WA House RSG - Committee Meeting
(March 13, 2023) - SB 5367 - Public Hearing

[ Event Details ]

Committee members heard testimony in favor, opposed, and ‘other’ while seeking suggestions on THC levels for hemp products after the Senate decided any amount of THC was too much. 

Committee members heard testimony in favor, opposed, and ‘other’ while seeking suggestions on THC levels for hemp products after the Senate decided any amount of THC was too much.  

Here are some observations from the Monday March 13th Washington State House Regulated Substances and Gaming Committee (WA House RSG) Committee Meeting.

My top 4 takeaways:

  • Representatives of public health and prevention organizations; some cannabis industry and trade group leaders; and staff of the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) all lobbied for the bill as written in an effort to keep items with THC from being available beyond licensed cannabis retailers.
    • 20 individuals registered their support for the bill (testifying, not testifying).
    • Sponsoring Senator June Robinson testified that as the measure was passed unanimously in her chamber, “I thought we had a well-worked bill," but she recognized that "folks still continue to have concerns with the approach that we’re taking here." Her goal was to “get this right; I want to get a bill out that…takes a public health approach, and a consumer protection approach to products containing THC…for the sake of youth” along with “anyone that might be consuming these products” without an awareness of the THC content (audio - 2m, video).
      • Representative Jim Walsh asked Robinson to elaborate on what she meant by a “public health approach.” She described how “people should know and have information about what they're consuming.” Cannabis had been “regulated for a reason, so that as people use substances that have impairing effects on their body…they understand that when you go to a [Initiative] 502 store you're expecting to purchase something that is going to have an effect on your body.” Robinson thought that people buying “something at a gas station or a convenience store, you probably aren't thinking that. So I'm thinking broadly about the public's health and what I believe is our duty to protect that” (audio - 1m, video).
      • Representative Melanie Morgan commented on the labeling on other types of items with “different effects for different people;” reiterating her “motivation is primarily around youth access” (audio - 2m, video).
      • Ranking Minority Member Kelly Chambers asked about “some issue on the definition, or whether it's dry weight.” Robinson replied that she didn’t believe that definition had changed since introduction (audio - 1m, video).
    • Several representatives of substance prevention and public health organizations backed the bill, finding that as the "cannabis industry continues to innovate" more needed to be done to protect minors and educate the broader public about products with THC content. Additionally, keeping all items with THC in the legal cannabis market "will also bring more funding to the dedicated cannabis account."
      • Cora Breuner, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics Member (audio - 2m, video)
        • Walsh asked whether the child’s cannabis use cited in testimony by Breuner had been purchased through illicit means and would be impacted by the bill. She responded that products with THC content sold in any legal market could have “long term ramifications forever in a developing brain” (audio - 2m, video).
      • Amy Brackenbury, Washington State Public Health Association (WSPHA) Public Health Roundtable (audio - 2m, video)
        • Representative Kristine Reeves brought up WSPHA focusing on the “consumables” and noted that she’d used cannabis topical products with THC content she believed to be in excess of the limits in SB 5367 but didn’t feel they could be considered ‘habit forming.’ With a “labeling requirement saying that it may be habit forming,” Reeves was trying to understand if products with low levels of THC would have that effect. Brackenbury responded that on previous versions of SB 5367 “we were cautiously supportive and know that getting to zero might be complicated…but from a public health perspective what we're saying is products that are…impairing should not be available to kids to purchase” (audio - 2m, video).
        • Morgan asked about theft of CBD products in 502 retail stores. Brackenbury was not concerned as such items were already available in the open market (audio - 1m, video).
        • Chambers wanted to know if Brackenbury could support a ratio of CBD to THC in products. She told the representative "our preference would be zero,” even as she recognized challenges to reaching that standard (audio - 1m, video).
      • Scott Waller, Washington Association for Substance Misuse and Violence Prevention Board Member (audio - 3m, video)
    • Three representatives from the cannabis industry felt the bill would keep THC content from the commercial market, encouraged amendments to allow federally legal CBD items like Epidiolex to keep being sold, and argued measuring THC content through a dry-weight basis still allowed for too much cannabinoid content.
    • Testifying for WSLCB, Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Webster suggested it was important to close a federally created “loophole” since there was stakeholder agreement "no one wants synthesized cannabinoids" or “unworkable" testing requirements (audio - 2m, video). Director of Policy and External Affairs Justin Nordhorn stressed the goal of agency leaders was to "regulate the unregulated sales" of items with THC and “protect youth." He pushed back on any suggestion SB 5367 allowed chemically synthesized cannabinoids and commented that the intention of the board was not to disrupt the industrial hemp industry (audio - 3m, video). 
  • People from the hemp sector, a testing laboratory representative, and a concerned citizen spoke in opposition to the bill on a variety of grounds, from the legislation’s impact on businesses and use of synthetic cannabinoids, to doubts over whether ensuring no THC in hemp products was even “scientifically possible.”
    • 40 individuals registered their opposition to the bill (testifying, not testifying).
    • Members of the hemp industry and trade groups lined up against the legislation, preferring products be required to have a high CBD ratio as a way to dampen the ability of THC compounds to interact with the endocannabinoid system. Others highlighted the fiscal note analysis suggesting three quarters of hemp licenses wouldn’t renew their annual license were the measure to pass, impacting consumers without addressing the "chemically transformed synthetic aspect.”
    • Citizen John Worthington told the committee that the 0.3% THC by dry weight was a “figure set by the treaty" through the Washington Uniform Law Commission (WULC). Rather than the percentage representing a “psychoactive figure,” he claimed the amount was “something that law enforcement wants so they can get conviction levels. It's not an impairment level; it's not backed by science.” Worthington called on the committee to reject the “heinous” changes made by the Senate, and “appoint an organization to develop” the level of THC which would cause an individual to experience impairment (audio - 2m, video).
    • Amber Wise, Medicine Creek AnalyticsScience Director and WA Hemp in Food Task Force Member, said that analytically confirming a "zero level of THC" is "not scientifically possible.” There were levels of compounds below which testing equipment  "can't detect,” and this level wasn’t consistent across different kinds of cannabis products. She seconded the suggestions others had made on regulations requiring a ratio of 20 CBD to 1 THC, saying CBD had a “mitigating effect on those intoxicating factors of THC.” Wise called for different THC limits in SB 5367 as a way to help labs “ensure that the labels are correct and accurate” (audio - 3m, video).
      • Kloba asked about the smallest amount of THC which labs could reliably detect. Wise figured that lab equipment could reliably detect 1mg of THC in a can of infused liquid, and “anything less than one milligram in a product like that is going to be hard for us to say definitively if it's there or not” (audio - 1m, video).
        • For reference, one milligram per liter (mg/L) would be the same as one part per million (ppm) in that product.
      • Reeves inquired whether the legislation might impact the capacity of labs to complete tests. Wise related their challenges less to capacity, and more to the “liability issue" of any business confirming there was no THC in a sample. If another lab reported different results, Wise’s team wouldn’t have state guidelines or standard methods to challenge the other lab’s results (audio - 2m, video).
      • Chambers followed up to ask about “less than that 0.3 amount per serving and more than the 0.1” of THC as a standard could be suitably low while remaining detectable by labs. Wise argued that by being based on product weight, 0.3% was very small for flower material, but still high for an infused beverage. She added, “we could absolutely set also other values of…very low or, not intoxicating and the idea behind the hemp in food task force was to have non-intoxicating levels present” (audio - 3m, video).
      • Vice Chair Chris Stearns asked about testing products “further upstream in a larger volume.” Wise answered that was possible, but “then you're not necessarily testing the final product that the consumer is getting exposed to,” though she felt testing in larger volume could work for infused beverages prior to being bottled (audio - 1m, video).
      • Walsh raised the issue of testing reliably for THC. He talked with Wise about what amounts could lead to intoxication and agreed to gather more information after the hearing (audio - 3m, video).
    • Arthur West signed in opposed to the bill, but wasn’t available when called to testify by committee staff.
  • Three people offered more nuanced positions of ‘other’ rather than support or opposition to the “tricky bill" as written, concerned about impacts the measure might have on the Washington state hemp industry, or the presence of synthetic cannabinoids in regulated cannabis products.
    • Four individuals registered a position of ‘other’ on the bill (testifying).
    • Ezra Eickmeyer, Producers Northwest Executive Director, remarked that although the initial THC threshold may have been too high, the “language as it came out of the Senate, however, taking the number of THC to zero…we're concerned may have gone a little too far.” Speculating the bill could prohibit hemp seed oil, or “other products that in no way, shape, or form could ever be used for intoxicating purposes,” he hoped amending language “fine tune[d] this bill even further” to ensure legislators “banned synthetic products” and “prevent[ed] there from being intoxicating products on the shelf outside of the 502 system” (audio - 2m, video).
      • Walsh asked what level of THC they could identify and measure “in a way that is practical.” Eickmeyer called for exempting federally approved products like Epidiolex and hemp seed oil, and raising the THC limit up, but “measure it micrograms.” He clarified there were two amendments “being worked on, not by our group, but by other interests,” he was confident would “address the issue in a technical fashion that would ensure that we don't ban things that are that we don't intend to ban” (audio - 2m, video).
    • WSDA Policy Advisor to the Director and Legislative Liaison Kelly McLain explained that department leadership was neither pro, nor con, on the bill. But as they regulated “production of hemp through a fee-for-service program that is similar in many ways to programs for other agricultural commodities,” she aimed to make clear their opinion that the “version of the bill before you is likely to reduce hemp production by as much as 90% in Washington state.” McLain confirmed that the fiscal note anticipated a 75% reduction in license renewals, diminishing “funding for the hemp program” that would “render our program insolvent” (audio - 2m, video).
      • Additionally, McLain found that although hemp licensees would be allowed to “sell their final product in the only available market space for products containing any THC, which would be the 502 market,” there was no “pathway to do that without either some temporary bridge between hemp production and that market, or an age gate restriction outside of the 502 space.”
      • She pushed for lawmakers and “interested parties to work together and identify pathways to protect the public and restrict access to compounds containing THC while also finding ways for hemp to continue to exist.”
    • Micah Sherman, Washington Sun and Craft Growers Association (WSCA) Board Member and Raven Co-Owner, seconded concerns he’d heard around the potential to allow synthetic compounds in cannabis products through the new definition for THC: “it's a sloppy approach and we would really like to see that definitional change revised.” He called out how “converted cannabinoids are synthetic. They've been illegal at the federal level; the [U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration] just clarified on February 13th that those compounds are not allowed. They are synthesized. They are not hemp” (audio - 3m, video).
      • “Those things are going to continue to be in stores because they are currently illegal and this is not going to actually change the reality on the ground in the way that it's constructed,” Sherman said, and would instead “create a back door for these synthesized compounds to come into the 502 regulated space whether that's the intention of the bill or not.”
      • Sheman wanted to see “substantial changes to this bill to get it to actually do what it says that it intends to do,” otherwise he felt the language “confuses more than it clarifies.” He added that he’d submitted potential amending language in an effort to keep officials from going “down some of the confusing roads we're going with hemp and hemp extractions.” Sherman testified that legislators should “move the more confusing and confounding parts related to hemp, and those limits for another day to be done when there's more time to do it well.”

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