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One of my favorite quotes from Justice Potter Stewart (naturally, a Supreme Court justice writing about watching pornography is my favorite) is “[f]airness is what justice really is.” The Alabama attorney general has an opportunity to demonstrate fairness and put wisdom before power. Will he?
We’ve written extensively about Alabama’s new law substantially curbing the sale of most forms of hemp. From the Alabama Political Reporter:
After Gov. Kay Ivey signed House Bill 445 — the bill setting major restrictions on Alabama’s hemp and CBD industry — into law in May, confusion arose over exactly when the bill’s provisions, specifically its ban on the sale and possession of smokable hemp products, would go into effect.
While the legislation’s language stipulates that it “shall become effective on July 1, 2025,” several provisions regarding the licensure of consumable hemp manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers have an effective date of Jan. 1, 2026.
However, according to reporting from WSFA 12 News, the Alabama Attorney General’s Office has confirmed that the smokable hemp ban will indeed go into effect in July.
“The criminal prohibition on the sale or possession of hemp products specifically excluded from the definition of ‘consumable hemp product’ goes into effect July 1, 2025,” a spokesperson for AG Steve Marshall’s office told WSFA on Tuesday.
This means that smokable hemp products — defined in the bill as “any plant product or raw hemp material that is marketed to consumers as hemp cigarettes, hemp cigars, hemp joints, hemp buds, hemp flowers, hemp leaves, ground hemp flowers, or any variation of these terms to include any product that contains a cannabinoid, whether psychoactive or not” — will indeed become illegal for sale or possession in Alabama starting next month.
The AG’s spokesperson also noted that selling or possessing any such product in Alabama after July 1 “could subject an individual to prosecution for a Class C felony” punishable by a maximum prison sentence of 10 years and up to a $15,000 fine.
It is worth noting that, in contrast, an individual charged with “personal use” marijuana possession in Alabama only faces a Class A misdemeanor with a much lighter maximum sentence of 1 year in prison and a $6,000 fine.
I’ll leave it to the lawyers and courts who will almost certainly be hearing this case in short order to decide whether this is good law, but it strikes me as an unnecessary policy choice that will lead to more bad consequences than good.
Regardless of whether you agree with it, the Alabama Legislature made a choice to substantially limit the availability of hemp products in Alabama. It will soon be decided whether that choice was legal, but in the meantime it seems both unnecessarily punitive to operators and shortsighted to threaten felony charges on July 1 for operators and consumers engaged in an activity that was legal a month ago.
Citizens and businesses should be able to rely on laws to at least the extent that they shouldn’t have to worry about immediately closing their businesses and finding new access to therapies at the drop of a hat. I have been on the phone this week with people expressing hopelessness and despair about their inability to comply with the new law on such short notice (to say little of the fact that possessing hemp is now a felony while possessing marijuana is a misdemeanor).
Add to that the ABC is overwhelmed dealing with the implementation of the new hemp laws and the new vape laws. Put simply, the regulators understandably don’t yet know how to enforce these new laws.
I encourage the attorney general to reconsider and instruct law enforcement to stand down on enforcing the hemp law until January 1 so that businesses can make proper arrangements for compliance and regulators can implement formal rulemaking.
To do otherwise would be to unnecessarily punish hemp operators and motivate formerly legal operators to simply move to an unregulated market to get rid of their inventory. I assure you they have no intention of simply destroying it in the next few weeks.
This is a chance to do right by all stakeholders. Let’s take it.
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“}]] One of my favorite quotes from Justice Potter Stewart (naturally, a Supreme Court justice writing about watching pornography is my favorite) is “[f]airness is what justice really is.” The Alabama attorney general has an opportunity to demonstrate fairness and put wisdom before power. Will he? Read More
