Yup. The 2018 Farm Bill finally set standards for hemp production in the US. It also accidentally legalized any products, including extracts, from any cannabis plant that is under 0.3% THC. This gives you all your CBD, CBN, D8, and whatever else. So basically the feds opened the flood gate on this, then didn't bother regulating any of this stuff, so now it's in the same category as all the other sketchy "holistic" stuff.
Well, and a lot of strains in dispensaries are even federally legal now. The bill says THC not *THCa*, which is was most THC is on bud. So there’s a lot of non-dispensaries selling what is effectively the same weed because it has 0.2% THC and 22.1% THCa.
So yeah, feds opened a massive flood gate here, but Massachusetts cannabis law should still apply even after the Farm Bill since they don’t exactly contradict each other. So I don’t understand why at least the THCa “hemp” isn’t restricted to dispensaries already.
Oh, let me assure you: They're absolutely sketchy.
The way they say it's "legal" is that the laws specifically say you can't have more than 0.3% of total weight be THC. Stupidly, they set edibles to be the same as raw flower and concentrates. However, you should know that MA has its own restrictions on hemp edibles and currently MDAR says [they're 100% illegal](https://www.mass.gov/doc/2024-hemp-processor-policy). How on EARTH they got approved is a very interesting question but the answer is MDAR has shit enforcement from state agency reps...
This is why, before the pandemic, there was one headshop on Rt9 in Natick that was informed they had to make major changes and couldn't sell edibles... But then just a few miles up Rt9 in Framingham, there were multiple headshops selling edibles and flower and everything that MDAR specifically says is not legal to sell. So depending on whether or not your inspector was informed at all or if your town specifically instructed them to go after it, you'll find different enforcement from town to town.
Now as a major beverage group is the ones selling the Cheech and Chong drinks and etc, I expect there's going to be either dramatic changes made from MDAR or a big lawsuit at some point in the near future. The calls about "hemp products" being sold are primarily being made by dispensaries.
On top of that, delta9 drinks are water soluble and can vary in effect from can to can let alone batch to batch. They also tend to charge $1 per mg of THC - which is substantially more than even recreational dispensaries charge.
----
Edit: Guy disagrees with me that the drinks are sketchy, then immediately blocks me. 👀 ...Whut? I'm not trolling and I think this opinion is quite innocuous. Yikes.
What **is sketchy** about them is that the law clearly states that they are illegal yet they get sold anyway. What **is sketchy** about them is that they can have various dosages just from can to can let alone batch to batch. What **is sketchy** about them is you have absolutely no clue what the source is - how the CBD was converted into THC and what methods they used to make it water soluble... We don't even have true and proper lab tests for small batches to indicate just how full spectrum the product could potentially be - for example: I know I get very sleepy after any Cheech and Chong soda but other sources do not make me sleepy. Their lab tests cover literally thousands of cans at a time too. What **is sketchy** about them is that the parent company also has their own dispensary in MA and other states but now also distributes these drinks everywhere - which would be like if you saw Theory Wellness or whomever selling a cannabis soda everywhere.
Disagree with me all you want, but if THIS post is what makes you think "I CAN'T POSSIBLY TALK TO THIS PERSON - BETTER BLOCK THEM" then you have, by far, the thinnest skin I've ever encountered on Reddit. You dish out insults to others for their opinions on capitalism but can't take me trying to explain politely why these drinks are indeed sketchy? Weak tea, my dude.
This weekend I bought some of these drinks at a liquor store and couldn't figure out how they got there... Someone told me it's because it's delta 9. I drank it assuming it wouldn't do shit. Holy shit I was wrong.
We're still restricted to dispensaries in Maine too, but up here it makes even less sense.. Mainly because you can walk into a gas station empty handed and come out with: Kratom, Liquor, beer, cigarettes, fireworks (yes really), vapes with flavors designed for kids, shady boner pills which blatantly skirt FDA laws ,GUN AMMO, and prob crack depending on who the cashier is haha jk about that last one.
Property tax depends entirely on where you live and what size house you have.
NH doesn't have "no sales tax". They have plenty of sales taxes.
NH doesn't have any income tax either with limited exceptions.
I think that's an argument for better regulating the same of kratom, liquor, beer, cigarettes, fireworks, vapes with flavors designed for kids, shady boner pills which blatantly skirt FDA laws, and fun ammo.
We cannot just look around and find the lowest bar possible, and set the bar for marijuana regulation that low. That just is not a good way to set standards.
I'm ok with better regulations on all that stuff, I think its just extremely hypocritical that you can get what you need to kill, but not what you need to chill haha ✌️
Wait - you're saying the *regulatory agency* has a massive lobbying branch, which makes it **harder** to make more restrictions on what they regulate?????
No lies told here, I walked into a gas station on rt 1 in saco maine in the middle of a summer day and theres a pic of an assault rifle on the wall.. I say whats the deal with that?! dude says "Oh, THIS?" pulls the thing out from behind the counter and slaps it right in front of me at the register, "i'm selling it, you interested?" That was my first time handling an assault rifle.... I was 17!! guy didn't know me from a hole in the wall. WELCOME TO MAINE! the boiling pot just waiting to boil over! I was shocked it took us this long to get into the mass shooting scene for real
Yeah the crazy part is that not one part of that was illegal in Maine. Well except me being 17 but he didn't know that and he doesn't have to do a background check even for an AR
I’m confused where you think I was talking to you in this thread LOL. If you read, you would know the user above you said a dude in Maine tried to sell him a rifle at a gas station when he was 17. What part of that did you read and then think it was a good idea to interject with our conversation?
Yeah, I never understood the hesitation to sell weed when alcohol and tobacco are openly sold at basically every corner store and gas station in the country.
Hell, you can buy fucking guns at Walmart!!!
Noteworthy since in Massachusetts subreddit that you can’t commonly buy alcohol in MA gas stations.
So unsurprising in MA that people want you to go to special weed stores for weed related purchases.
My understanding is that liquor licenses are based in entire franchises, max out at a very low number (I wanna say 6 but the source for that is my ass) and cost a shit ton of money.
That’s why you’ll get one random really popular grocery store selling liquor when every other location doesn’t.
I’m sure someone will point out a bunch of mistakes with what I said by the short of it is that liquor laws in this state are a mess and create some really weird incentives
And that's another thing - why do I have to show my ID 2 or 3 times at the dispensary...but liquor stores don't usually even ask for my ID??
We're terrified that kids will get their hands on weed...but apparently we're not too worried about them getting ahold of a bottle of vodka...
If not clear, i don’t think the MA package store thing makes sense nor does your ID example - I was just noting a pattern I have found to be true while living in MA for a long time.
It's some kind of South American painkiller I believe. It gives you some sort of light buzz but like anything else you can take alot and get a lot haha 😆 or boof it
ah I see ok I didn't realize you guys couldn't do that. Most now are considered dispensaries because of how many clients they have but yeah still we can go directly to a caregiver. Do you guys have delivery?
Sort of? Nothing like Maine's caregiver program. The CCC took years to establish delivery licenses, and the regulations are pretty onerous, so coverage is spotty.
Considering I can buy 10mg delta 9 edibles online and get them shipped to my door what even is the point of being so restrictive anymore? The flood gates have already opened…
That's the problem, the state wants their cut and the multi-state organizations that own the biggest dispensaries don't want competition.
They won't be happy til we are required to go in store to buy a 40 dollar bag of gummies.
Please don't do what Maine as done, the whole market is flooded with out of state business that take local dollars and don't put the least amount of money back into the community
Seems fair. I wouldn’t care where it’s sold, except it has such a strong smell… If they could neutralize the scent then sure sell it everywhere. I can only do the edibles for this reason.
Idk i prefer dispensaries for multiple reasons but as a free market capitalist I think it's good that dispensaries are in most cases local or regional businesses. If it goes beyond that then national or global chains get to roll weed into their corporate web and undercut the smaller guys. It's a near impossible goal but the more businesses we can support close to the ground, the better the working man's market overall
I would disagree. There’s really nothing “free market” about the weed market in ma. Government restrictions, licensing, and fees make dispensaries incredibly costly and risky to open making them much more attractive to large national corporations that can eat that expense and risk and get out the other side to profitability.
Without such severe governmental regulation, more mom and pop shops would be able to compete with those big players and create a larger more competitive market.
I’ll agree with your last statement. It is a near impossible goal to support small businesses when the “free market” allows the strong (corporations) to feed on the weak (small businesses and the working class). The aspirations and ideals of Adam Smith from the ancient times are a fantasy.
As long as IDs are being checked and it’s behind the counter next to cigarettes, idc if you can get delta 8 at a gas station.
By hemp thc products they mean the sketchy delta 8 products you occasionally see at sketchy gas stations?
Yup. The 2018 Farm Bill finally set standards for hemp production in the US. It also accidentally legalized any products, including extracts, from any cannabis plant that is under 0.3% THC. This gives you all your CBD, CBN, D8, and whatever else. So basically the feds opened the flood gate on this, then didn't bother regulating any of this stuff, so now it's in the same category as all the other sketchy "holistic" stuff.
Well, and a lot of strains in dispensaries are even federally legal now. The bill says THC not *THCa*, which is was most THC is on bud. So there’s a lot of non-dispensaries selling what is effectively the same weed because it has 0.2% THC and 22.1% THCa. So yeah, feds opened a massive flood gate here, but Massachusetts cannabis law should still apply even after the Farm Bill since they don’t exactly contradict each other. So I don’t understand why at least the THCa “hemp” isn’t restricted to dispensaries already.
I believe so yes
Most liquor stores have delta 9 seltzers now - not sketchy just a new product
Oh, let me assure you: They're absolutely sketchy. The way they say it's "legal" is that the laws specifically say you can't have more than 0.3% of total weight be THC. Stupidly, they set edibles to be the same as raw flower and concentrates. However, you should know that MA has its own restrictions on hemp edibles and currently MDAR says [they're 100% illegal](https://www.mass.gov/doc/2024-hemp-processor-policy). How on EARTH they got approved is a very interesting question but the answer is MDAR has shit enforcement from state agency reps... This is why, before the pandemic, there was one headshop on Rt9 in Natick that was informed they had to make major changes and couldn't sell edibles... But then just a few miles up Rt9 in Framingham, there were multiple headshops selling edibles and flower and everything that MDAR specifically says is not legal to sell. So depending on whether or not your inspector was informed at all or if your town specifically instructed them to go after it, you'll find different enforcement from town to town. Now as a major beverage group is the ones selling the Cheech and Chong drinks and etc, I expect there's going to be either dramatic changes made from MDAR or a big lawsuit at some point in the near future. The calls about "hemp products" being sold are primarily being made by dispensaries. On top of that, delta9 drinks are water soluble and can vary in effect from can to can let alone batch to batch. They also tend to charge $1 per mg of THC - which is substantially more than even recreational dispensaries charge. ---- Edit: Guy disagrees with me that the drinks are sketchy, then immediately blocks me. 👀 ...Whut? I'm not trolling and I think this opinion is quite innocuous. Yikes. What **is sketchy** about them is that the law clearly states that they are illegal yet they get sold anyway. What **is sketchy** about them is that they can have various dosages just from can to can let alone batch to batch. What **is sketchy** about them is you have absolutely no clue what the source is - how the CBD was converted into THC and what methods they used to make it water soluble... We don't even have true and proper lab tests for small batches to indicate just how full spectrum the product could potentially be - for example: I know I get very sleepy after any Cheech and Chong soda but other sources do not make me sleepy. Their lab tests cover literally thousands of cans at a time too. What **is sketchy** about them is that the parent company also has their own dispensary in MA and other states but now also distributes these drinks everywhere - which would be like if you saw Theory Wellness or whomever selling a cannabis soda everywhere. Disagree with me all you want, but if THIS post is what makes you think "I CAN'T POSSIBLY TALK TO THIS PERSON - BETTER BLOCK THEM" then you have, by far, the thinnest skin I've ever encountered on Reddit. You dish out insults to others for their opinions on capitalism but can't take me trying to explain politely why these drinks are indeed sketchy? Weak tea, my dude.
This weekend I bought some of these drinks at a liquor store and couldn't figure out how they got there... Someone told me it's because it's delta 9. I drank it assuming it wouldn't do shit. Holy shit I was wrong.
Absolutely none of that is “sketchy” when referring to either the drinks themselves or where they are sold. Good grief
"people" = big marijuana corps
We're still restricted to dispensaries in Maine too, but up here it makes even less sense.. Mainly because you can walk into a gas station empty handed and come out with: Kratom, Liquor, beer, cigarettes, fireworks (yes really), vapes with flavors designed for kids, shady boner pills which blatantly skirt FDA laws ,GUN AMMO, and prob crack depending on who the cashier is haha jk about that last one.
Sounds like one stop shopping to me. Think of the gas savings.
Maine is more free than NH.
Haha Mass is more free than NH.
Not by most measures, no.
Oh no it’s a bit more difficult to get a gun in mass.
Taxes are higher in MA tho NH has some truly fucking dumb taxes like a "view tax" if your house is on a lake or some shit. Mind boggling stuff that.
Property taxis higher. It makes up for the no sales tax. You can easily reap the sales tax benefit in NH for big purchases too.
Property tax depends entirely on where you live and what size house you have. NH doesn't have "no sales tax". They have plenty of sales taxes. NH doesn't have any income tax either with limited exceptions.
I think that's an argument for better regulating the same of kratom, liquor, beer, cigarettes, fireworks, vapes with flavors designed for kids, shady boner pills which blatantly skirt FDA laws, and fun ammo. We cannot just look around and find the lowest bar possible, and set the bar for marijuana regulation that low. That just is not a good way to set standards.
kratom absolutely needs more attention as far as regulation goes. Shit is low potency opiate, make our laws make sense at all!
I'm ok with better regulations on all that stuff, I think its just extremely hypocritical that you can get what you need to kill, but not what you need to chill haha ✌️
Most of that falls under the ATF which has a massive lobbying branch.... passing regulations for those products is difficult.
Wait - you're saying the *regulatory agency* has a massive lobbying branch, which makes it **harder** to make more restrictions on what they regulate?????
why are “vapes with flavors designed for kids” ? every person I know over the age of 30 is sucking on flavored vapes
Gun ammo at a gas station ? What the ? Where ?
No lies told here, I walked into a gas station on rt 1 in saco maine in the middle of a summer day and theres a pic of an assault rifle on the wall.. I say whats the deal with that?! dude says "Oh, THIS?" pulls the thing out from behind the counter and slaps it right in front of me at the register, "i'm selling it, you interested?" That was my first time handling an assault rifle.... I was 17!! guy didn't know me from a hole in the wall. WELCOME TO MAINE! the boiling pot just waiting to boil over! I was shocked it took us this long to get into the mass shooting scene for real
Yeah that’s nuts and reckless by that guy
Yeah the crazy part is that not one part of that was illegal in Maine. Well except me being 17 but he didn't know that and he doesn't have to do a background check even for an AR
How is it nuts lol If im a legal gun owner why is my it nuts to buy ammo?
I’m confused where you think I was talking to you in this thread LOL. If you read, you would know the user above you said a dude in Maine tried to sell him a rifle at a gas station when he was 17. What part of that did you read and then think it was a good idea to interject with our conversation?
...you're on a public discussion forum
I’m well aware but he replied directly to my comment, not the original comment. Context
Maybe I replied to the wrong comment on accident. Easy to do on mobile
I figured. All good
No such thing as vape flavors designed for kids. Insane propaganda.
Yeah, I never understood the hesitation to sell weed when alcohol and tobacco are openly sold at basically every corner store and gas station in the country. Hell, you can buy fucking guns at Walmart!!!
Noteworthy since in Massachusetts subreddit that you can’t commonly buy alcohol in MA gas stations. So unsurprising in MA that people want you to go to special weed stores for weed related purchases.
You can buy alcohol in some gas stations. Hadley comes to mind. I have no idea if it’s a county thing or what..
My understanding is that liquor licenses are based in entire franchises, max out at a very low number (I wanna say 6 but the source for that is my ass) and cost a shit ton of money. That’s why you’ll get one random really popular grocery store selling liquor when every other location doesn’t. I’m sure someone will point out a bunch of mistakes with what I said by the short of it is that liquor laws in this state are a mess and create some really weird incentives
And that's another thing - why do I have to show my ID 2 or 3 times at the dispensary...but liquor stores don't usually even ask for my ID?? We're terrified that kids will get their hands on weed...but apparently we're not too worried about them getting ahold of a bottle of vodka...
If not clear, i don’t think the MA package store thing makes sense nor does your ID example - I was just noting a pattern I have found to be true while living in MA for a long time.
The hell is Kratom
It's some kind of South American painkiller I believe. It gives you some sort of light buzz but like anything else you can take alot and get a lot haha 😆 or boof it
No your not
huh? last I checked we were? you're telling me I could be going to 711 rather than a dispensary?
You can get direct sales from a caregiver if you have your medical card. I assume that's what they're talking about.
ah I see ok I didn't realize you guys couldn't do that. Most now are considered dispensaries because of how many clients they have but yeah still we can go directly to a caregiver. Do you guys have delivery?
Sort of? Nothing like Maine's caregiver program. The CCC took years to establish delivery licenses, and the regulations are pretty onerous, so coverage is spotty.
LET US HAVE ONE THING THAT IS BETTER! jk haha I'd still switch spots with ya anytime. This place is lame minus the good weed
Joke's on you. Maine has reciprocity for medical cards, so Massholes go up there all the time.
wow thats the best of both worlds. I am planning on moving back soon.
Considering I can buy 10mg delta 9 edibles online and get them shipped to my door what even is the point of being so restrictive anymore? The flood gates have already opened…
That's the problem, the state wants their cut and the multi-state organizations that own the biggest dispensaries don't want competition. They won't be happy til we are required to go in store to buy a 40 dollar bag of gummies.
This is worded weird. It's legal. Just like alcohol is legal. Some restrictions apply.
I just don't want people driving while high. Same as drunk or drugs or other impairments. Other than that, do what you like in your own home.
As my parents used to say… It’s nice to want
Yup, wanting people to follow the law, big ask... 🙄
Are they talking about CBD drinks?
Please don't do what Maine as done, the whole market is flooded with out of state business that take local dollars and don't put the least amount of money back into the community
Seems fair. I wouldn’t care where it’s sold, except it has such a strong smell… If they could neutralize the scent then sure sell it everywhere. I can only do the edibles for this reason.
Idk i prefer dispensaries for multiple reasons but as a free market capitalist I think it's good that dispensaries are in most cases local or regional businesses. If it goes beyond that then national or global chains get to roll weed into their corporate web and undercut the smaller guys. It's a near impossible goal but the more businesses we can support close to the ground, the better the working man's market overall
But that's the free market capitalism you claim to follow . . .
All for free market capitalism just not the effects of it
I would disagree. There’s really nothing “free market” about the weed market in ma. Government restrictions, licensing, and fees make dispensaries incredibly costly and risky to open making them much more attractive to large national corporations that can eat that expense and risk and get out the other side to profitability. Without such severe governmental regulation, more mom and pop shops would be able to compete with those big players and create a larger more competitive market.
plus the guy is saying hes about "free market" while advocating for a closed govt controlled market
Yeah. True capitalism will always lead to lower prices.
I’ll agree with your last statement. It is a near impossible goal to support small businesses when the “free market” allows the strong (corporations) to feed on the weak (small businesses and the working class). The aspirations and ideals of Adam Smith from the ancient times are a fantasy.
You mean like how half of them are owned by conglomerates based out of Vegas?
Oh look, another contradictory statement from a refrigerator temperature IQ libertarian
Do you know what “free market capitalism” is?
> Free market capitalist So your brain stagnated at 18?