Steve Robinson

They're going to give you a little bit of the experience of a high.

If you're a veteran marijuana user, you're not going to recognize it as the same experience.

But if you're an 18-year-old taking a puff off a vape for the first time, you might not know.

And because they do not contain THC Delta-9, they are regulated in a different way and can be available at smoke shops through different age gates.

They can be available at smoke shops in non-legalization states.

And one of the other ways that we regulate cannabis products in this country that just doesn't make sense is whether they're hemp derived or cannabis derived.

So you can derive CBD from a hemp plant grown in Kentucky and through a small chemical process involving heat and acid, turn it into THC Delta-9.

And it's identical chemically to the THC Delta-9 that would come from a cannabis sativa plant grown in Maine, but it's regulated totally differently.

Interesting.

even in Kentucky and Tennessee, wherever, in Maine, totally different regulatory systems.

So in Maine right now, I can go into gas stations and I can buy a beverage that's five milligrams Delta nine THC hemp derived.

But if I wanted to buy cannabis sativa derived,

beverages with five milligrams THC Delta-9 in them.

I'd have to go to a dispensary, show my license, go through a whole different regulatory process.

And the process to create those products would be totally different.

The analogy I've used is it'd be like, it'd be like regulating alcohol differently depending on how it was formed.

like regulating corn whiskey in one way, but potato vodka in another way, because corn-derived alcohol is in some way different than potato-derived alcohol.

It doesn't make sense, but that's the system that we have right now, and that's the loophole that has allowed some of the least ethical players to reap the biggest rewards.

Because we've set up a system now where what they're effectively doing is a form of arbitrage where they know that they can safely and for low risk grow and cultivate in states like Maine or California or Oklahoma and then take that product and instead of selling it in Maine for bargain store prices, they can bring it to a prohibition state and sell it through a smoke shop or a head shop or whatever.

uh tobacco shop and they're going to make more money and the money is also going to be clean once it comes through the visa payment processor are the chinese involved in the hemp stuff too yes they are yes uh the they're it's it's really all one uh uh i guess one one system or one network there's not a lot of differentiation between the the hemp and the cannabis there's cannabis that's being passed off as hemp there's hemp that's being passed off as cannabis