HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — A Huntsville small business owner is calling on Governor Kay Ivey to veto House Bill 445, saying the legislation would ban nearly all of his company’s legal products and threaten the future of Alabama’s hemp industry.
Carmello Parasiliti, owner of Green Acres Organic Pharms, said HB445 would outlaw 99.9% of the federally compliant products his company has produced under the 2018 Farm Bill. The bill, which passed both the Alabama House and Senate, now sits on Ivey’s desk. She has six legislative days — not counting Sundays — to either sign or veto the bill. If she does neither, it becomes law automatically.
“It’s just going to put a lot of a lot of businesses out of business,” Parasiliti said. “People are not sure about the future of, you know, our operations remaining in Alabama.”
Parasiliti said the bill would eliminate products that are tested by DEA-certified labs and legally produced under federal guidelines.
“It’s going to eliminate 99.9% of our legal, federally compliant products that we’ve been making in Alabama code state years under the 2018 farm bill,” he said. “All of our products are tested by DEA certified labs, and we have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into Alabama’s hemp economy. We saw thousands of people in need. We have a self-funded, cancer program. Where we were giving these products away and under that bill, it’ll be illegal to even give it away.”
Supporters of the bill say it’s aimed at reining in an unregulated and potentially dangerous market. Rep. Andy Whitt, R-Harvest, who sponsored the legislation, said it’s about protecting public health — especially that of minors.
“Delta-8 and Delta-9 may look harmless, but without proper checks, they’re sneakin’ into the hands of our kids—unregulated, untested, and downright dangerous to their health and future,” Whitt said. “There is no oversight, they are unregulated, and quite frankly it’s the Wild West in the hemp industry.”
But Parasiliti strongly disagrees with that framing and said the bill is more about government overreach than consumer safety.
“It’s being sold as consumer protection, but, you know, it’s anti-free market and anti-patient. It’s anti-science. And we have a bunch of red tape Republicans who are, you know, Republican by name only,” he said. “And here they are wanting to impose new taxes and more government regulations and, you know, me being a Republican, raised Republican my whole life — it’s embarrassing that, you know, my, the people I voted for are trying to put us out of business.”
Parasiliti said he met Ivey in 2022 at a farmers market event in Montgomery, where he gave her a bottle of full-spectrum CBD oil. He said she later sent a handwritten letter thanking him for his work and investment in the state.
“She just personally for our work, wrote us a letter,” he said. “We gave her, we gave her some of our full spectrum CBD oil in Montgomery in 2020. We were at a farmers’ market f, and we gave her a product, the oil. She wrote us a beautiful letter and, you know, encouraging us and thanking us for investing into, Alabama and being a small business. And, that bottle that was once praised by, you know, the highest office in the state is now going to be illegal under this new bill.”
Governor Ivey has not publicly indicated whether she plans to sign or veto HB445.
