U.S. health authorities are signing off on human trials of CBD to treat opioid addiction.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave the green light this week to Ananda Scientific to start human testing of its CBD drug Nantheia ATL5, the company announced.

The trials will be run out of UCLA and are funded by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The federal clearance for CBD opioid-addiction research “further re-enforces our vision of developing CBD as a therapeutic for a number of key indications.” Ananda Scientific CEO Sohail R. Zaidi said in a statement.

The clearance comes two years after the FDA issued a warning letter to Massachusetts-based Curaleaf for marketing its CBD product’s potential to treat opioid addiction. Curaleaf scrubbed its website, though national drugstore chain CVS Health dropped some Curaleaf products anyway.

Ananda Scientific is privately held and has offices in Los Angeles and Greenwood Village, Colorado. A company spokesman reached by Hemp Industry Daily did not immediately say where the CBD comes from or if it is naturally derived or synthetic.

The only plant-derived cannabinoid medicine approved for human use in the United States remains Epidiolex, a CBD drug that treats rare forms of epilepsy and is owned by Ireland’s Jazz Pharmaceuticals.

Federal agriculture regulators gave the green light to state hemp production plans for both Oregon and Connecticut, allowing them to move forward with regulating hemp and registering producers for the 2022 season.

Hemp production throughout the U.S. must now comply with the final regulations developed for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Domestic Hemp Production Program under the 2018 Farm Bill.

Registered hemp producers in those states must reapply under the new program to produce hemp this year.

Some key changes under the federal rules to both states’ hemp programs included requirements for participants to:

• Submit a criminal history.
• Report location and acreage of hemp planted.
• Collect hemp samples for testing 30 days before harvest.
• Register with the USDA’s Farm Service Agency.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture, which regulated its hemp program under the 2014 Farm Bill’s pilot research program, did not report its acreage or number of licensed producers to Hemp Industry Daily, though the state has been an early leader in hemp production since the pilot program was created.

In September, more than 100 licensed hemp producers in the region were found to be growing marijuana illegally, according to the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, the state’s marijuana regulators, who started inspecting hemp grows in August to root out illegal cannabis growers.

Comparatively, Connecticut is the third smallest state with little farmland, and in 2021 licensed 98 producers who planted 85 acres outdoors and around 10 acres of indoor production.

Still, the Connecticut state agriculture department, which also ran its 2021 hemp production season under the 2014 pilot program, finds value in keeping the state program.

“USDA’s approval of our state plan for hemp production allows us to align our program with their final rule,” Connecticut Agriculture Commissioner Bryan P. Hurlburt said in a statement.

“This offers the opportunity for continued growth and diversification necessary for farm sustainability and we look forward to working with producers to administer the program.”

With USDA’s approval of state hemp programs in Connecticut, Oregon, nearly every state will move forward with a state plan, aside from states that have opted to let the USDA oversee their growers including Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Mississippi and Wisconsin.

Aligned federal regulations could offer additional stability for the U.S. hemp industry compared to past years with programs operating under a patchwork of state regulations.

An Idaho man is accusing his onetime partner of foiling a hemp-processing venture in Montana and making off with some $2 million.

Jeremiah Skaggs says in the lawsuit that Clinton Boone was hired by Isotex Health LLC of Texas in 2019 to start a CBD processing facility in Lincoln, Montana.

Isotex promised locals that the CBD facility would eventually employ 120 people.

Skaggs says he moved to Montana to start the project and was supposed to receive 45% of its proceeds. However, Skaggs says, Boone diverted funds and machines intended for the Montana facility.

The project was terminated in 2020. Skaggs is asking a federal court in Montana to award him unspecified damages.

Law 360 first reported the lawsuit. Boone’s attorneys did not immediately reply to the complaint.

The globe’s sputtering supply-chain logistics are challenging for all businesses right now. But for cannabis, those challenges can be an absolute nightmare.

When hemp cultivation became legal in all 50 states in 2018, under a Farm Bill that guaranteed that hemp products could cross state lines but gave no guidelines for moving them, Kevin Schultz knew there was a serious business need.

The founder of Illinois-based The 357 Co.’s experience with the Illinois marijuana industry help him see the need for specialty logistics support for these operators.

Hemp, he said, can be trickier to move than marijuana. That’s for two reasons:

• The hemp supply chain frequently crosses state lines.
• Hemp products don’t require track-and-trace technology the way marijuana products usually do.

Hemp Industry Daily caught up with Schultz to find out more about how the global logistics mess is playing out in hemp. His answers have been edited for length and clarity.

How are hemp logistics different than logistics for other regulated products, such as alcohol or tobacco?

With alcohol and tobacco, you have some standardization and you have some guidance. You then have to play within that framework to make sure you’re doing things legally.

Where I saw the glaring hole for the hemp supply chain was after the Farm Bill in 2018 came out. You now have the golden ticket that the cannabis industry wants to bring things over state lines. But they gave you no idea on how to do it.

And I said to myself, without proper tracking and tracing and seed-to-sale and all the stuff I was used to when I was in cannabis, the supply chain is going to need a friend in that logistics component to be able to navigate through this and keep us all out of trouble. …

It’s not like tobacco or alcohol. There’s really no way that we’re being told exactly how to do it. And there’s no standardization across all the states.

How would standardization help?

It’s not like we’re taking this new product that we know for sure is always under 0.3% (THC). There’s always that worry that someone’s going to misinterpret what it is. And I don’t think you have that with tobacco and alcohol.

With alcohol, they’re able to take unprocessed alcohol over state lines to a processor. And I believe that’s one of the biggest bottlenecks in our industry right now. It’s a gray area.

I don’t see anything that says where you can take product that is testing over 0.3% THC from your processor in Kentucky to my processor in Tennessee. I don’t see how that’s not committing a crime.

I believe that’s going to have to come from the USDA. … I don’t know how the supply chain can truly ever scale to the level we all want it to until that opens up.

What’s your advice for going through different states?

We pretend as if we’re in court already. We try to make sure we have everything that driver needs to show law enforcement. We call law enforcement in advance to really get ahead, to say, “We’re coming through your state.”

And our operations team has relationships with many of the departments of ag in states we come through most often.

We always say to plan for when we get pulled over, not if we get pulled over. …

One example, we learned this lesson in the state of Florida. We reached out to the Florida Department of Ag and we asked, “What do you want us to do with it? Tell us exactly what you want us to do.”

And they had some rules with bringing in dirt or soil into Florida. It’s a big no-no. And there is a checkpoint when you go in. They want you to stop and check in.

Something that simple, but most folks I believe are blowing right past it. And they’re just hoping they’re not going to get caught.

Question about fiber logistics. Are you seeing more hemp decorticators and processing sites popping up? The scarcity of decortication facilities has historically been a big gap in the hemp supply chain.

I wish I had good news on decorticators. I still think there’s a ways to go there.

I think you’re starting to see more start to come online, just not as many as we need to cover what’s eventually going to be just an explosive side of this industry.

We keep hearing about this enormous truck-driver shortage. How is that affecting your business?

It’s been challenging for us to build a network simply because some folks won’t ship hemp. Some drivers will not take it, so we spend a lot of time educating our drivers on the rules and regulations on why it’s okay to ship it.

Ultimately, the driver does not have to. Sometimes they get cold feet and say they don’t want to play in that area. They’d rather ship other freight that we have.

If you look at logistics and transportation as a whole, driver shortages mean your capacity shrinks.

I think of some drivers that typically would go on the road are now delivering for last-mile companies, doing the front-of-the-doorstep type shipments. They’re not going to long trips cross country as much anymore.

And there’s a significant amount of drivers that are retiring.

What’s your forecast for how automation will affect cannabis logistics? Will robots and drones be making hemp deliveries?

I think where you’re going to see this from the early adopters is going to be inside the pick, pack and ship locations. Putting orders together inside a factory inside distribution centers.

The last-mile stuff, that’s a different story. When it comes to a product like cannabis and hemp, that’s not going to be here as soon as people think.

They’re underestimating the importance and the role that those drivers play, whether it’s a 21-and-older age verification or the handling of the product from the truck to the doorstep. Our drivers really play a really big role.

I do feel like the world’s going in that direction. But I think you’re gonna see that inside the distribution centers before you actually see (robot delivery) out on the streets.

Kristen Nichols can be reached at kristen.nichols@hempindustrydaily.com

As research broke over the past two weeks that cannabis products including CBD, cannabinoid acids and even synthetic cannabis compounds may prevent or treat COVID-19 infections, excitement among hemp entrepreneurs spread.

Interest in the seemingly stagnant hemp biomass, CBD and CBG markets soared to highs not seen in three years. Prices are on the rise again and hemp producers are fielding calls from a slew of interested parties hoping to cash in on the news.

Considering the ups and downs the hemp industry has struggled through since it became a legal commodity in December 2018, it’s easy to understand the enthusiasm.

It’s good to see positive COVID-19 headlines for once, especially when they are about cannabis.

But is it too early for hemp entrepreneurs to profit from research that hasn’t yet been tested in human clinical trials?

And what are the compliance and legal risks for cannabinoid product makers peddling products as COVID cures?

Researchers and industry leaders have urged caution among consumers and industry alike.

“Science is not the result of one or two studies. It’s a long process based on peer review and the opportunity for replication of results,” said Hemp Industries Association executive director Jody McGinness.

“As much as we are encouraged by studies that open up people’s eyes to the possibilities, we want to caution anybody against extrapolating from the results of early studies to any type of claims about the efficacy of cannabinoids.”

Industry ramping up anyway

For Bend, Oregon-based hemp producer Wesley Ray, Oregon State University’s study showing cannabinoid acids can prevent COVID-19 from entering human cells has validated his own work growing and processing CBDA and CBGA over the past few years.

Since news broke about the research, Ray and his partner Shannon Little have been inundated with calls and emails from retailers, formulators, distributors, recreational marijuana businesses, and even government entities, looking for raw material, crumble and tinctures to produce white label products and more.

“And then you have the bigger companies that are wanting to do some pretty crazy numbers (like) 25 kilos every two weeks,” Ray said.

He’s selling CBGa and CBDa crumbles in bulk for $2,900 per kilo or $5,000 per single kilo.

“The prices on that are obviously up. And if farmers are smart, they would hold back their biomass and not just liquidate it,” Ray said.

“I would put $20 a pound on my CBG biomass right now, just because I know how many pounds are going to go in to make a kilo and I know the input costs, and I don’t think the lab should be the only one making margins.”

Prices haven’t seemed to go up across the board yet in response to recent research results, but it’s still early and the interest is clear, according to Julie Lerner, the founder and CEO of Denver-based commodity selling platform PanXchange.

“There is no doubt that demand and inquiries are picking up for several processors in the country, but so far activity has been mostly directed toward CBDA and CBGA products,” Lerner told Hemp Industry Daily in an email.

“Demand has not yet picked up in biomass; our January prices are on par with December. However, a late-month rally pushed winterized crude prices up $5/kg this month.”

Compliance matters

The research findings supporting the role of cannabis in human health “moves the scientific conversation forward” and show the industry is one step closer to “unlocking the many benefits of cannabis,” said Asa Waldstein, principal of Boulder, Colorado-based Supplement Advisory Group, which advises herbal products and cannabis entrepreneurs on federal compliance.

That said, “it is a prohibited act to promote non-drug products as a cure for any disease or virus,” Waldstein cautioned in an email to Hemp Industry Daily.

“I urge companies to fight the urge to exploit this news to sell products.”

As has been the case with all other claims that have prompted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to sanction cannabis product manufacturers, anything on a commercial website or social media is considered marketing, he pointed out.

“Although unadvisable, if a company must risk posting about (cannabinoid and COVID research), they should ensure there is no mention of their product or company in the post or blog,” Waldstein said.

“This includes removing any shopping cart-linked call to actions and product pictures.”

Waldstein added that FDA and FTC authorities consider the “reasonable consumer takeaway,” which means if consumers think a company’s blog or post is about its products, the authorities do, too.

“I asked a top FTC official about ‘educational’ blogs on commercial websites. He responded, ‘What is the purpose of posting an educational blog on a commercial website, if not to sell products?’” Waldstein said.

“This further demonstrates the authority’s position when posting about disease therapies on a supplement site.”

And with the number of “cringe-worthy product claims” aiming to cash in on scientists’ research, companies promoting COVID research with links to products should consider FDA and FTC enforcement “a given,” Waldstein said.

Waldstein pointed to 25 COVID-related warning letters that the FTC sent earlier this month, showing the regulator’s “renewed dedication” to stopping companies from making misleading claims.

“The FDA/FTC makes examples of companies not following the rules, especially in areas they want to highlight,” he explained in an email.

“I predict we should see a batch of CBDA and COVID warning letters coming out in the next couple of months.”

Universities could push back, too

It’s not just government compliance companies need to consider.

Cannabis entrepreneurs that are openly promoting products in the name of university research may also be violating intellectual property laws provided to researchers, said Jay Noller, director of the Global Hemp Innovation Center at Oregon State University.

“There’s this presumption that because it was published, it’s theirs to use,” Noller told Hemp Industry Daily.

“International and U.S. patent law is such that to not check in with the publisher or that institution, we’ve seen that in other industries where the presumption leads to downstream reaches for violation of that IP.”

Even in cases of publicly financed research, scientists and universities have IP rights on findings that can produce results such as inventions, scholarly publications, new plant varieties, confidential information and more – even if they are proof-of-concept or laboratory-scale prototypes that require additional research and development before they can be commercialized.

Hemp entrepreneurs therefore need to do due diligence that they aren’t violating prior IP, Noller said.

Perhaps because the makers of the only CBD drug sanctioned by the FDA, Epidiolex, aren’t in headlines suing over-the-counter CBD makers, some cannabis operators may assume they are safe to market their own CBD products.

But that’s a risky assumption, Noller said, pointing out that such cases can take years to build, as in the seven-year patent battle over smart phones between Apple and Samsung.

Further, cannabis companies should consider that investment in research could yield faster industry development than investments in marketing, Noller said.

“We saw that for three years: branding, marketing. And then you have one science paper come out on a very, very limited budget. …That’s how it’s going to work.”

“So I think we’ve we’ve been able to demonstrate, if not shame, the industry into its disproportionate attention to fantasy versus reality, and that’s truth in science.”

Laura Drotleff can be reached at laura.drotleff@hempindustrydaily.com

Thailand’s Health Ministry recent removal of marijuana from the country’s list of controlled drugs is opening business opportunities only for low-THC hemp operators for now, because the country has retained a cap on allowable THC.

The nation of almost 70 million plans to limit products above 0.3% THC to highly regulated medical sales channels, experts say.

One North American business that isn’t waiting to capitalize on opportunities in Thailand is Las Vegas-based Audacious Brands.

Earlier this month, Audacious entered the Thai market via a strategic partnership with Golden Triangle Health.

Marc Lakmaaker, senior vice president at Audacious, said the companies plan to sell isolate and white label products, as well as developing its own brands, leveraging GTH’s broad distribution networks.

GTH is setting up a retail franchise under the name Hemp House, and plans significant expansion this year.

“Longer term, we intend to get into the medical THC business by establishing cultivation in Thailand,” he said.

“For now, the products will be sold to the government, but it is anticipated that in the coming two years or so, recreational use will be permitted also. We will then convert the Hemp House stores into dispensary style outlets, as well as use our network in the country to secure broad distribution.”

By removing cannabis from the country’s list of controlled drugs, Thailand is also allowing home cultivation for noncommercial use.

When it comes to commercial cannabis, the changes benefit mostly health and beauty cannabis companies, said Chaiwat Sowcharoensuk, an analyst at Bangkok-based Krungsri Research.

“Producers of soaps, beauty products and cosmetics … will likely be the ones to benefit the most,” Sowcharoensuk told Hemp Today.

Federal agriculture regulators continue to approve hemp production plans for state and tribal programs following the Jan. 1 deadline when pilot programs were due to expire and the final rules under the 2018 Farm Bill were set to take effect.

Most recently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved hemp production programs for Alaska, Arizona and Montana.

All current hemp license holders in these states must apply for new licenses.

According to the Arizona Department of Agriculture, with approval to comes eligibility to USDA crop insurance, loan and conservation programs for hemp producers including:

• Whole-Farm Revenue Protection.
• Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP).
• NRCS-administered conservation programs, including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Conservation Stewardship Program, Regional Conservation Partnership Program, and Agricultural Conservation.
• Easement Program Farm loans, including operating, ownership, beginning farmer, and farm storage facility.

Arizona’s newly approved hemp production plan allows producers to grow and sell new products such as hemp baby greens commercially, according to Robert Masson, an agriculture extension specialist for the University of Arizona’s Yuma County Extension.

“Baby leaf hemp can be grown in Arizona and shipped nationwide,” Masson told KYMA and KECY Yuma TV stations.

There have already been several trials done in edible hemp greens, he said.

“Moving forward, I think the big win for us will be the leafy green production,” Masson said.

“I think that will go great in a salad blend. I think that consumers will really get behind it. We’ve done some initial nutritionals and it’s very healthy.”

Fiber and grain hemp have been shown to be of higher interest now than CBD, according to Masson.

In Alaska, the state agriculture division director David Schade said hemp holds economic promise for the state, which produced the crop on 70 outdoor acres and in 14,000 square feet of indoor space.

“We have clean water, clean soil, clear air, so we can, in the right regions, grow great plants,” Schade told Alaska Public Media.

Schade said that harvest will likely grow under the new USDA approved plan.

“The goal is diversification of Alaska’s economy with the addition of a new crop for our farmers,” he said in a press release.

“Industrial hemp is one crop where Alaska is not years behind the Lower 48 in development.”

Montana, which has been one of the largest hemp production states since the hemp pilot program began under the 2014 Farm Bill passed, licensed 37 producers who planted 2,540 acres in 2021.

According to the state hemp program, the majority of the planted acres were for grain (1,700 acres), followed by fiber (590 acres) and CBD (250 acres).

About 2,000 acres of hemp were produced on tribal lands in Montana.

Applications for Montana outdoor producers are due to the Montana Department of Agriculture by May 30.

Editor’s note: This week, Hemp Industry Daily will be highlighting stories and analysis on the delta-8 THC phenomenon. Today, a look at the origins of the delta-8 THC trend. Read more in the special D-8 February issue of MJBiz Magazine.

When Harold Jarboe told his partners at Columbia River Cannabis in 2014 that he was leaving the licensed Washington state marijuana company to grow hemp in Tennessee, they thought he was crazy.

“They thought I’d lost my mind,” Jarboe recalled. And for a while, it seemed as if they were right.

Jarboe launched Tennessee Homegrown in 2016 and toiled to build it into a well-respected manufacturer of hemp-derived CBD products. He invested in premium genetics, operated leanly and, most importantly, tested his products at a third-party lab before sending them to retailers. The company was profitable but struggling to survive.

Then, in early 2020, retailers started asking for delta-8 THC.

Jarboe knew D-8 occurred naturally in cannabis in miniscule amounts. But the plant did not produce enough D-8 for an economically feasible harvest, so the requests caught him by surprise.

“No one in the industry saw this coming 2½ years ago,” Jarboe told MJBizMagazine. “Labs didn’t see it. Processors didn’t see it. Store owners didn’t see it.”

With his interest piqued by the requests, Jarboe researched and found that Israeli cannabis scientist Raphael Mechoulam had written in 2005 about converting CBD isolate and distillate into delta-8 THC. At the time, both hemp derivatives were extremely expensive, making the conversion to D-8 commercially unfeasible.

Loophole-turned-dam break

That changed dramatically with the passage of the 2018 U.S. Farm Bill, which pulled the rug from underneath CBD prices.

When Congress passed the Farm Bill, hemp cultivators and processors were sitting on loads of CBD oil that, until then, was hard to move in a marketplace limited by lack of federal clarity on CBD. The new regulations undammed that supply, with CBD distillate unleashed along with a new wave of entrepreneurs looking to enter the industry.

Jarboe said CBD prices dropped from $25,000 per kilogram to as little as $500 after the Farm Bill’s passage. Suddenly, converting CBD into delta-8 THC was economically feasible.

“One of the reasons this didn’t happen earlier is because anytime you have to do a conversion, it’s an added expense. When CBD prices went through the floor, this raw material became really cheap,” Jarboe explained. “Previously, the barrier to doing this had been cost. And now that cost barrier was gone.”

In its effort to legalize and regulate hemp-derived CBD, the 2018 Farm Bill stated that any cannabinoid derived from hemp—defined as cannabis containing less than 0.3% delta-9 THC—was a legal product.

Yet by specifying delta-9, the bill’s authors unwittingly left other cannabinoids outside the realm of regulation.

Unintended consequences

“Unfortunately, nobody that was dealing with this legislation knew what delta-8 was. We were all familiar with delta-9, and the Farm Bill was written so that hemp was defined as less than 0.3% delta-9 THC,” said Jonathan Miller, an attorney with the U.S. Hemp Roundtable who helped draft the bill. “Folks were innovative and … have been able to take advantage of a loophole because the legislation doesn’t ban delta-8; it only bans delta-9 over a certain amount.”

The news was music to the ears of hemp executives such as Jarboe, who suddenly “had huge stockpiles” of CBD with diminishing value.

Jarboe soon developed his own process for converting CBD into delta-8, did several trial runs to dial in his formulations and hired a third-party lab to test the products.

“We had store owners asking us for the product. It’s that simple. If you’ve got stores calling you saying, ‘Look, if you put this product under your label, we can sell it because people trust your brand.’ Well, that’s how we got into it,” Jarboe explained.

Now, Tennessee Homegrown is thriving, and Jarboe gives much of the credit to his D-8 pivot.

“Maybe it’s no longer the season for hemp as we knew it,” Jarboe wrote in a September 2021 blog post. “The world had changed, and we had to adapt or die.”

Other side of the coin

While D-8’s popularity is boosting the bottom lines of hemp farmers and CBD companies, it’s causing worries among traditional marijuana cultivators, manufacturers and retailers—as well as regulators and lawmakers.

“Any cannabinoid that can cause impairment should be regulated like delta-9 until we know more about it,” said Morgan Fox, a former spokesman for the National Cannabis Industry Association, who took a job with NORML after this interview.

“In the meantime, I think states as well as the federal government really need to start thinking about ways in which to bring novel and minor cannabinoids into the regulated market in a way that protects consumer safety but also respects the huge burdens that licensed cannabis producers have faced and make sure that they’re not being cut out.”

Jim Makoso, CEO of Washington state extraction company Flowe Technology, said safety is his No. 1 concern about delta-8 THC. He would like to see D-8 regulated like D-9, and that includes third-party testing.

“When it comes to consumer safety, at least some regulation should be required around the QC (quality control) standards,” Makoso said. “Pesticide testing, residual solvent testing, potency testing, mycotoxins. That would be a good place to start.”

Omar Sacirbey can be reached at omar.sacirbey@mjbizdaily.com.

Coming tomorrow: Is delta-8 THC a threat to marijuana operators, or an opportunity?

Hemp was lauded as a climate-smart commodity for its use as a construction material by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack this week as he highlighted new funding opportunities for farmers.

Speaking at a university in Missouri, Vilsack pointed to hemp Monday when he announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will invest $1 billion in climate-smart commodities.

The new Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities fund will go to farmers, ranchers and forest landowners who use climate-smart practices, Vilsack said.

“For far too long in rural America, we’ve taken products of the land and from the land, we’ve shipped them someplace else, where opportunity is created someplace else, where wealth is created someplace else,” Vilsack said.

“With this opportunity, we now have a chance to change it from an extraction effort to a circular effort. The ability to essentially create climate-smart commodities, the opportunity to convert waste into wide variety of bio-based materials. I saw some of them today – hemp in construction material, for example.”

“Those processing facilities can be located right where the crops are being grown.

“They can be sustainably produced; they can be a higher value; they can create jobs in rural communities; they can increase farm income; they can expand population centers in rural places, taking pressure off our urban centers; they can restore life and vitality in our small towns.

“That’s the opportunity side of this – we just need to understand the opportunity we have, and we need to fully seize it.”

The USDA defines a climate-smart commodity as a commodity crop produced using practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester carbon.

The USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation will be used to fund pilot projects to provide incentives to:

• Implement climate-smart production practices, activities and systems on working lands.
• Measure or quantify, monitor and verify the carbon and greenhouse-gas benefits associated with those practices.
• Develop markets and promote the resulting climate-smart commodities.

Applications will be taken in two groups, sorted by the size of the proposals. Deadlines are:

• April 8 for the first funding pool (proposals from $5 million to $100 million).
• May 27 for the second funding pool (proposals from $250,000 to $4,999,999).

Learn more about eligibility and how to apply here.

Editor’s note: This week Hemp Industry Daily is highlighting stories and analysis on the delta-8 THC phenomenon. Today, a look at delta-8 THC sales trends in marijuana dispensaries. Read more in the special D-8 February issue of MJBizMagazine.

Plant-touching companies weren’t the only businesses surprised by the sudden and explosive growth of delta-8 THC in 2020. Sales of the novel cannabinoid surprised trade associations and ancillary companies as well.

Seattle-based cannabis analytics firm Headset compiled delta-8 sales numbers for MJBizMagazine, and they show the rapid rise in popularity of products that contain “delta-8” in their names.

Cooper Ashley, senior data analyst at Headset, cautioned that the figures are based on point-of-sale data and are susceptible to errors made by retail workers at checkout.

Still, the numbers paint a picture of the rapid increase in delta-8 popularity as well as the actions taken by regulators in markets where the data was collected: Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state.

We caught up with Ashley to learn about the D-8 phenomenon’s effect on retail cannabis sales. Answers have been edited for length and clarity.

The explosion of D-8 sales in the third and fourth quarters of 2020 coincided with a dip in the total cannabis market. Do you think the two are related?

You have to remember that growth in the second and third quarters of 2020—after the initial (COVID-19) lockdown and through the summer—was some of the biggest growth we’ve seen in the cannabis market in a very long time, including in more established markets like Washington and Colorado.

Q4 2020 was a return to normal after unexpected growth in spring and summer sales.

That’s also the time when people started to hear about (delta-8 THC) as an option, especially in the world of CBD and gray-market cannabis. That’s when it exploded in name recognition and popularity.

We can see that delta-8 sales exploded in late 2020 and continued to grow through Q2 of 2021.

Have you ever seen a cannabinoid rocket to popularity like this?

The only thing I can think of is CBD itself. It is reminiscent, but I definitely don’t think it’s as widespread or common as CBD was when it was gaining popularity.

Still, that quick rate of growth and adoption was similar to when CBD really took the country by storm a few years back.

The edibles category for delta-8 products is incredibly robust. Is that the case for other lab-made cannabinoids as well?

Tinctures, capsules, edibles and topical categories seem to cater a little bit more to a wellness-type customer.

We see a lot of CBN in the edibles category as well as ingestibles like tinctures and capsules. CBN, especially, is seen as more of a wellness-type cannabinoid. Customers are potentially looking more to treat symptoms/get better sleep (with CBN), and that tends to translate to noninhalable categories.

Edibles may be more approachable for new (cannabis) users or those looking to treat insomnia or treat pain.

What do you think caused the rapid decline in D-8 sales starting in 2021?

We can see that delta-8 sales exploded in late 2020 and continued to grow through Q2 of 2021, but in Q3 (they took) a pretty significant nosedive.

There were a few quarters when (D-8) growth was quick—probably because it was gaining popularity, and also it was quite unregulated.

Since it gained popularity, state governments have been forced to try to deal with it—and some have banned it. Now that it is more regulated, I think that level of growth has been naturally curtailed.

It had a moment of explosive growth, and I think that moment appears to be passing.

How does the price of delta-8 products compare with the other items you track?

It appears that customers who are looking for delta-8 products will have to shell out a bit more cash to get them.

Over the previous 90 days, the average item price of a delta-8 edible product was about 24% higher than a non-delta-8 THC edible.

Coming tomorrow: A look at consumer confusion about delta-8 THC.