'Operation Candy Crush:' Legality of Rutherford County CBD raids is under question

The legality of this week’s highly publicized raids of Rutherford County stores is being questioned by activists.

More: What is CBD: A glossary of terms

On Monday, the sheriff’s office led raids into 23 Rutherford County stores believed to be selling products containing cannabidiol, or CBD, a hemp derivative.

Sealed indictments were filed against 21 individuals who will be in court Friday.

More: 'Operation Candy Crush': Rutherford County businesses closed, accused of selling CBD candy

Is CBD legal?

Cannabidiol is considered a Schedule VI narcotic. It is illegal to possess or sell in Tennessee unless prescribed by a doctor and dispensed from a licensed distributor, investigators said.

Opinion: Cannabis oil: It's medicine and it's time

While that is true, the situation is complicated. Hemp-derived products are, under certain circumstances, legal in Tennessee.

Hemp and marijuana, the psychoactive plant outlawed at a federal level, are not the same thing.

A 2017 bill in the state legislature lays down clear definitions of what industrial hemp is and clarifies that it is legal as long as proper licensing regulations are followed.

The industrial hemp plants must have a clear chain of origin and not contain more than 0.3 percent of the psychoactive element of the plant family, known commonly as THC, per dry mass.

Hemp farmers, whether private individuals or university research departments, are required to be licensed annually to grow the plants, as are distributors.

Those who process and distribute industrial hemp must also be licensed, but the same standard is not listed as necessary for retailers in the 2017 law.

An individual who “makes only retail sales of industrial hemp obtained from a licensed processor or distributor will not be required to obtain a license,” according to the 2016 bill discussing the subject.

Possession of CBD

The items seized from these establishments are marketed as containing CBD. It is not clear how many items were confiscated or what results of tests on them have revealed.

“Presently, under the new law, a person can possess an industrial hemp product,” hemp activist Joe Kirkpatrick said. As president of the Tennessee Hemp Industries Association, Kirkpatrick said his agency’s goal is to promote the hemp industry and to make it economically viable and legal.

According to District Attorney Jennings Jones, who pushed for the judge’s decision to close the stores as “public nuisances,” the situation is more nuanced.

CBD products can be prescribed as health aids, often to help with anxiety or seizure disorders. CBD can be used in pill form, but can also be distilled into an oil and added to beverages or food for sale.

"If you possess this without a prescription, you have broken the law," Jones said Monday. "If you are selling this without a prescription or if you're not a pharmacy selling it to someone with a prescription for it, you have broken the law."

Under Jones’ interpretation of the law, even having the items for sale without clear licensing is illegal.

Others disagree.

“If in fact the products they’ve seized derived from industrial hemp, then the DA has broken federal law,” Kirkpatrick said.

The 2016 Senate appropriations bill forbids the use of federal funds, which many law enforcement agencies receive and rely on, to prohibit the growing, processing or distribution of properly licensed industrial hemp.

Quality of life

“Murfreesboro is on the wrong side of history,” John Horton, 27, said. Horton, a former Chattanooga resident, was on his way through Tennessee when he heard the news of the raids.

He stopped at Walmart as he drove through Nashville to pick up some “activism supplies” and stood outside the historic Rutherford County Courthouse in protest Tuesday afternoon.

“This is important to me,” Horton said. “It’s helped me, it’s helped my friends. It needs to be legal here, it is legal here, they need to leave it alone.”

Horton said he was diagnosed in 2011 with epilepsy. At its worst, he suffered three to five grand mal seizures a month. Two years ago he was prescribed CBD products and he has been seizure-free ever since.

“I’m only one person, I’m not going to change anybody’s mind in there, but what I am able to do is talk to people, educate people,” he said, “and it’s been nothing but a positive response.”

Horton said he’d talked to about 15 people by midafternoon, and many others had honked and waved when they saw his sign reading "CBD keeps me seizure-free."

Support in legislature

State Rep. Jeremy Faison has been an unexpected supporter of bills helping to legalize research into industrial hemp.

In a Facebook post, Faison indicated there were other worries about the products seized from the Rutherford County stores.

“After the (Tennessee Bureau of Investigation) took products to their lab, they found that multiple compounds of substances were found in packaged material and they weren’t even labeled to have the compounds found,” Faison wrote. “Melatonin, sugar, ibuprofen, Benadryl, and other things like that were found. From what I have been told nothing was necessarily dangerous or found to be an intoxicant.”

The TBI would not confirm the number of items confiscated, nor what test results had revealed them to contain, as the investigation remains open and charges are still pending.

Faison went on to say that his support for a medical cannabis bill was based on the need to regulate the research and sale of CBD products.

“Tennesseans should never be left to purchase something that is derived from the cannabis plant without knowing exactly what they are getting,” he wrote on Facebook. “One day in the very near future, Tennessee will realize 3 things:

• Cannabis is not the problem.

• Cannabis is far safer than many FDA approved pills.

• Cannabis actually does work for some very sick Tennesseans.”

Opportunity for research, revenue

Middle Tennessee State University recently invested in its own hemp research program.

The work being done in those greenhouses has been lauded by many lobbying for the medical-only bill.

“The advanced research programming on non-psychotropic cannabinoids,” being done at MTSU, “provides a strong foundation for Tennessee to become a global player in the rapidly growing medical cannabis research community,” one such group said in a release.

The Tennessee Medical Cannabis Trade Association brought in lawmakers to walk through the research center earlier his year.

According to the TMCTA, the medical cannabis industry could grow to involve $20 billion over the next six years.

Its research also indicates that states with more open medical cannabis laws report fewer deaths from opioid overdoses and lower numbers of painkiller prescriptions.

Opponents worry about the unregulated state of the industry as it stands, as the concentration of CBD and other chemicals in these products can vary widely between items.

More: MTSU, lawmakers ponder making medical cannabis legal in Tennessee

More: Reaction, support to medical marijuana mixed

Reach Mariah Timms at mtimms@dnj.com or 615-278-5164 and on Twitter @MariahTimms.