Much of the talk in the last legislative session about the state of the legal marijuana industry revolved around Alaska’s outdated tax rate, but the industry has another major concern: Potent edibles that skirt the state’s regulated system because they come from hemp.
Many growers and retailers have complained at recent meetings of the Alaska Marijuana Control Board, pleading for the state to act against edibles that have been popping up in gas stations and head shops without the same oversight or barriers to entry of the legalized industry. That’s because they come from industrial hemp rather than recreational cannabis, taking advantage of a loophole in the federal farm bill.
They can also be sold without any age limit.
However, that could be coming to an end with the Alaska Division of Agriculture’s proposed regulations that would block any hemp-made products from containing intoxicating ingredients. It would also transfer the authority for THC-containing products to the Alaska Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office for regulation alongside the recreational industry.
The regulation is welcome news to Brandon Emmett, a member of the Alaska Marijuana Industry Association and co-chair of the governor’s task force on recreational marijuana. Along with addressing the state’s tax system, the task force called for action on intoxicating edibles using hemp-derived THC. Emmett, who co-owns Good Titrations in Fairbanks, said much of the concern was raised by cannabis businesses regulated by the Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office, who saw the products as unwelcome competition with the potential to mar the industry’s reputation because minors can buy and use it.
“We didn’t realize it was such a big issue until it was,” Emmett said. “They’ve really started to erode the market share for edibles in the AMCO system. It comes to light that those products, they’re not regulated, they’re not age-gated, and they can technically be sold anywhere. It was really the businesses that brought this to light. We can’t compete with these products.”
Under the federal farm bill, hemp products can have a very small amount of THC by weight. Where flower on the recreational market can range from the high teens to 30% and beyond, hemp produced through the industrial hemp program is limited to a THC content of no more than 0.3% of the total dry weight.
Where the loopholes come into play is in the frontier of THC concentrates. Throw all that low-THC hemp through one of the many available distillation processes, and you’ll get pure THC. To be clear, it’s a slightly different kind of THC than what you’ll find in regular recreational marijuana, but it’s still intoxicating. Manufacturers can then add that pure THC to edibles, where it doesn’t take all that much sugar, flour and gelatin to get the proportion of THC content down to an allowable limit while still packing a punch.
At an Alaska Marijuana Control Board hearing more than a year ago, Alaska’s leading marijuana industry attorney Jana Weltzin explained to regulators that a 15-gram sugar cookie would be illegal for having 50 milligrams of THC—a hefty dose—under the farm bill, but the law would see it as a harmless hemp product no different than a hemp granola bar once you add a couple of grams of frosting.
“When one thinks of industrial hemp, several products pop into your head: Rope, hempcrete, paper, a pack of intoxicating 50mg delta-9 gummy bears with no age restriction. Wait! One of those things doesn’t fit. … There’s no child-resistant packaging, there’s no AMCO approval, no AMCO warnings,” she said. “If they’re going to be allowed, they should only be in licensed marijuana retail establishments.”
At that same hearing, Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office Director Joan Wilson lamented that it wasn’t entirely clear what could be done legally to limit the sales of the hemp-derived THC edibles given their legality under federal law.
“There’s no legal reason to deny that product under statute or regulation,” she said. “There’s a great reason to deny it as a public safety threat.”
At the time, she and the Division of Agriculture members expressed concern and interest in finding a solution. That solution was put out for public comment in mid-June as regulations would prevent products that go through the state’s industrial hemp program from having intoxicating ingredients and specifically shift the authority to regulate those kinds of products to the AMCO office.
The state does not comment on regulations that are actively out for public comment, but Emmett said it was very welcome news.
“The Alaska Marijuana Industry Association and the governor’s task force applaud the Division of Agriculture for their draft regulations,” he said. “We feel that that is the purview of AMCO and that those products should be sold in the regulated system that has been created for it. So, we’re hopeful to see those regulations come through in very close to their draft form.”
Asked about the time it took from when it became an issue with the industry to now—more than a year—Emmett acknowledged that it’s a complicated issue that has taken time to educate people and find a workable solution.
“Bureaucracy is never quick to act, so it’s taken quite a while to get all the stakeholders on the same page,” he said and thanked businesses for their work in continuing to push the issue. “Not only have businesses invested millions of dollars into this thing, but there’s also many of us both on the industry side and the bureaucratic side who’ve invested thousands of hours of time over these years. It’s tough to see the system we’ve all paid into and built, essentially have the rug pulled out from under it because of a loophole in the federal farm bill.”
If approved, the regulations could go into effect by the end of the summer.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
