* The Tribune has a story about often-shady smoke shops…

On a recent school day, a student at Uplift Community High School in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood began vomiting multiple times and became unresponsive.

A short time later, other students alerted security that they had taken cannabis gummies from a classmate and felt sick, the school incident report showed. Another student who’d taken a gummy was “extremely paranoid and delusional.”

Five students were transported to hospitals, one classified as code red, suggesting a potentially serious condition, though all recovered. The Chicago Fire Department tweeted that the gummies came from a “dispensary” — but those involved indicate that’s not the case.

The gummies came not from a licensed cannabis dispensary, but from a neighborhood smoke shop, according to the school report of the incident and one of the parents of the teens involved. […]

Uptown Smokes is located within 1,000 feet of Uplift school and would not be allowed to be a licensed dispensary. The store, according to its Instagram account, advertises delta-8 and delta-10-THC, tobacco, and another drug called kratom, sold alongside potato chips, pop, candy and other items popular with high schoolers. […]

Uptown Smokes was shut down by the city the day after the incident — not for the overdoses, but for building code violations. Chicago officials say they generally have no authority to regulate the sale of delta-8, but can use code citations to temporarily address problem sites. The store was to remain closed until violations were corrected. The registered agent for Uptown Smokes, Zeyad Abughoush, could not be reached for comment.

The state has no authority to regulate the gray-market stores, either.

According to an online archived copy of the now-defunct website CBD At Work, there were an eye-popping 9,712 CBD shops in Illinois alone two years ago. And that doesn’t include the gas stations which sell it everywhere you look.

So far, the legislature hasn’t stepped up to do anything about it, although Rep. Bob Morgan tried a couple of years ago. There is no bill in the hopper right now, but the subject is being addressed by Rep. La Shawn Ford’s cannabis working group. Morgan ran the state’s medical cannabis program under Pat Quinn.

* From Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago)…

Incidents like what happened in the high school in Uptown are exactly why we need regulatory controls over these products. We regularly hear from people confused by storefronts calling themselves dispensaries, parents upset that their minor children have been able to purchase from these stores who are frustrated that there’s no recourse, and people who’ve purchased these products believing them to be tested and regulated. Regulation is about protecting consumers and ensuring the safety of the products being sold.

This reminds me of the taverns and other places offering the shady “sweepstakes” games that have never truly been addressed by the state.

* If the General Assembly is looking at reforms, maybe addressing this kind of stuff would be a good place to start. After all, the gray-market sweepstakes game industry was behind the former Rep. Luis Arroyo bribery scandal which resulted in the indictment of his alleged bribery paymaster James Weiss.

I doubt it will be too long before this delta thing attracts similar federal interest.

Either legalize, tax and regulate it or ban it. The status quo is not acceptable.

…Adding… Mark Peysakhovich…

Hi Rich –

I am one of the lobbyists who represents some Illinois companies involved in various aspects of Illinois’ hemp industry, including cultivation, research, processing, and retail of products like delta-8. They have invested years of our lives and millions of dollars to build hemp businesses, which, by the way, was legal before adult use applications even started. The industry includes hundreds of demographically and geographically diverse companies and a lot of jobs in Illinois.

The honest, legitimate companies in this space have been advocating for strict regulation of hemp-derived cannabinoids for almost two years. (Fact sheet attached.) Unfortunately, the insatiable cannabis companies see delta products as competition and they really do not just want regulation, which is part of why there is no regulation. They want to take the hemp businesses away for themselves by putting the hemp products (like the deltas) under the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act (CRTA.) If they can’t do that, they will push for a ban. They went as low as hiring a retired DEA agent to spy on Illinois hemp businesses and presenting the cherry-picked information to the House Cannabis Work Group a few weeks ago.

The Illinois General Assembly acknowledged that hemp products, such as delta-8, are legal when it passed the Industrial Hemp Act in 2018. But now, even though their products remain federally illegal, Big Cannabis is advocating a hostile takeover of the hemp industry by moving hemp regulation under the CRTA rather than amending the Hemp Act. This step would put us out of business and give control of our industry to the huge cannabis corporations.

While my clients already carefully test and label products and restrict sales to consumers who are 21 or older, we know there are irresponsible people out there cutting corners to make a fast buck. That’s why we have been advocating for age restrictions as well as robust state licensing and regulation of hemp consumer products for years. This approach will protect consumers by ensuring they get fairly taxed, carefully tested, quality hemp products that are professionally made in local state-of-the-art facilities, rather than dangerous, potentially tainted, and mislabeled or unlabeled products made by shoddy operators in basements and garages.

At the same time, hemp and cannabis cannot be put under the same regulatory structure, which is what Big Cannabis wants. Hemp is federally legal. Cannabis is not. Giving control of the hemp industry to Big Cannabis is neither fair nor viable. It would disenfranchise those in the hemp industry and give away our businesses to the few hundred wealthy individuals who already own the licensed cannabis industry.

In short, we hope the Illinois General Assembly will protect consumers by enacting a strong hemp licensing and regulatory network. At the same time, we hope the General Assembly to resist Big Cannabis’ cynical scaremongering and to protect Illinois’ legal and legitimate hemp industry.

I am attaching a fact sheet we’ve been sharing widely. Please let me know if you have questions.

The fact sheet is here.