'My customers no longer have access to something that was really helping them.' Officials in Ohio raid CBD sellers, order products removed.

State and local officials have begun cracking down on Ohio retailers selling products infused with cannabidiol, otherwise known as CBD. 

The Ohio Department of Agriculture is working with health departments and police agencies throughout the state to "embargo" products containing CBD, according to a statement from the Cincinnati Health Department.

The embargo process involves identifying, itemizing and even removing CBD products from store shelves, according to the statement sent to The Enquirer Monday evening. 

Kate Zaidan, owner of Dean's Mediterranean Imports in Cincinnati's Findlay Market, said city health inspectors visited her store Friday and told her to stop selling CBD products or risk having her inventory embargoed.

"They basically came in and laid down the law and said we were no longer allowed to carry any CBD products,'' said Zaidan, who was one of at least two other Findlay Market retailers visited by health officials. "The saddest thing is my customers no longer have access to something that was really helping them.''

Touted as a cure-all for numerous ailments, edibles and other non-intoxicating products infused with CBD derived from hemp have become wildly popular.

Last year, CBD sales in the United States approached $900 million and are expected to grow to $2.1 billion by 2020, according to a report by market intelligence firm, Hemp Business Journal.

Under pressure from the health department, Zaidan said she immediately removed all CBD products from her store, which was among seven Cincinnati retail food establishments that were identified as potentially having CBD products for sale and were inspected by health officials.

Three of the facilities either didn’t have CBD products in stock or had discontinued sales; three, including Dean's, removed their products from display; and one facility had its products "embargoed" involuntarily, according to the health department. 

The retailers were allowed to keep embargoed items on-site as long as they were not displayed for sale.

Enforcement officials said they were acting in accordance with the state law establishing Ohio's medical marijuana program, which strictly prohibits CBD sales outside the state's 56 licensed dispensaries.

The Ohio Board of Pharmacy - one of three state agencies regulating Ohio's medical marijuana program - reminded retailers of the restrictions in an advisory issued last fall.

At the time, the pharmacy board said it would leave enforcement actions up to the discretion of local authorities.

In addition to cracking down on sellers, the state agriculture department has also been working with local health officials to investigate suppliers.

Agriculture officials said they recently informed Queen City Hemp, based in Over-the-Rhine, that its CBD Seltzer water hadn't been properly inspected by its Division of Food Safety as required under the law.

Officials are trying to determine "if they (Queen City) knew they were supposed to have their product inspected'' said Mark Bruce, a department spokesman.  

Queen City is so far the only CBD producer in the local area to come under scrutiny from the agriculture department, according to Bruce: "There is one particular company down there (Cincinnati) that we’re investigating to see if the product was made without inspection.''

Queen City CEO Nick Balzer declined comment Monday and would not say whether he believed his company had been singled out for inspection.

Balzer was one of a number of CBD suppliers to publicly defy the pharmacy board advisory, telling The Enquirer last year he believed his products did not fall under the purview of state regulators because  they're derived from industrial hemp.  

Hemp is a cannabis plant. But unlike the cannabis plants used to produce mood-altering medical marijuana products, hemp is not psychoactive and contains only trace amounts of THC - the compound that gets you high.

CBD derived from hemp is also protected under the 2018 Farm Bill, which allows hemp and hemp products to be produced and sold throughout the United States.

Each state must submit a plan to license and regulate hemp and have it approved by the USDA before hemp can be grown.

But Ohio has not set regulations for hemp under the 2018 law.

In the meantime, the state's medical marijuana regulators insist they have ultimate authority over CBD sales and production because state law doesn't distinguish hemp from other cannabis plants.

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