LOS ANGELES (AP) — There are thousands of illegal marijuana farms around the country.

But when the federal government decided to stage one of its largest raids since President Donald Trump took office in January, it picked the biggest legal grower in California.

Nearly two weeks later, the reason for the federal raid at two Glass House farm sites northwest of Los Angeles remains unclear and has prompted speculation. Some say the raid was intended to send a chilling message to immigrants in the U.S. illegally — but also to rattle the state’s legal cannabis industry.

Meanwhile, the Republican Trump administration has been feuding with heavily Democratic California over funding for everything from high-speed rail construction to wildfire relief, so it’s also possible Glass House was pulled into a broader conflict between the White House and Sacramento.

“There are plenty of other places they can go to find illegal workers,” said political consultant Adam Spiker, who advises cannabis companies. “A lot of people believe there is a hint of politics in this. It’s federal enforcement coming into California to go after cannabis.”

What happened during the raids?

On July 10, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents executed a search warrant for Glass House’s farms in Carpinteria and Camarillo, court filings show.

At the Camarillo site, armored vehicles blocked the road, which is lined with fields and greenhouses, as masked agents deployed onto the property. One farmworker who fell from a greenhouse roof while running to hide later died from his injuries.

Outside the farm, officers faced off with demonstrators and fired tear gas to disperse them, a federal agent wrote in court filings. One demonstrator threw a gas canister back at Border Patrol officers, according to the agent. Another demonstrator, who is sought by the FBI, appeared to fire a gun.

More than 360 people were arrested, most suspected of being in the country without legal status. Those arrested included four U.S. citizens, including U.S. Army veteran George Retes, 25, who works as a security guard and was held for three days.

The operation came more than a month into an extended crackdown across Southern California that was originally centered in Los Angeles, where local officials say the federal actions are spreading fear in immigrant communities.

Why Glass House?

No cannabis was seized and the criminal search warrants used to enter the farm sites are under court seal. Authorities refused to share them with The Associated Press.

The government said the business was being investigated for potential child labor, human trafficking and other abuses. Agents found 14 children at one site. No information has been released about the minors.

The company has not been charged.

Federal and state laws allow children as young as 12 to work in agriculture under certain conditions, though no one under age 21 is allowed to work in the cannabis industry.

Company officials did not respond to calls or emails. In a brief statement on the social platform X, Glass House said it complied with immigration and naturalization warrants and “has never knowingly violated applicable hiring practices and does not and has never employed minors.”

Some believe the raid was aimed at the legal marijuana market

After the raid, United Farm Workers — the country’s biggest farm worker union — posted an urgent message to its social media accounts warning that because marijuana is illegal under federal law, workers who are not U.S. citizens should avoid jobs in the cannabis industry, including state-licensed facilities.

“We know this is unfair,” it said, “but we encourage you to protect yourself and your family.”

Industry experts point to unwelcome publicity the company received after rival Catalyst Cannabis Co. filed a 2023 lawsuit alleging that Glass House “has become one of the largest, if not the largest, black marketers of cannabis in the state of California.” The lawsuit, formally filed by Catalyst parent 562 Discount Med Inc., was dismissed last year but the headlines might have drawn the interest of federal investigators.

Who runs the Glass House farm sites?

The company was co-founded by Kyle Kazan, a former Southern California police officer and special education teacher turned cannabis investor, and Graham Farrar, a Santa Barbara tech entrepreneur.

Glass House started growing cannabis in a greenhouse in Carpinteria in Santa Barbara County when once-thriving cut flower operations were being reduced. It later bought property in Camarillo in neighboring Ventura County for $93 million that had six greenhouses and was being used to grow tomatoes and cucumbers.

To date, two of the greenhouses have been converted to grow cannabis. Workers’ relatives said tomatoes are still being grown in other greenhouses at the location.

How did Glass House do it?

The raids have put the spotlight on a company that is alternately admired and reviled because of its meteoric rise in the nation’s largest legal market.

Glass House is the state’s biggest legal cultivator, dwarfing its nearest rivals. Glass House Farms is part of the broader company Glass House Brands, which has other businesses that make cannabis products.

“There is no farmer in California that can compete with them at scale,” Sacramento-based cannabis consultant Sam Rodriguez said.

Many legal operators have struggled despite the passage of Proposition 64 in 2016 — which was seen as a watershed moment in the push to legitimize and tax California’s multibillion-dollar marijuana industry. In 2018, when retail outlets could open, California became the world’s largest legal marketplace.

But operators faced heavy taxes, seven-figure start-up costs and for many consumers, the tax-free illegal market remained a better deal.

But as other companies folded, Glass House took off, fueling envy and suspicion by rivals over its boom at a time when much of the state’s legal market was in crisis, in large part because of competition from the robust underground market.

In a recent call with investors, Kazan said company revenue in the first quarter hit $45 million — up 49% over the same period last year. He said he remained hopeful for a federal shift that would end marijuana’s classification as a Schedule I drug, alongside heroin and LSD.

But “we are a company that does not require federal legalization for survival,” Kazan said.

Glass House’s sales grew as many others around the state declined.

“I remain steadfast in the belief that it is not if but when the cannabis industry becomes America’s next massive normalized industry, and I’m excited to participate along with investors in the corresponding reward that that change will bring,” he said.

According to a release from the Sheriff’s Department on Friday, Deputy Sheriff Kinat arrived at the ICON Residences at the Rotunda on West 40th Street, where she met the property manager to issue an eviction to a resident of the building.

When Kinat and the property manager arrived at the residence, knocked on the door and announced themselves, no one answered. Kinat then asked the property manager to open the door.

Inside, they found a man, along with what they estimated to be 50 to 60 large clear bags containing what appeared to be cannabis in plain view.

Kinat detained the man, called for backup deputies and secured a search and seizure warrant from a judge to search the apartment. The subsequent search uncovered about 65 pounds of suspected cannabis, as well as nearly $47,000 in cash.

After the search, deputies charged the man with criminal possession of marijuana in excess of the legal limit.

“If he had answered and paid the amount owed to the property manager right there on scene, the law requires that the deputy would have had to cancel the eviction,” said Baltimore City Sheriff Sam Cogen.

The release states the tenant owed nearly $2,900 in unpaid rent and fees.

Have a news tip? Contact Mathew Schumer at mschumer@baltsun.com, 443-890-7423 and on X as @mmmschumer.

The Maryland Economic Development Corporation (MEDCO) identified 37 potential incubator sites in six counties in a December 2023 report. Now, program leaders are reviewing the list after Moore’s decision.

Montgomery County, which had seven properties listed in the 2023 report, submitted a revised, shorter list to MEDCO last week of properties that could work for the incubator. The previous properties Montgomery County listed were a mix of office, retail and industrial sites in Rockville, Olney, Damascus and Bethesda.

Dorchester County also remains interested in such an incubator, Susan Banks, the director of the county’s Economic Development Office, said this week. Dorchester listed two sites in 2023 for the project.

“We had hoped the incubator could co-locate with an existing business and utilize those resources, bringing in additional jobs and expanding the tax base,” Banks said.

Prince George’s County listed six properties for the incubator in 2023. Of the six, three are still available, a county spokesperson confirmed. These include a 29,325-square-foot industrial building in Hyattsville and two retail centers in Oxon Hill and Clinton. County officials did not respond when asked if they were still interested in the project, however.

Other counties included in the 2023 MEDCO site list were Garrett, Somerset and Anne Arundel. Garrett and Somerset counties did not respond to multiple requests for a comment, and Anne Arundel County declined to comment.

The incubator, which is the first state-run program of its kind nationwide, would support around 60 cannabis micro-businesses that need help accessing equipment or space, according to the Maryland Cannabis Administration’s (MCA) website. Plans for the Catonsville Armory were scrapped after community members raised concerns with its proximity to Catonsville Elementary School, prompting Moore to reopen the search.

“I have instructed the agencies to identify locations that are not within close proximity to residential communities and schools. The agencies will begin this new process immediately, conduct extensive community and stakeholder engagement, and work quickly to move the project forward,” Moore said in his statement about the decision.

The $7 million project would give licensees, such as microprocessors or microdispensaries, space to process and store their products. It would not sell or grow any cannabis onsite, but rather “is for licensees to jumpstart their businesses and acquire skills in a supportive environment,” the cannabis agency said.

The program “is a critical step toward leveling the playing field for micro-licensees,” said Michelle Rutter Friberg, the director of government relations at the National Cannabis Industry Association. “By lowering barriers to entry, the program empowers small businesses to thrive in a competitive industry while advancing equity and innovation in the state’s regulated cannabis market.”

The Catonsville Armory was not included in the 2023 site list but was chosen because of its reinforced security vaults and its central location, according to the Maryland Cannabis Administration’s website.

But local residents protested the idea, with one resident, Josh Jackson, organizing a Change.org petition that got more than 850 signatures. In addition to its closeness to the elementary school, the petition brought up concerns with “nuisance smells from the processing of cannabis.”

According to the MCA’s website, the incubator’s facility would feature “state-of-the-art odor mitigation systems.” These include air filtration, sealed rooms and other HVAC measures.

The Catonsville Armory was scheduled to begin a year-long renovation this month to prepare it for housing an incubator.

The MCA and MEDCO did not respond to requests for comment.

“The Moore-Miller Administration will work expeditiously — but thoughtfully and deliberately — to select the new site,” the MCA stated on its website. “At this time, we do not have a projected date for when a new site might be announced, but we will provide updates as they become available.”

Have a news tip? Contact Irit Skulnik at iskulnik@baltsun.com or on X as @irit_skulnik.

The Community Reinvestment and Repair Fund (CRRF) was launched by Maryland state lawmakers when recreational cannabis sales began in July 2023. The fund allocates 35% of tax revenue from cannabis sales in Maryland for counties to spend on programs in low-income areas. Counties receive the money based on the proportion of cannabis possession charges in their jurisdiction relative to the statewide total from 2002 to 2023.

Spotlight on Maryland reached out to each of Maryland’s 23 counties asking how they spend CRRF money.

Seven counties said they have either spent or scheduled spending: Anne Arundel, Allegany, Baltimore, Charles, Harford, Queen Anne’s and Wicomico.

Another seven counties said they have yet to spend the funds but are in the process of determining how to do so: Calvert, Cecil, Frederick, Howard, Kent, Saint Mary’s and Worcester.

Two counties said they are waiting to spend funds until receiving further guidance from the Maryland Office of Social Equity (OSE), which manages CRRF: Carroll and Garrett.

The remaining counties did not respond to questions about their participation in CRRF, most notably the two most populous in the state: Montgomery and Prince George’s.

Counties that reported higher levels of finalized CRRF spending tended to have lower populations.

Wicomico County Executive Julie Giordano told Spotlight on Maryland that her county received $2.18 million from CRRF so far and spent $553,314 in fiscal year 2025, with another $1.38 million scheduled to be spent in the new fiscal year. The county used the money to boost programs in low-income areas such as Habitat for Humanity, a free dental clinic, mentor services for teenaged students, reintegration services for incarcerated individuals, and autism evaluations for infants and toddlers.

A Queen Anne’s County official told Spotlight on Maryland they received $595,000 through CRRF for fiscal year 2025, which was used for its Minority Entrepreneur Training Accelerator program, after-school programming and homelessness prevention efforts.

A Harford County official told Spotlight on Maryland they received $3.15 million in CRRF funds and awarded $554,825 in grants, pending finalized agreements. The official said additional CRRF funds will be used to provide a free 8-week summer camp program for children.

An Allegany County official told Spotlight on Maryland they received $316,144 through CRRF in 2023, which was allocated in the new fiscal year starting this month. The money will be used for employment programs and scholarships at the Maryland Area Health Education Center West, as well as a cosmetology certification program through Allegany College of Maryland.

Baltimore County published a December report on its use of CRRF funds that showed it received $10.78 million and committed to spend $350,000 on its freezing weather shelter.

An Anne Arundel official told Spotlight on Maryland that they received $5.18 million through CRRF and allocated $1.78 million for its first round of grants in the new fiscal year. The official said specific spending decisions are expected to be made in the coming months.

Maryland law allows counties to decide how to manage CRRF money, with some deciding to do so within a government agency and others establishing commissions with members appointed by elected leaders.

OSE previously told Spotlight on Maryland that it allocated more than $89 million through CRRF as of February.

Legislation signed into law this year requires that OSE adopts regulations by October 1, 2025, on how funds can be spent by counties. The law requires that counties submit reports to OSE on how funds are spent by October 1, 2026. Counties can spend up to 15% of the CRRF funds on administrative expenses, according to the law.

A spokesman for Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott previously told Spotlight on Maryland the city is waiting for guidance from OSE before deciding how to spend the $5 million allocated in its new fiscal year budget from CRRF.

The law establishing CRRF in 2023 required that OSE publish a report by March of each year on how money was allocated to counties in the previous calendar year. OSE has only published data from one fiscal quarter of allocated funds so far, as previously reported by Spotlight on Maryland.

An OSE spokeswoman said they plan to publish a report on allocated CRRF funds this month and noted the agency provided proper notification of the delay to the Maryland legislature and the secretary of state’s office. She said CRRF rollouts vary in each county based on how they regulate the fund.

“By law, jurisdictions must adopt local legislation outlining how CRRF dollars will be used. As a result, timelines for spending vary based on each jurisdiction’s internal processes, including the creation of advisory bodies and public engagement mechanisms,” the OSE spokeswoman told Spotlight on Maryland.

OSE did not respond to a question about whether counties are allowed to spend CRRF funds prior to its regulations scheduled to be released in October.

Gov. Wes Moore appointed the executive director of OSE, Audrey Johnson. A spokesman for Moore’s office expressed confidence in the agency’s oversight of CRRF.

“For nearly two years, the Office of Social Equity has played a critical part in administration of the fund by making recommendations for usage, ensuring allocation to local jurisdictions in partnership with the Comptroller, reporting on its deployment, and providing oversight on spending by local jurisdictions,” the governor’s spokesman told Spotlight on Maryland. “In partnership with the communities, the funds have the potential to support increased access to mental health and substance use services, workforce development, education, and housing.”

Spotlight on Maryland is a joint venture by FOX45 News, The Baltimore Sun and WJLA in Washington, D.C. Have a news tip? Contact Patrick Hauf at pjhauf@sbgtv.com.

The Community Reinvestment and Repair Fund (CRRF) was established by Maryland state lawmakers in 2022. The fund allocates 35% of tax revenue from cannabis sales in Maryland for counties to spend on programs serving low-income communities. Counties receive the funds based on the proportion of cannabis possession charges in their jurisdiction relative to the total statewide number from 2002 to 2023.

A spokeswoman for the Maryland Office of Social Equity (OSE), which was established in 2023 to manage CRRF, told Spotlight on Maryland that less than 1% of the fund has been spent by counties.

“In February of 2025, OSE collected data from all jurisdictions on CRRF utilization,” the OSE spokeswoman wrote in an email statement. “Of the $89+ million allocated, approximately $451,785 has been spent across two of the jurisdictions.”

OSE was established through legislation in 2023 that required it to publish an annual report by March that details how CRRF funds were allocated in the previous calendar year.

The OSE spokeswoman told Spotlight on Maryland that its 2025 report will be published next month and that proper notification of the delay was provided to the Maryland legislature and the secretary of state’s office.

OSE published a report in March 2024 that included data on what each Maryland county received from CRRF in its first quarter, which began when recreational sales of cannabis were legalized in July 2023. The CRRF funds totaled $4.3 million.

The OSE report on allocated CRRF money did not include data from the final quarter of 2023, meaning the office has so far provided data from one of the six quarters required for publication.

David Williams, the president of the Taxpayer Protection Alliance, said Maryland officials need to prioritize transparency for CRRF.

“This could be a game changer for counties to address a lot of issues,” Williams told Spotlight on Maryland. “But when it’s hidden under a blanket of obscurity, you’re not going to see that transparency.”

The Maryland legislature passed a bill this year providing additional guidance on CRRF. The bill, signed into law by Gov. Wes Moore, provides examples of how counties can use the funds to benefit low-income communities, such as education, homelessness prevention, transportation improvements, job training, community childcare, and programs that benefit individuals and families impacted by incarceration.

State law does not allow for counties to use CRRF to boost law enforcement.

Counties are allowed to spend 15% of their money from CRRF on overhead, according to the bill signed this year. An earlier version of the bill only allocated 5% for overhead spending but was later amended to 15%.

A spokeswoman for OSE told Spotlight on Maryland that legislation passed this year will help her office provide better oversight of CRRF.

“The low percentage of total allocated funds that have been spent to date was a motivating factor for SB 894 to provide guidance on how the money should be spent most effectively, as well as enhanced engagement, cooperation, and oversight from OSE to ensure that these critical dollars are being spent most effectively,” she wrote in an email statement.

Spotlight on Maryland will have more reporting on how local counties plan to distribute the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars from cannabis sales.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with information from the Maryland Office of Social Equity.

Spotlight on Maryland is a joint venture by FOX45 News and The Baltimore Sun. Have a news tip? Contact Patrick Hauf at pjhauf@sbgtv.com.

Benjamin Han, a geriatrician and addiction medicine specialist at the University of California, San Diego, tells his students a cautionary tale about a 76-year-old patient who, like many older people, struggled with insomnia.

“She had problems falling asleep, and she’d wake up in the middle of the night,” he said. “So her daughter brought her some sleep gummies” — edible cannabis candies.

“She tried a gummy after dinner and waited half an hour,” Han said.

Feeling no effects, she took another gummy, then one more — a total of four over several hours.

Han advises patients who are trying cannabis to “start low; go slow,” beginning with products that contain just 1 or 2.5 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive ingredient that many cannabis products contain. Each of the four gummies this patient took, however, contained 10 milligrams.

The woman started experiencing intense anxiety and heart palpitations. A young person might have shrugged off such symptoms, but this patient had high blood pressure and atrial fibrillation, a heart arrhythmia. Frightened, she went to an emergency room.

Lab tests and a cardiac work-up determined the woman wasn’t having a heart attack, and the staff sent her home. Her only lingering symptom was embarrassment, Han said. But what if she’d grown dizzy or lightheaded and was hurt in a fall? He said he has had patients injured in falls or while driving after using cannabis. What if the cannabis had interacted with the prescription drugs she took?

“As a geriatrician, it gives me pause,” Han said. “Our brains are more sensitive to psychoactive substances as we age.”

Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia now allow cannabis use for medical reasons, and in 24 of those states, as well as the district, recreational use is also legal. As older adults’ use climbs, “the benefits are still unclear,” Han said. “But we’re seeing more evidence of potential harms.”

A wave of recent research points to reasons for concern for older users, with cannabis-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations rising, and a Canadian study finding an association between such acute care and subsequent dementia. Older people are more apt than younger ones to try cannabis for therapeutic reasons: to relieve chronic pain, insomnia, or mental health issues, though evidence of its effectiveness in addressing those conditions remains thin, experts said.

In an analysis of national survey data published June 2 in the medical journal JAMA, Han and his colleagues reported that “current” cannabis use (defined as use within the previous month) had jumped among adults age 65 or older to 7% of respondents in 2023, from 4.8% in 2021. In 2005, he pointed out, fewer than 1% of older adults reported using cannabis in the previous year.

What’s driving the increase? Experts cite the steady march of state legalization — use by older people is highest in those states — while surveys show that the perceived risk of cannabis use has declined. One national survey found that a growing proportion of American adults — 44% in 2021 — erroneously thought it safer to smoke cannabis daily than cigarettes. The authors of the study, in JAMA Network Open, noted that “these views do not reflect the existing science on cannabis and tobacco smoke.”

The cannabis industry also markets its products to older adults. The Trulieve chain gives a 10% discount, both in stores and online, to those it calls “wisdom” customers, 55 or older. Rise Dispensaries ran a yearlong cannabis education and empowerment program for two senior centers in Paterson, New Jersey, including field trips to its dispensary.

The industry has many satisfied older customers. Liz Logan, 67, a freelance writer in Bronxville, New York, had grappled with sleep problems and anxiety for years, but the conditions grew particularly debilitating two years ago, as her husband was dying of Parkinson’s disease. “I’d frequently be awake until 5 or 6 in the morning,” she said. “It makes you crazy.”

Looking online for edible cannabis products, Logan found that gummies containing cannabidiol, known as CBD, alone didn’t help, but those with 10 milligrams of THC did the trick without noticeable side effects. “I don’t worry about sleep anymore,” she said. “I’ve solved a lifelong problem.”

But studies in the United States and Canada, which legalized nonmedical cannabis use for adults nationally in 2018, show climbing rates of cannabis-related health care use among older people, both in outpatient settings and in hospitals.

In California, for instance, cannabis-related emergency room visits by those 65 or older rose, to 395 per 100,000 visits in 2019 from about 21 in 2005. In Ontario, acute care (meaning emergency visits or hospital admissions) resulting from cannabis use increased fivefold in middle-aged adults from 2008 to 2021, and more than 26 times among those 65 and up.

“It’s not reflective of everyone who’s using cannabis,” cautioned Daniel Myran, an investigator at the Bruyère Health Research Institute in Ottawa and lead author of the Ontario study. “It’s capturing people with more severe patterns.”

But since other studies have shown increased cardiac risk among some cannabis users with heart disease or diabetes, “there’s a number of warning signals,” he said.

For example, a disturbing proportion of older veterans who currently use cannabis screen positive for cannabis use disorder, a recent JAMA Network Open study found.

As with other substance use disorders, such patients “can tolerate high amounts,” said the lead author, Vira Pravosud, a cannabis researcher at the Northern California Institute for Research and Education. “They continue using even if it interferes with their social or work or family obligations” and may experience withdrawal if they stop.

Among 4,500 older veterans (with an average age of 73) seeking care at Department of Veterans Affairs health facilities, researchers found that more than 10% had reported cannabis use within the previous 30 days. Of those, 36% fit the criteria for mild, moderate, or severe cannabis use disorder, as established in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

VA patients differ from the general population, Pravosud noted. They are much more likely to report substance misuse and have “higher rates of chronic diseases and disabilities, and mental health conditions like PTSD” that could lead to self-medication, she said.

Current VA policies don’t require clinicians to ask patients about cannabis use. Pravosud thinks that they should.

Moreover, “there’s increasing evidence of a potential effect on memory and cognition,” said Myran, citing his team’s study of Ontario patients with cannabis-related conditions going to emergency departments or being admitted to hospitals.

Compared with others of the same age and sex who were seeking care for other reasons, research shows these patients (ages 45 to 105) had 1.5 times the risk of a dementia diagnosis within five years, and 3.9 times the risk of that for the general population.

Even after adjusting for chronic health conditions and sociodemographic factors, those seeking acute care resulting from cannabis use had a 23% higher dementia risk than patients with noncannabis-related ailments, and a 72% higher risk than the general population.

None of these studies were randomized clinical trials, the researchers pointed out; they were observational and could not ascertain causality. Some cannabis research doesn’t specify whether users are smoking, vaping, ingesting or rubbing topical cannabis on aching joints; other studies lack relevant demographic information.

“It’s very frustrating that we’re not able to provide more individual guidance on safer modes of consumption, and on amounts of use that seem lower-risk,” Myran said. “It just highlights that the rapid expansion of regular cannabis use in North America is outpacing our knowledge.”

Still, given the health vulnerabilities of older people, and the far greater potency of current cannabis products compared with the weed of their youth, he and other researchers urge caution.

“If you view cannabis as a medicine, you should be open to the idea that there are groups who probably shouldn’t use it and that there are potential adverse effects from it,” he said. “Because that is true of all medicines.”

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The sweeping request claims that the state is using new cannabis laws to push unlicensed hemp businesses out of the legal marijuana industry, despite a state judge ruling two years ago that eliminating them outright was unconstitutional. It came as part of a lawsuit seeking to dismantle major sections of the state’s cannabis licensing system, which industry-watchers have hailed for its focus on social equity and public health.

The Maryland Hemp Coalition, joined by 10 business owners and a consumer of the products, alleged in a complaint earlier this month that Maryland laws illegally regulate hemp-derived products that are legal at the federal level and that state agents are now selectively enforcing “erroneous testing standards” to seize items from shelves. The 40-page complaint also attacks laws that cap how many cannabis licenses can exist and how they’re issued, taking aim at Maryland’s social equity provisions and the lottery for new businesses.

Annapolis attorney Nevin Young, who is representing the group, said Maryland’s licensing system was an unnecessary control intended to inflate cannabis prices and increase the value of a state-sanctioned business.

“It’s really just communist cannabis,” he said.

Recreational cannabis is legal in Maryland and illegal under federal law, though hemp-derived products, which contain significantly less of marijuana’s main psychoactive ingredient but can still be intoxicating, are sitting in a legal limbo. Those products are technically legal at the federal level, though when Maryland legalized recreational cannabis on July 1, 2023, state lawmakers attempted to shut down the unregulated industry by requiring stores that sell such products to be licensed. A Washington County judge temporarily struck down that provision in 2023.

Since then, both the hemp industry and the state have been waiting on the Maryland Appellate Court to issue a more decisive ruling — and both have doubled down on their efforts.

The coalition of hemp businesses went a step further in their lawsuit filed earlier this month, seeking to chop away at central tenets of the state’s cannabis licensing system. It asks for a federal judge to rule that the state’s social equity program, limits on the number of cannabis licenses that exist and how they’re issued, are unconstitutional.

Falling outside of the recreational cannabis market, hemp-derived products have largely remained unregulated, while Maryland’s laws for legal cannabis have stringent health and safety restrictions ranging from product testing to packaging. Last legislative session, state lawmakers worked around the 2023 ruling and passed more regulations for hemp-derived products and empowered officers who enforce cannabis laws to seize unlicensed items. The hemp businesses said in the lawsuit that there have been several such seizures already in Baltimore, accusing the state of not testing the products fairly.

Levi Sellers, president of the hemp coalition, said in a statement that the new law was “a model of regulatory overreach and economic favoritism,” accusing the state of “stripping the rights of compliant hemp businesses and handing the market to politically connected cannabis dispensaries.”

The Maryland Cannabis Administration declined to comment on the pending litigation.

Hemp generally has very low amounts of intoxicating compounds like delta-9 THC, the main intoxicating compound in cannabis. A federal law passed in 2018 allows hemp to be grown and processed as long as the plant and any derivatives are less than 0.3% delta-9 THC by weight. But there are more than 100 other cannabinoids found within both cannabis and hemp, and processors can use chemical treatments to synthesize some cannabinoids while removing others. The federal legalization of hemp prompted a proliferation in products using delta-8, delta-10, CBD and CBG that skirt drug laws but can still produce intoxicating effects.

Not facing the same regulatory oversight as cannabis, hemp products are often cheaper and are readily available for purchase at gas stations and smoke shops rather than licensed dispensaries. Experts and cannabis industry leaders expressed public health concerns after Maryland hiked its sales tax on recreational cannabis products, warning that the increase could push some consumers toward unregulated hemp and other untested products.

Existing in somewhat of a gray market in Maryland over the past several years, local hemp businesses have been able to grow, process and sell their products without the need for a cannabis license. The hemp coalition argues that new state laws, such as one targeting low-THC “cannabinoid beverages,” aim to keep them out of the industry and give state license-holders a monopoly over products that are legal under federal law.

Licenses are a costly barrier to entry that’s difficult to obtain, the group claims, alleging that the licensing system unlawfully restricts federally legal products from being sold across state lines, and that some requirements to get a cannabis license violate the 14th Amendment.

The state issued 205 new licenses last year via its social equity lottery, which aimed to share the benefits of legal cannabis with communities that were disadvantaged by marijuana prohibition. The lottery was at random, though entry was limited to applicants who grew up in an area or attended a school disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs. The lawsuit describes that lottery as a “monopolized licensing scheme thinly disguised as being focused upon ‘social equity'” that has “no rational relationship to any public safety or health concerns.”

The state is required to respond to the complaint in the U.S. District Court for Maryland before the end of the month.

Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at dbelson@baltsun.com,  on X as @DanBelson_ or on Signal as @danbels.62.

Rep. Andy Harris is “trying to overrule the will of my constituents,” said Norton, Washington D.C.’s delegate to the U.S. House. The Maryland Republican, she added, is “violating his own principles regarding local control of local affairs.”

Norton was referring to Harris tucking language into federal budget legislation that prohibited the District of Columbia from spending money to carry out a marijuana legalization law approved by its voters.

That was 2014, but it might well have been yesterday.

In every congressional session since — including the current one — the “Harris Rider” has appeared in appropriations bills, and Norton and marijuana legalization advocates have vehemently railed against it. Their longstanding back-and-forth is as predictable as the humidity that returns to Washington each summer.

The rider means people can possess or use limited amounts of marijuana at home in Washington, but no one can sell it for recreational use.

“The congresswoman always advocates to remove it,” said Sharon Eliza Nichols, the communications director for Norton, now 89. “She speaks against it continuously — she references it specifically on the House floor, at press conferences, and at external speaking engagements whenever she speaks about the D.C. appropriations bill.”

Harris, 68, whose district includes the Eastern Shore, Harford County and a portion of Baltimore County, is a Johns Hopkins-trained anesthesiologist who has long crusaded against marijuana use. He has an outsized role in District of Columbia governance as a member of the House Appropriations Committee, which has a powerful say over D.C. finances.

Harris says marijuana has been linked to a host of physical and social ills.

“The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration have held long-standing opinions that marijuana is a psychoactive drug that is both addictive and harmful,” Harris said in a written statement to the Baltimore Sun.

“Despite a lack of much scientific research showing safety and growing evidence of harm, over three dozen states legalized the recreational use of marijuana,” he said. “I am glad to see that the Trump administration recognized the importance of the Harris Rider by including it in their FY26 Budget Request and look forward to seeing the Harris Rider enacted into law again in this year’s appropriations process.”

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said she opposes “all congressional interference in the lives and affairs of Washingtonians,” in a statement from her office on Tuesday.

Maryland voters approved a ballot referendum in 2022 to legalize marijuana for adults, and sales were permitted beginning in July of the following year.

Marijuana remains classified, along with heroin and LSD, as a Schedule I controlled substance, meaning it is illegal at the federal level. States such as Maryland acted independently in legalizing it, and federal law enforcement has generally concentrated its efforts on “criminal networks involved in the illicit marijuana trade,” according to the Congressional Research Service.

President Joe Biden’s administration had proposed reclassifying marijuana, which would have removed some restrictions — on medical research, for example — although it still wouldn’t have been declared the drug legal federally.

But President Donald Trump’s administration has not moved to downgrade the drug from Schedule 1, even though Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had pledged to “decriminalize cannabis at the federal level” while a presidential candidate in 2023. HHS did not return messages seeking comment about its plans.

The battle between Harris and marijuana legalization activists seemed to get personal after the congressman’s rider was first introduced.

In April 2018, former Washington head shop owner Adam Eidinger rented a brick rowhouse in the congressman’s district in Salisbury so he could vote against Harris and organize others to do the same.

Eidinger, 51, helped push Initiative 71, the ballot measure approved by voters in 2014 to legalize marijuana in Washington for recreational use. He also often showed up at Harris’ public events, asking repeatedly why Harris thought he knew more than District voters about what is good for them.

Eidinger and his fellow activists tried to imbue their rallies and events with creativity. They displayed inflatable joints outside the White House and distributed cannabis at Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.

Harris would not relent.

“Andy Harris is totally out of touch. It’s frustrating on so many different levels,” Eidinger said this week.

“I’ve given up on trying to change these guys’ minds. We have to vote in guys we can trust,” he said.

Have a news tip? Contact Jeff Barker at jebarker@baltsun.com.

Ziyon Thompson did not admit in a plea agreement to fatally shooting Miguel Soto-Diaz, 35, or setting fire to the vacant Furrow Street rowhouse where the California resident was held hostage on May 8, 2022. But the now-24-year-old did admit to placing a FaceTime call to Soto-Diaz’s son that day and showing him that his father was duct taped, gagged and bound to a chair with zip ties

Thompson proceeded to demand 200 pounds of cannabis and $50,000 for Soto-Diaz to return home safely, federal prosecutors said.

“We had a long conversation,” Thompson, who had visited the Soto-Diaz family’s marijuana farm in California the previous month, texted the son, according to court records.

Fire crews later found Soto-Diaz dead in the Southwest Baltimore house, dead from gunshot wounds, next to a gas canister and shell casings. The owner of the vacant building, a Prince George’s County resident, had been trying to get the city to evict squatters from the property.

Thompson’s defense team wrote in a sentencing memorandum that the 24-year-old “has understood he must face serious consequences” and knows that despite not firing the fatal shots, he “bears responsibility” for Soto-Diaz’s death.

A forensic neuropsychologist examined Thompson this April and determined that he had “longstanding neurodevelopmental challenges” such as ADHD and other learning disorders that were “shaped by early lead exposure and significant childhood adversity.”

Thompson has been “highly responsive to rehabilitation,” Dr. Jonathan DeRight wrote in a court filing, noting that the young man’s “strong motivation for change during incarceration” signaled a positive outlook.

Attorneys wrote that Thompson did not even learn about Soto-Diaz’s killing “until hours after the fact.”

“He did not intend for Mr. Soto-Diaz to die nor is he the one who killed him,” attorneys wrote, calling the extortion attempt and killing a scheme he participated in “without due regard for what could go wrong” because of his age, unmedicated ADHD and abuse of other drugs.

Thompson pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting the use of a firearm for a crime resulting in death. U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher sentenced him to 22 years of incarceration, recommending he be sentenced to the Federal Correctional Institution in Bennettsville, South Carolina.

Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at dbelson@baltsun.com,  on X as @DanBelson_ or on Signal as @danbels.62.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Walk into enough gas stations and they’re likely easy to find: gummies, drinks and vapes infused with THC, the compound that gives marijuana its psychoactive properties.

That’s given lawmakers across the U.S. headaches over how to regulate the booming market, and it’s a conflict now taking hold in Texas, where a proposed ban passed by the Legislature poses another major battle for the industry.

Texas has some of the nation’s most restrictive marijuana laws, but thousands of retailers in the state sell THC consumables, underscoring states’ struggle to set rules around the products that generate millions in tax revenue.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has not indicated whether he will sign the ban. Other states, including California, have imposed restrictions in recent years that include banning underage use and limits on the potency of the products, which are often marketed as legal even in states where marijuana is not.

“Governor Abbott will thoughtfully review any legislation sent to his desk,” spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris said when asked for comment on the bill.

Texas tries to crack down

The Texas bill would make it a misdemeanor to sell, possess or manufacture consumable products with tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. The proposal shadows several other state efforts to crack down on a market that has exploded since a 2018 federal law allowed states to regulate hemp, which can be synthetically processed to create THC.

Hemp is a plant that is grown to make textiles, plastics, food and several other products. It is related to marijuana and must contain less than 0.3% THC to still be classified as hemp under federal law.

The proliferating market has given residents in states with strict marijuana laws such as Texas a legal way to access products that can give them a similar high.

Nationwide, the substances are often sold through legal loopholes, despite concerns about potential health risks and a lack of oversight of how they’re produced.

Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick laid out bags of THC snacks on a table in front of a group of reporters last week to reiterate his determination for Texas to ban the products. He said he wasn’t worried about Abbott when asked about the possibility of a veto.

“This is serious business,” Patrick said.

If enacted into law, Texas would have one of the most restrictive bans in the country, according to Katharine Neil Harris, a researcher in drug policy at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

“I’m not aware of any other states without recreational marijuana markets that also prohibit consumable hemp products from having any THC,” Harris said.

A jumbled legal landscape

States that prohibit recreational marijuana have also made efforts to regulate the THC market, including Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee.

In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed a bill last year that would have put in place age restrictions and banned marketing directed toward children, stating that it would hurt small businesses.

“There’s such a variety in how states have responded to this,” Harris said.

Texas has one of the most restrictive medical marijuana programs in the country, only allowing three licensed dispensaries to operate in the state to sell low-potency marijuana to residents with PTSD, cancer or other conditions. Proposals to expand the state’s medical program are a sticking point for some Republican lawmakers.

A total of 38 states and the District of Columbia have laws that allow the medical use of marijuana. About 6 in 10 voters across the country said they favor legalizing recreational use nationwide, according to AP VoteCast, in a 2024 survey of more than 120,000 U.S. voters.

Retailers push back on ban

Kyle Bingham, a farmer in the Texas Panhandle, said he doesn’t plan on growing hemp anymore if there’s a ban. He has grown the plant on a family farm with his dad for four years and said it is one of many crops they grow, including cotton.

“We’ve never planted more than 5% of our acres in hemp, and that’s part of the business plan,” said Bingham, who is also vice president of the National Hemp Growers Association. “So for us, it’s definitely hard to walk away from as an investment.”

Because of a lack of federal oversight into manufacturing processes and a lack of uniform labeling requirements, it’s hard to know what exactly is in THC products sold in stores.

Many dispensaries, worried about their future, have urged the governor to veto the legislation. They have defended their industry as providing medical relief to people who cannot access medical marijuana through the state’s restrictive program.

“It’s absurd they think they can sign away 50,000 jobs,” Savannah Gavlik, an employee at Austin-based dispensary Dope Daughters, said. The store will likely have to close if the ban takes place, but the anxiety has not yet set in, she said.

“One of the biggest things we provide is self care,” Gavlik said. “It’s people genuinely wanting medical relief.”

Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.