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Gov. Mike DeWine’s emergency order last week to put a 90-day pause on the sale of intoxicating hemp products outside of licensed dispensaries starting Oct. 18 means no more sales of edibles, candies, gummies, prerolls, seltzers, sodas, liquors and flower.
Consumers have responded with criticism of the order, and so have smoke shops, beverage stores and CBD warehouses that have been selling Delta-8 and Delta-10 THC products.
“It just sucks,” Bill Barak, owner of Rozi’s Wine House in Lakewood, which sells THC drinks.
Hemp drinks “had become a part of the business, so it’s gonna hurt,” he said. “Maybe that means people go back to beer and wine? We’ll see.”
Last Wednesday, shortly after DeWine’s order was announced, three hemp-selling members of the Ohio Healthy Alternatives Association—including the Cleveland-based Titan Logistics Group—sued DeWine and the state under the belief that the governor infringed upon weed-related laws when he suddenly decided to put the kibosh on edibles.
The suit, which was filed in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, cites the 2018 Farm Bill, the act that led to Delta-8 and Delta-9 hitting shelves, as the legal basis for why a Ohio governor alone can’t and shouldn’t have the final say in taking those products away.
As does Issue 2, the law Ohioans voted into law in 2023, which okayed the sale of recreational marijuana.
“Legislative deliberations on potential hemp reforms have been carefully considered and debated for nearly two years, but the lack of passing legislation does not vest Governor DeWine with the authority to stand in the shoes of lawmakers and enact his preferred public policy,” court documents read.
“To allow otherwise,” it read, “would violate longstanding principles of the separation of powers.”
And it would just about decimate or put a dent in businesses that have sprung up in the past decade or so due to those new laws, about 4,000 across Ohio. Those like Titan, which, owner Wesley Bryant told The Cannabis Times, rake in $2.4 million alone on intoxicating hemp product.
And with the upcoming ban in effect? “Titan will be forced to permanently cease business operations,” Bryant said.
As DeWine explained in his forty-minute press conference, his decision lied in both fact and perception. For one, that THC drinks or Delta-8 prerolls aren’t actually regulated like beer or spirits are. And two, that means there’s no agreed-upon age limit for consumers.
It’s a ban-now-and-regulate-later mentality that Cleveland seemed to hold when, back in April, City Council okayed new laws meant to regulate the 500 to 800 shops around town selling tobacco products. Namely by forcing them to either register and pay for new occupancy permits (by December), or, as Health Director Dave Margolius said, “change your business or close down” completely.
Margolius, who helped convince City Council putting closer watch on new and existing smoke shops was a dire need, told Scene he agreed with DeWine’s belief that the colorful, imitative hemp gummies—those mimicking Nerds or Gushers—should not be within reach of any child or teenager’s hands.
“It’s time we get a more nuanced set of regulations for this stuff,” said in a phone call. “In the meantime, it’s out of control—any kid can walk in any one of these stores and buy this stuff. I mean, it’s not the law you have to be a certain age.”
And Margolius is right. Though the Farm Bill allowed hemp to be cultivated and gummies to be sold, it put the responsibility of who actually could buy such products in the hands of the stores themselves.
“Here? We treat it like alcohol,” Barak said about Rozi’s cooler-full of THC seltzers and sodas. “And me, I’m all for more regulation—it is kind of like the Wild Wild West out there.”
But Barak sighed when personalizing the issue. The penchant for Gen Z to choose adaptogenic mushrooms or hemp-derived inebriations has certainly hit his store: about five percent of his sales comes from products like THC seltzers.
The same for non-alcoholic beer, the Best Days and Ale Smiths, that Barak believes the hemp folk will choose while the Statehouse figures out regulation.
“Honestly, it was just nice to have another option for people who didn’t want to have alcohol,” he said.
Out of the five smoke shops Scene interviewed, none said they would for sure go out of business due to DeWine’s ban, though it meant some rethinking.
Rebecca Saplak, a manager at High Society Boutique off Detroit Ave., said although Cleveland’s quantity of smoke shops definitely need a taking look at, any idea that children are legally buying products like the prerolls they sell, to her, is just ludicrous.
Just as is, Saplak told Scene in a call, that businesses like hers have to say goodbye to a reliable source of revenue, thanks to an order she believes is meant to covertly shut smoke shops down for good.
“Think of the Ohio problems we have—poverty, school shootings. But yeah, let’s focus on some weed,” Saplak said. “That’s just about the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”
But what about the concerns over children purchasing the items?
“Oh come on, this is just to hurt small businesses,” she said, and direct sales to the hundreds of taxed dispensaries around Ohio. “They’re mad they just can’t make money off of it.”
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Mark Oprea
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