Delta-8 in Tennessee: The history and uncertain future of the industry
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Delta-8 is similar to cannabis. Both get you high, and scientifically, they might as well be cousins.
Delta-8, -9 and -10 are now commonplace in Tennessee, but it hasn’t always been this way. The growth of hemp originally started with a pilot program in Tennessee back in 2015. But it really opened up in 2018, when Congress passed the Federal Farm Bill.
In the bill, a clause allowed for Americans to grow hemp as long as it didn’t contain too much Delta-9 THC, which is the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis.
But it didn’t say anything about Delta-8 or Delta-10, which create similar sensations.
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“Delta-8 is generally one that is going to hit you a little milder than your Delta-9,” Hemp Law Group attorney Joey Fuson said. “You’ve got Delta-10, which, as I understand it – I don’t consume that – it has more of a caffeine-style upper-type effect.”
After the Farm Bill passed, the Tennessee hemp market exploded in 2019. It was poised to actually level out quite a bit in 2020, but then the pandemic hit.
“You’ve also had a national change in how people have viewed cannabis,” Fuson said. “I think that my parents’ age group, the Baby Boomers, are not the same as their parents when it comes to the ‘Devil’s Lettuce’ and marijuana being the worst thing in the world.”
When COVID-19 forced people across the country indoors, it helped open up a new market of people simply looking for new things to try on their own, leading to a smaller boom throughout the state.
Eventually, the market corrected itself, netting far fewer hemp farmers now than in 2019. But still, it remains viable – though last year came an attempt to completely kill it.
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“We don’t want children to have access to these,” House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland) said. “We want to make sure that if someone is purchasing a product that they know exactly what that product is because there are many of these products that are absolutely addictive and can be dangerous to an individual.”
Lamberth initially hoped to ban the Delta products outright. But after pushback from the industry, he and Sen. Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville) decided to move forward with a regulation bill instead.
“If you were to purchase a Diet Coke, okay, you’re going to expect and experience that is, every time, the same. You drink that Diet Coke, you know exactly what you’re getting,” Lamberth said. “If you purchased a beer, you would know that that would be different than the Diet Coke that you purchased, that there are different substances in there, a different experience.”
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The bill also levies some new taxes to pay for testing and oversight of those products. When that bill passed last year, it authorized the Dept. of Agriculture to establish rules and regulations around the industry.
One of their proposed rules this year would essentially ban smokable forms of something called THCA, which is similar to THC – the ingredient in cannabis that makes you feel “high.”
“THCA is in the hemp plant and through the course of the grow and at the end of the last stages of the grow, THCA starts to convert to Delta-9,” Fuson said.
When THCA is heated or burned, it turns into THC. Currently, it has very few restrictions. But if those proposed rules from the Ag Department are ratified, then it will essentially ban THCA, which has frustrated the industry.
“There’s a big push and a fight for them to change those rules, and if they don’t change those rules, there may be litigation,” Fuson said. “You may have a big fight on your hands.”
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