IOWA CITY, Iowa (KCRG) – Medical marijuana in Iowa has competition that could destroy it: hemp.
Drinks, gummies, and lotions made with hemp, can cause a high. They’re legal and easy to find, and anyone of any age can buy them. One company says it’s partly to blame for why many companies have already pulled out of the state of Iowa.
The Iowa Cannabis Company provides medical marijuana products to Iowans with a doctor’s prescription.
“We were one of the first people in the state of Iowa,” said Chief Operating Officer Aaron Boshart.
Boshart said when they first joined, they won the bid for a dispensary in Waterloo. It was one of 5 dispensaries approved in the state. By 2020, he said companies started pulling out of the state because they were losing money.
“We have dispensaries in Washington and Oregon that do very well,” he said. “We use funds from that business to make the investments we’ve made in Iowa.”
Hemp and Marijuana both contain the same chemical that causes a high, THC. However, the state has a much more lax approach to regulating consumable products made from hemp.
“It’s a competitor that has a wildly unfair advantage of not having any regulations,” said Boshart.
Patients with a medical cannabis registration card can only buy 4.5 grams of products containing THC every 90 days. In hemp, THC levels are restricted based on weight, but there’s no limit on how much a consumer can buy and no restriction on who can buy it.
“It’s frankly a danger to the public to have 100 milligram THC beverages available to teenagers available to teenagers or available to anyone at a very low cost,” said Boshart. “We don’t know where the THC came from, how was it processed, were the solvents completely removed.”
State lawmakers are currently working on legislation that would make it illegal to buy hemp-derived THC products under the age of 21, change the amount of THC that can be in a product, and require tighter licensing on who can sell.
“We have camera systems, security systems, background checks, we have testing protocols all our products go through to ensure that there is nothing dangerous,” he said. “We want our label claims to say what percentage is actually in the product.
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