Intoxicating THC products and kratom will disappear from Tennessee store shelves at the end of the month, but hope for a Trump-backed psychedelic is on the horizon, all thanks to the Tennessee GOP.
July 1 will bring the long-foreseen collapse of Tennessee’s burgeoning cannabis industry. Lawmakers banned intoxicating products last year, though the industry got a short-lived reprieve to continue sales until the end of the month.
Cannabis business leaders say THCA — especially its smokable flower form — constitute much of their business. Without it, the financial loss leaves many wondering what cannabis looks like here, if anything at all.
Many of the “legal weed” products on the shelves now will simply be gone in a month. All that will really be left will be those CBD, CBC, CBG, and CBN products that were available before the galaxy of hemp-derived THC products hit the market. CBD hand cream, anyone?
It will also be illegal to ship “legal weed” products into Tennessee, according to the new laws. You might still be able to order them, but the shipping, receiving, and possessing them become criminal offenses. Get caught once: $1,000 fine and your stash is taken. Second time: $5,000. Third time: $10,000.
The same illegality, of course, goes for all those Memphians who have beaten a path to the Missouri Bootheel for legal, recreational cannabis. Totally legal to buy it up there, totally illegal to possess it in Tennessee. This is nothing new, though.
Kratom
Kratom is also set to disappear from shelves in a month, thanks to something called “Matthew Davenport’s Law.” The Chattanooga man’s family says he died of an overdose using kratom and many other substances.
The law’s sponsor, Sen. Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga), called kratom “gas station heroin.” Kratom is derived from a Southeast Asian tropical tree. Its effects include feelings of pleasure and relief, pain reduction, and sedation or stimulation depending on the dose, according to the Nashville Addiction Clinic.
The Mayo Clinic says while some users turn to kratom to help fight opioid addiction, it labels the drug “unsafe and ineffective.” Physically, the drug can cause everything from liver damage to dry mouth. In the nervous system it can cause hallucinations, delusions, depression, and more, Mayo Clinic says.
“Some studies have found that some kratom sellers add more of the active ingredient than kratom naturally has,” the clinic says. “And because kratom products lack clear labels, it’s not possible to know how much kratom people who use it take.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved kratom to be marketed as a drug, supplement, or food additive. Though, it is not banned at the federal level. When lawmakers banned kratom in Tennessee earlier this year, it became the eighth state to do so.
On July 1, those convicted of kratom possession face up to 11 months, 29 days, in jail and a $2,500 fine. Manufacture, delivery, or sale of kratom is a felony and can lead to fines up to $25,000.
Ibogaine
However, there is one psychedelic that Tennessee conservatives appear to love — ibogaine.
While the cannabis and kratom crackdowns were pushed by Tennessee’s hard-right GOP, the push for this new hallucinogen also came from them. That’s largely thanks to President Donald Trump.
“Psychedelic drugs, including ibogaine compounds, show potential in clinical studies to address serious mental illnesses for patients whose conditions persist after completing standard therapy,” reads Trump’s executive order on the matter in April. “It is the policy of my administration to accelerate innovative research models and appropriate drug approvals to increase access to psychedelic drugs that could save lives and reverse the crisis of serious mental illness in America.”
That executive order came with the promise of $50 million to work with states “that have enacted or are developing programs to advance psychedelic drugs for serious mental illnesses.”
To get in line, Tennessee Republicans created and passed the “Helping Open Pathways to Effective (HOPE) Treatment Act.” It would create a funding funnel from The White House, through the state, and to Tennessee drug developers, research institutions, universities, and hospitals for money to research ibogaine.
The HOPE Act wants to test “ibogaine as a medication to treat opioid use disorder, co-occurring substance use disorder, and other neurological or mental health conditions for which ibogaine demonstrates efficacy.”
