One representative called it a “wonderful, reefer-smelling bag” and another worried a drug-sniffing dog might alert to him at the airport later as he passed the bundle of products down the Cannabis Policy Committee dais Wednesday.
The bag didn’t contain items sold in legal retail marijuana stores here, or even marijuana items sold on the illicit market. Inside were products purchased legally and without clear state regulation from gas stations, convenience stores and vape shops around Massachusetts, each one purporting to be a legal hemp product under federal law but offering the same kind of high as cannabis.
These intoxicating hemp-based products largely fall into a gray area of the law and between the regulatory cracks. Since the gummies, energy shot-like drink bottles and seltzers proliferated across Massachusetts convenience store checkout counters and social media feeds in recent years, lawmakers and regulators have already expressed a desire to straighten out what is and is not cannabis, and how it should all be regulated…