'Diet weed' regulation fails again at Ohio Statehouse

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Ohio lawmakers are officially on summer break and a hotly debated piece of legislation failed to pass before legislators signed off until October.

“I’m hopeful that the legislature will wrap this up and give us a bill and we can go on to other discussions,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said, still hopeful at the start of last week.

DeWine has been urging the legislature to pass a bill that regulates intoxicating hemp products for a year and a half now, and the idea has support from both Republicans and Democrats.

“Of course, we should regulate intoxicating hemp,” Ohio House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn (D-Cincinnati) said. “You can go, unfortunately, walk into too many stores and they don’t ID you, you don’t know what’s in it, there’s advertising to children. There are so many common-sense things that we agree on and when the majority brings forward a clean bill, we would be happy to vote for it.”

“Intoxicating hemp” products — like Delta 8 — are low-level THC products. Those products can give you a high similar to marijuana but are not regulated, can be sold to anyone at any age, and is often found at places like convenience stores; it is known by some as “diet weed.”

So, if there is bipartisan support, what’s the holdup in getting something done? On the Republican side, it is largely a disagreement about how exactly to regulate those products.

“We’ve got a group that would like to see Delta 8 a lot more places than I think the [Ohio House] speaker, the governor or the [Ohio Senate] president would like to see it,” Ohio House Finance Chair Brian Stewart (R-Ashville) said.

Some members prefer banning the products all together while others want to put it in a dispensary to be sold only to Ohioans 21 and over; others think the products are best left where they are, but with a strict age restriction.

“In general, we’ve had a busy six months here on a lot of issues, property taxes, the budget,” Stewart said. “I think this is an issue that probably needs a little more time to talk through with folks.”


On the Democratic side, there is a different frustration: intoxicating hemp regulations keep getting folded into bills that Democratic leaders said “ignore the will of the voters.”

“If we had a clean bill to fairly regulate intoxicating hemp, we could’ve voted on it months ago, years ago,” Isaacsohn said. “Because it is so tied up in trying to overturn the will of the voters when it comes to adult-use recreational cannabis, it all gets intermixed.”

The effort to change recreational marijuana laws in the state is also on hold. Stewart said right now, like with intoxicating hemp, there are just too many different ideas between Republicans.

“We are going to take the summer and come back in the fall, potentially take another crack at it,” he said. “We have a lot of different ideas on marijuana within the Republican caucus, which I think kind of mirror the rest of Ohio.”

But Isaacsohn said the more that bill stalls, the better because it aims to overturn a law that 57% of Ohioans approved.

“Anytime the people are speaking so forthrightly and clearly, our job is to listen to them and so I’m very happy to honor the democratic impulses of the people of Ohio,” Isaacsohn said. “I think it’s always safe to bet on the people and when the people have spoken so clearly, that’s probably where we should land.”

Lawmakers are not likely to come back in session before October, meaning legislative action will largely be on hold until then.