month, ordering stores to stop selling things like pre-rolled joints or canisters of “THCA hemp flower” that allegedly contain more than .3% of total THC on a dry weight basis.
The letters also state shop owners can no longer use language such as cannabis, marijuana, weed and kush that illegally “deceive consumers” into believing the shops are a licensed marijuana dispensary.
Some businesses were ordered to stop selling products that contain heavy metals, pesticides or other foreign substances – or were made to be attractive to children. The letters did not list specific products that violated the law.
“Following lab testing, it was confirmed many of these businesses sold substances which contained lead, arsenic, mercury, ethanol, and other contaminants, solvents, pesticides or unknown byproducts,” Hanaway’s press release stated, announcing the letters in March.
The letters went to 18 stores in the St. Louis region, 13 in the Kansas City area and two in Springfield last month.
The Independent obtained the cease-and-desist letters through a public records request, but the office denied a request for the lab results, saying they’re part of an ongoing investigation.
Hanaway’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Whitaker, confirmed the state lab didn’t conduct any testing as part of the investigation or order any testing from independent labs. The lab testing cited in her letters were provided through complaints, she said, and conducted by licensed Missouri marijuana labs.
The attorney general’s ammunition came largely from secret-shopper lab results provided by the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association, a trade organization that represents marijuana business owners, professionals and consumers.
In October, MoCann released a report titled, “The Missouri Hemp Hoax Report,” where the association sent 55 products purchased from smoke shops and gas stations across the state to licensed marijuana testing labs.
According to the report, 96% were actually marijuana, not legal hemp, because of the amount of total THC in the products.
Andrew Mullins, executive director of MoCann Trade, said the lab results “proved that these bad actors were perpetrating a fraud on Missourians.”
Of the 33 businesses that received letters from Hanaway, all but two were businesses named in MoCann’s report.
MoCann’s lab test results were linked in the report’s website, and the claims in the attorney general’s letters largely match those results.
“The MoCann list was provided to us, as well as other complaints from law enforcement and city and county officials,” Whitaker said.
The cease-and-desist letters were signed by Assistant Attorney General Jane Dueker, who is leading what Hanaway’s office informally calls the “vice squad.”
Intoxicating hemp products with as much as 1,000 mg of THC are being sold in smoke shops — outside of Missouri’s licensed marijuana dispensaries — and they aren’t regulated by any government agency.
Dueker met with police, county prosecutors and mayors’ offices across the state as part of the investigation, Whitaker said.
“These unlicensed dispensaries are peddling dangerous, deceptive and intoxicating cannabis and marijuana products,” Hanaway said in her March press release. “My office is prepared to use the full extent of our authority to hold bad actors accountable.”
‘The word of our competitors’
Cameron Fleet, owner of Center Smoke in Independence, was confused when he received the letter from the attorney general’s office last month.
“Some of the points that she made I don’t think apply to us,” Fleet said, “so I thought maybe it was just a generic letter. We don’t have a sign that says dispensary or marijuana. We’ve been a smoke shop selling CBD for a very long time, before corporate cannabis became a thing.”
Fleet’s letter is the only one of the 33 that claimed a THC candy-like product was being sold. It claims he’s selling a THC Nerd Rope candy, which he said he’s never sold. The letter also states that pesticides and heavy metals were found in lab tests of his products.
“We’re not trying to undermine the attorney general, but we’re definitely questioning where this is coming from,” Fleet said.
The claims match lab test results MoCann’s report alleges were products bought in his store, and the testing was conducted by Missouri’s largest licensed marijuana lab, Green Precision Analytics.
“While MoCann Trade is …making these websites and lobbying against us, trying to get us shut down,” he said, “it’s just awfully convenient that the attorney general would also step in.”
MoCann has led the push for legislation to ban intoxicating products in Missouri, which has received pushback from the hemp industry.
Fleet and other owners are confused about why only 33 stores that sell THCA hemp flower received letters because there’s many more stores out there that do.
“The only correlation that we found out amongst ourselves is the stores that were posted on Missouri Hemp Hoax got a letter,” Fleet said, “and that website was funded by MoCann Trade.”
Cirese argues, “taking the word of our competitors might not be the best way to approach it.”
After receiving the letter, he said his team “double checked” the lab results they do to make sure they all passed for pesticides and foreign substances. His store has been around since before recreational marijuana was legalized in 2022, and he said marijuana legalization advocates used the success of stores like his as a way to get the initiative passed.
“We’ve never been given the opportunity to have licensing in Missouri,” he said. “How do we get the same treatment for hemp as say marijuana, which the marijuana advocates used hemp as a platform to run on?”
The ‘Hemp Hoax’
MoCann’s report found that 29% of the products tested had dangerous contaminants such as pesticides, mold, heavy metals and residual solvents.
“We made these detailed lab results available to the public, as well as law enforcement and policymakers, to show that convenience stores and smoke shops across our state are unequivocally selling marijuana and calling it hemp,” Mullins said in a statement to The Independent, “because then it isn’t taxed, isn’t regulated, and doesn’t have to be lab tested.”
The report also states the legal limit for a cannabis plant to be considered hemp is .3% total THC or less, and that’s measured by combining Delta-9 THC and THCA, according to federal guidelines. The cease-and-desist letters state the attorney general also used this measurement method.
“Most of these products contained far more THC than allowed by law, with one product found to contain up to 89% THC, which is 298 times the legal limit,” MoCann’s October press release about the report states.
The hemp stores disagree with this method of measuring THC.
Cirese said the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp, “clearly states” that the measurement is only Delta-9 THC and not total THC, which would include THCA.
THCA doesn’t become intoxicating until heated, which is why a joint only gets people high when it’s lit, not when it’s eaten. However, it will mean total THC when a federal provision kicks in Nov. 12.
“I’m not sure where that interpretation comes from,” Cirese said. “There’s no Missouri law that states total THC either, so we’re just going by the federal farm bill.”
MoCann argues in the report, “In short, THCA flower is marijuana under federal law, not hemp.”
CBD Kratom in Tower Grove neighborhood also received a letter. Craig Katz, the company’s manager of government compliance, called the allegations “misguided and false.”
CBD Kratom is a large company, he said, that has the resources to have in-house legal counsel. But most of the stores on the attorney general’s list don’t.
“I would say that 95% of the businesses they’re mom and pops, they’re small entrepreneurs or family farmers, or whatever they are,” he said. “They see a letter like that coming with the seal of the state of Missouri on it, and they get worried. But if you’re not doing anything wrong, then you should be able to deal with it.”