After Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin sent a letter about hemp-derived THC products to congressional leaders last week, a lawyer representing hemp producers and retailers in a federal lawsuit said he thinks Griffin effectively admitted the state doesn’t have the grounds to ban the products. 

Griffin joined 20 other attorneys general in asking the leaders of the Senate and House agriculture committees to “reaffirm” that Congress doesn’t intend to limit states in restricting or regulating intoxicating hemp products. 

The products have been a source of confusion and contention since Congress passed the 2018 Agricultural Improvement Act, better known as the Farm Bill, legalizing hemp for the first time since federal law banned it in 1937. The Farm Bill defined hemp as cannabis plants with a THC content of .3% or less. THC is the component in cannabis that’s psychoactive. Despite the low THC content in hemp, producers have been able to use the plants to create psychoactive products such as edibles and vape pens. 

One analyst earlier this year estimated the size of the hemp-derived THC market to be $28.4 billion, larger than the medical and recreational cannabis markets combined.

Griffin said “bad actors” have exploited the Farm Bill and that a “crisis issue” has been created. Griffin said the Farm Bill was meant to reintroduce industrial hemp as an agricultural commodity, but intoxicating products that are “attractive to children” have been allowed to proliferate. 

Arkansas legislators attempted to address the issue in 2023 with Act 629, which banned the products and included a trigger provision to regulate the industry in case the ban was not upheld in court.  

A group of hemp producers and retailers filed a federal lawsuit on July 31, 2023, a day before Act 629 went into effect, saying the state did not have the grounds to restrict the industry in the way that it had. On Sept. 8, Judge Billy Roy Wilson granted the plaintiffs’ request. Wilson issued an injunction to halt the law while the case plays out in court. Wilson said the plaintiffs had shown a likelihood of prevailing on the merits of their case. 

Abtin Mehdizadegan, the Little Rock lawyer who represents the hemp contingent in the case, said he believes Griffin’s letter to Congress last week supports his case that the state doesn’t have the authority to regulate hemp products. 

“I am glad that the attorney general agrees that the solution he requires is one for Congress to provide him and not the courts,” he said. “I think what he said in his letter is effectively an admission as to the nature of our claims.” 

Mehdizadegan said he also disagrees with the potential policy of having a nationwide patchwork of hemp laws. 

“I think that’s a terrible idea,” he said. “I think that gets us back to where we are right now.”

With each state choosing how to regulate hemp, it would be difficult for a person to know what is permitted or what will land them in jail, he said.

The plaintiffs in the case are Bio Gen, LLC of Fayetteville; Drippers Vape Shop, LLC of Greenbrier; The Cigarette Store LLC of Colorado doing business as Smoker Friendly; and Sky Marketing Corporation of Texas doing business as Hometown Hero. Drippers is a retailer of hemp products, including non-psychoactive CBD as well as hemp-derived psychoactive substances Delta-8 and Delta-9 THC, and has stores in Greenbrier, Cabot, Hot Springs, El Dorado and Benton.

The defendants in the case include the governor, the attorney general and all of the state’s prosecuting attorneys.