South Carolina Lawmakers Advance Hemp Restriction Bills, Including One To Allow THC Drinks
South Carolina hemp ban edges closer as lawmakers push dueling THC bills, the kind of late-night menu choice that tells you more about a place than any tourism brochure ever could. On one side, a hard-stop prohibition that would scrub intoxicating hemp products from shelves statewide. On the other, a guarded lane for “intoxicating hemp beverages,” where 12-ounce cans could carry up to 5 milligrams of delta-9 THC and only cross a counter to someone 21 or older. The House Judiciary chair, Weston Newton, put both on the docket—an all-or-nothing bid and a compromise—acknowledging that if a total ban fizzles, something narrower might still keep kids from buying a buzz with their gas station beef jerky. The more lenient proposal would license sellers, cap potency per serving, and mirror alcohol’s 21+ gate. It’s a corrective for a legal gray zone born from the 2018 Farm Bill’s 0.3 percent delta-9 THC threshold by dry weight, a loophole big enough to drive a fleet of gummies, seltzers, and delta-8-and-delta-10 carts through. Lawmakers agree it’s time to shut the door on minors. The fight is where to draw the line for grown adults without, as Rep. Justin Bamberg put it, trampling their freedoms.
This is South Carolina, where the moral and the practical collide on a humid Wednesday and nobody leaves without a stain. The House already flirted with a fix last April, passing a bipartisan bill to block under-21 sales; the Senate never bit, though that age gate could resurface now that intoxicating hemp drinks have jumped from vape counters to convenience coolers. Newton’s twin-track strategy nods to political reality: if you can’t ban it outright, at least tame it—licenses, testing, labels, accountability. But fear runs both ways. Opponents cite a state already haunted by the nation’s highest drunk driving fatality rate, and wonder what happens when a THC buzz rides shotgun with alcohol. Senators are workshopping how to actually test roadside impairment from THC—the kind of nuts-and-bolts policy that rarely makes headlines but decides lives when the blue lights flash. There’s no turnkey breathalyzer here, just bio-chemistry, litigation, and the burden of proof.
Of course, regulation isn’t just a morality play—it’s a business model with a law degree. On Wednesday night, industry folks worked the room a few blocks from the Statehouse, arguing for smart rules instead of a padlock. They were shop owners who’ve checked IDs, scanned them, tested batches before they hit shelves, and—at least in their telling—watched a few “bad actors” poison the well for everyone else. One retailer described ditching antidepressants and back pain meds after finding relief in hemp-derived THC; another warned that confining them to CBD alone would be a slow walk off a financial cliff. If history is any guide, when lawmakers swing an axe where a scalpel would do, small players bleed out first and the big outfits adapt. That dynamic isn’t new; it’s the same gravity that has kept the dream of boutique weed elusive in some markets, as chronicled in The Promise Of ‘Craft Cannabis’ Has Not Been Realized—Due To Policy Decisions Favoring Big Companies (Op-Ed). And while South Carolina debates whether to bolt the doors, other legislatures are loosening the hinges on where and how cannabis businesses can exist—see the way a neighboring state wrestled zoning straightjackets in Delaware Senate Votes To Override Governor’s Veto Of Marijuana Bill That Would Limit Restrictive Local Business Zoning Rules.
Zoom out and the picture turns even messier. The 2018 Farm Bill tried to birth an industrial hemp economy—fiber, rope, uniforms—and instead midwifed a parallel market of psychoactive hemp-derived THC products. Washington noticed. A last-minute rider in the stopgap spending deal that ended last year’s shutdown aims to slam the loophole shut by banning sales of hemp goods with more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per serving starting this November. There are Capitol Hill efforts to punt that deadline for two years, and another proposal to craft a national framework rather than play whack-a-mole. Meanwhile, back home, law enforcement is testing a new posture. In December, Attorney General Alan Wilson announced 12 arrests and the seizure of more than 30,000 pounds of joints, edibles, and assorted THC products—“Ganjapreneur,” they called it—a brand name for a lab-intensive reality where proving illegality takes time and chemistry. It’s a patchwork now: evolving federal rules, state-level crackdowns, and a marketplace where consumers don’t always know what’s in the can. That uncertainty is its own public health risk, and it punishes responsible operators alongside the hustlers. For a flavor of how other states are tuning policy instead of torching markets, look at how lawmakers trimmed barriers for patients in Florida Lawmakers Approve Bill To Slash Medical Marijuana Card Fee For Military Veterans.
South Carolina’s choice doesn’t have to be puritanical or permissive; it can be adult. If the state keeps a tightly defined lane for hemp-derived THC drinks, that means real licensing, 21+ verification, potency caps that are clear, labels that mean something, QR codes linked to lab results, and swift penalties for anyone selling to kids. If lawmakers decide to ban intoxicating hemp products across the board, they should admit the demand won’t disappear—it’ll just head for the shadows, or over the border, or online. Either way, you still need tools to measure impairment on the road and a plan for the retailers who played by the rules while the rules were being written in pencil. And if your compass is personal liberty, you can find allies across the aisle arguing that the state should protect minors without kneecapping adults—a line that echoes reforms elsewhere, like sentencing relief for old marijuana cases in Virginia Lawmakers Approve Bill To Provide Marijuana Sentencing Relief To People With Prior Convictions. However this story ends, it’ll be written in the margins between harm reduction and human nature; until then, if you’re curious about compliant, hemp-derived options, explore our shop.
