After pushback from legislators and industry stakeholders, Montana’s revenue department has removed a prohibition on cannabidiol goods from its marijuana program laws. The Montana Department of Revenue will also cancel a separate law that tried to keep people with minor criminal convictions from getting or renewing permits to operate in the marijuana industry. Read on to know more about cannabis and CBD laws in Montana.
Director of Montana DOR Brendan Beatty stated that the interpretation of his department of the laws strayed from what House Bill (HB) 701 intended. The Montana State Legislature and the public have clarified that the interpretation of this department of the laws was not in accordance with that of the Legislature. Beatty also stated that it was up to the revenue department to pay heed to public input.
The two reversals are expected to considerably affect Montana’s adult-use marijuana industry. Several medical marijuana dispensaries already have an array of cannabidiol items, which include topicals, tinctures, and edibles. The US federal law requires the items to contain only up to 0.3% tetrahydrocannabinol, the main active phytocannabinoid in cannabis. If the prohibition had become effective, Montana would have forced dispensaries to stop selling the items or set up separate businesses to keep selling them.
Every business location with no cannabis license, like a grocery or gas station corner store, would still have been capable of selling the items.
In the recent hearing, Department of Revenue lawyer Courtney Cosgrove suggested a measure that would result in a prohibition on smokable industrial hemp material being kept in place. Montana has people with the following.
- Guilty pleas
- Convictions
- No contest pleas to either criminal offenses in the last three years, charges of dispensing or selling tobacco or alcohol products to minors, or violations of other states’ marijuana laws
The law would have kept one of those people from submitting an application for an employment position or continuing to be in that position in the industry.
Dispensary business owners wondered whether it would limit the pool of applicants for their jobs as they expand to satisfy the new requirements of the recreational cannabis marketplace.
Dispensary owners welcomed the cannabidiol ban reversal as well. It has cleared their concerns about the lack of access for patients to well-made and locally sourced CBD goods. Some dispensaries state that the new Montana CBD legislation is a big relief for seekers of cannabidiol products for use in humans or pets.