A judge in Franklin County has for now blocked Gov. Mike DeWine’s short-term ban of “intoxicating” hemp products with psychoactive ingredients, such as delta-8 THC and THC-A.
“The court is concerned that the governor is adding new definitions that don’t exist,” Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Carl Aveni said Tuesday.
In a lawsuit filed last week, the retailers and manufacturers argued DeWine acted outside his authority as governor, according to Franklin County Court of Common Pleas documents. Those plaintiffs include Titan Logistics Group, Fumee Smoke and Vape and Invicta Nutraceuticals—all members of the Ohio Healthy Alternatives Association.
“It is statutory law that products containing ‘hemp’ and ‘hemp products’ are not adulterated,” the lawsuit reads. “Yet, (Gov.) DeWine’s basis for invoking emergency is that these products are adulterated.”
The lawsuit requests the court issue a short and a long-term block of DeWine’s ban, which begins Tuesday and lasts 90 days.
The advocacy organization the U.S. Hemp Roundtable is backing the plaintiffs. Jonathan Miller, U.S. Hemp Roundtable general counsel, said he sees DeWine action as both “wrongheaded” and “illegal.”
“If the legal challenges are not successful or if the legislature doesn’t reverse this, it would have a devastating impact on the Ohio hemp industry,” Miller said.
DeWine signed an executive order Wednesday afternoon that both seeks to redefine hemp, by excluding “intoxicating hemp” from the Ohio Revised Code’s definition of hemp, and declares an adulterated consumer product emergency. That emergency declaration gives retailers statewide until Oct. 14 to clear their shelves of any products fitting that definition.
“It is absolutely absurd that a 14-year-old, a 13-year-old can walk into a store and buy this stuff. It’s never what anybody intended,” DeWine said. “I don’t think you’ll find one legislator who will tell you that it was intended, so yeah, I went back to our lawyers.”
Since late 2023, DeWine has made it clear he wants legislators to regulate intoxicating hemp products. It has been mostly touch and go on how to handle the gray area the federal government created in 2018, when Congress removed cannabis products with less than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC from the definition of marijuana. Most products contain psychoactive ingredients that still induce a high, but are legal at any age.
In early 2024, however, he said he could not “do anything without action by the state legislature.”
