“This bill completely put my clients out of business. There were no ways to get rid of the inventory except to destroy it.”
By Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal
A new law banning low-level THC hemp products and changing the state’s marijuana laws hurts Ohio businesses, plaintiffs argued during a preliminary injunction hearing Monday.
Happy Harvest and Get Wright Lounge filed a lawsuit in Franklin County Court of Common Pleas after Ohio Senate Bill 56 took effect March 20 after Ohioans for Cannabis Choice failed to get enough signatures to get a referendum on the November ballot for voters to block the law.
Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Magistrate Jhay Spottswood-Harrison heard the preliminary injunction hearing.
“This bill completely put my clients out of business,” said Scott Pullins, the attorney for the plaintiffs.
“There were no ways to get rid of the inventory except to destroy it, and the court attempted and succeeded in fashioning a fair and equity remedy to solve that problem,” he said. “Now, would we like to see it extended statewide to any other retailers in a similar situation.”
Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey M. Brown issued a 14-day TRO on April 22 allowing Happy Harvest locations and Get Wright Lounge to sell their existing products, but the 10th District Court of Appeals stayed the TRO last week.
Happy Harvest has locations in Delaware, Marion and Wood counties. Get Wright Lounge has one location in Columbus.
“The TRO restores the status quo that existed for years before March 20, 2026, and in fact, the TRO strengthens what the law was back then by expressly putting in more stringent age restrictions, more restrictions against marketing children, more restrictions as to products that look like hemp,” Pullins said.
The state argued Ohio’s law now aligns with new federal restrictions on hemp products that are set to take effect November 12.
Congress voted in November to ban products that contain 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container when they voted to reopen the government.
The only way to sell marijuana in Ohio starting November 12 is by getting a license from the Ohio Division of Cannabis Control, said Ann Yackshaw, assistant section chief in the Ohio Attorney General’s office.
“The only way for plaintiffs or anyone else to get that license is to let Senate Bill 56 continue in effect so that the Division [of Cannabis Control] can continue to regulate and continue to build out the regulatory framework to bring these people into cannabis regulation in the state of Ohio,” Yackshaw said.
“Putting Senate Bill 56 on hold would put that rule-making process on hold, and then no one would be able to get into the cannabis program in the state of Ohio,” she said.
Previously, the 2018 Farm Bill said hemp can be grown legally if it contains less than 0.3 percent THC.
But the 2018 Farm Bill created challenges from a definition standpoint and a series of loopholes, said Andrew Makoski, chief legal counsel for the Ohio Division of Cannabis Control.
“Hemp products exploded, not just in Ohio, but all across the country, where people were using the hemp definition to sell these intoxicating products that had the technical definition of hemp,” he said.
“With any kind of unregulated marketplace, you don’t know what you’re actually getting. What you found was a large spike in accidental ingestions,” he said.
Stopping S.B. 56 would take Ohio back to an unregulated market where “any child or anybody could walk into a store buy whatever they want,” Makoski said.
Ohio Senate Bill 56
The bill had to go to conference committee in the Ohio legislature after it passed the Ohio House, but the Ohio Senate voted not to concur with changes made to the bill at the end of October.
“The General Assembly enacted a sweeping criminal statute through a midnight conference report that neither chamber ever read three times in its final form and that consolidated four separate bills…into a single omnibus vehicle,” Pullins said.
Under the new law, THC levels in adult-use marijuana extracts will be reduced from a maximum of 90 percent down to a maximum of 70 percent, cap THC levels in adult-use flower to 35 percent and prohibit smoking in most public places.
The new law prohibits possessing marijuana in anything outside of its original packaging, criminalizes bringing legal marijuana from another state back to Ohio, and requires drivers to store marijuana in the trunk of their car while driving.
“Customers who wish to get lower prices and go to Michigan and other states have now been declared to be felons if they buy the product and bring it back here,” Pullins said.
The new law funnels unregulated THC through the Ohio Division Cannabis Control, Yackshaw said.
“That is the regulation that plaintiffs say that they were looking for, but they don’t want it because they don’t want to have to go through the stringent procedures that the Division of Cannabis Control lays out,” she said.
Mark Fashian was the president of hemp product wholesaler Midwest Analytical Solutions in Delaware, Ohio, but he is now out of business because of the new law.
“After March 20, my sales have died,” Fashian said. “[Senate Bill 56] basically made everything that I do illegal… I have five employees, and right now they’re finding other jobs.”
Happy Harvest was one of his best customers and they have more than $200,000 of stranded inventory, Fashian said.
“Every day [Ohio Senate Bill 56] is enforced, it destroys lawful Ohio businesses, businesses operating a good faith reliance on the 2018 federal Farm Bill,” Pullins said.
A Sandusky County judge last month issued a TRO on the hemp portion of the new law which allows the sale of intoxicating hemp products to continue in Fremont.
This story was first published by Ohio Capital Journal.
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