Last week, when Johnson administration officials offered aldermen their ideas for regulating the growing Chicago industry of intoxicating hemp, it sounded to our ears like the mayor’s people were more interested in expanding a highly suspect “industry” than in protecting kids from serious harm, as they repeatedly said was their main motivation.
But the hearing served an educational purpose, just probably not the one that Revenue Subcommittee Chairman and hemp-industry booster William Hall, 6th, had in mind. For example, we learned there are an estimated 1,900 locations in Chicago — 1,900! — where potent drinks, gummies or other THC-infused hemp products are sold. We’re talking about gas stations, convenience stores, smoke shops and plenty of other random retail outlets in neighborhoods throughout Chicago.
By contrast, there are just 25 to 30 active licenses for recreational pot dispensaries within Chicago’s city limits: 1,900 versus 30 or less!
Intoxicating hemp is so widely available because an unintended loophole in the federal Farm Bill enacted six years ago opened the door to infusing hemp, then a relatively benign product marketed for its purported wellness and health benefits, with synthetic THC, the compound produced naturally in marijuana plants and the source of the high that imbibers feel. With Republicans and Democrats unable to agree on much of anything in Washington since then, substantive amendments to the Farm Bill that might have included regulating or shutting down this industry have gone nowhere.
The Illinois Senate last year overwhelmingly passed a bill to ban intoxicating hemp products like delta-8 while a regulatory regime could be put together. Despite enthusiastic support from Gov. JB Pritzker, Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch refused to call the bill for a vote last month, in part because of opposition from Mayor Brandon Johnson, who wants to preserve the industry in order to generate future tax revenue. The measure died, so the hemp business marches on, unregulated.
The joint hearing last week before two City Council panels gave us the most detailed look so far at the mayor’s plans for hemp after working to tank Springfield’s crackdown. In essence, administration officials told skeptical aldermen at the hearing that they wanted to create a soup-to-nuts regulatory framework of their own to set standards for manufacturing, contents, packaging, marketing, licensing and (of course) taxation.
Asked to provide examples of municipalities that have done such a thing, city officials obfuscated and waffled. They said their plans were based on amorphous “best practices.”
Let’s be clear. There is little if any precedent for a city setting product standards for an intoxicating product like hemp.
That sort of thing is done at the federal level, which unfortunately hasn’t occurred because of congressional paralysis. What localities ordinarily do is establish licensing standards for the retailers who make the already-regulated products available to the public.
In its zeal to promote an industry whose products have sent Chicago kids to the hospital in frightening conditions that could be likened to overdoses, the Johnson administration is effectively seeking to give a business with few redeeming aspects a veneer of legitimacy, accompanied by promises that the city will outlaw the sale of intoxicating gummies and the like to those younger than 21. The administration told aldermen it would enforce the age restriction the same way it does with cigarettes and booze.
How reassuring. There are a grand total of two city inspectors who make sure retailers aren’t selling smokes to kids, we learned during the hearing, and the state of Illinois pays for both of them.
To their credit, most of the aldermen who attended the hearing were incredulous.
“When it comes to what’s in the product, the chemical testing, that’s where I don’t believe the city has the capacity (to regulate),” said 40th Ward Ald. Andre Vasquez.
No matter what regulations Chicago sets up, said 44th Ward Ald. Bennett Lawson: “We’re still not going to say this product is safe. Because the FDA doesn’t say this product is safe.”
“What we’re talking about is really creating it all and going it alone. … The amount of opportunities to skirt regulation is so immense that it seems very daunting,” said Ald. Nicole Lee, 11th.
Administration officials promised to return with a proposed ordinance that would establish these elaborate rules and determine how much all that regulation and enforcement would cost the city, as well as the taxes licensees would pay.
Perhaps more revealing than the extensive discussion of safeguards was the level of respect city officials gave a business dedicated simply to getting people high. In his testimony, Ivan Capifali, acting commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, used descriptors for delta-8 purveyors like “emergent,” “innovative” and ‘transformative” — terms more often used for the technology industry. “Hemp has immense potential to benefit our economy and our local communities,” he said.
Guess that’s what counts as economic development in Brandon Johnson’s Chicago.
If and when the Johnson administration returns with a proposal to make its hemp dreams reality, aldermen should reject it in the name of protecting Chicago’s kids. And city officials should let Springfield, with more resources at its disposal, take the lead on this important public-health issue.
At the very least, hemp sellers should be subject to the same strict rules imposed on the pot industry.
At the very least.
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