Sam Santana, owner and operator of Wisconsin Growing Company, walks through a field of hemp in southern Dane County that, when mature, will be used to make CBD and delta-8 THC products.
In November, Herbal Aspect made just two sales when the Madison-based online retailer only stocked CBD products.
By the following month, the business started selling delta-8 THC — a chemical cousin of the main psychoactive component in marijuana — and sales soared to more than $10,000. Since then, business has taken off “exponentially,” said Herbal Aspect co-founder Alan Robinson.
In the past year, delta-8 has boomed in popularity nationwide as the product — sometimes referred to as “marijuana light” — is billed to offer a euphoric high similar to but milder than marijuana. It occupies a legal gray area, allowing businesses in many states where cannabis is illegal to sell gummies, vaping devices and other products infused with delta-8.
Delta-8 is found naturally in low concentrations in cannabis and hemp plants, but it can also be produced through a series of processes starting with raw material from hemp plants. Buds from hemp are turned into CBD oil — a nonintoxicating compound abundant in the plant and touted for medical benefits — which in turn is converted into delta-8.
Green County Hemp sells several delta-8 products, including a vape pen, at right, and oil drops known as a tincture.
Locally, delta-8 products are found at CBD stores and head shops but also inside Woodman’s Market locations or sold at booths during festivals. The unregulated aspect of the industry, though, is prompting concerns about consumer and product safety, which has no legally enforceable age restriction.
State Rep. David Bowen, D-Milwaukee, said there’s “concern across the board” about ensuring delta-8 is produced and sold safely, including from some inside the industry. The demand for delta-8 is “more evidence that we should be moving in a direction as a state to officially legalize marijuana and to officially provide medical marijuana as well,” he said.
In an extraction lab on Madison’s East Side, which is awaiting final city approval before it can be used, Brook Bartels, co-owner of Green County Hemp, talks about how hemp can be processed using the machine at right into CBD and then delta-8 THC.
Bowen, who has supported previous marijuana legalization attempts, said he and other legislators are working with legislative staff on potential bills regulating delta-8 in Wisconsin.
“We will be looking at a number of different angles to provide some regulation around delta-8,” he said.
Established in 2018, Green County Hemp began selling delta-8 products nine months ago, said co-owner and operator Brook Bartels. Now, the company’s delta-8 products account for about half of its sales, with the other half coming from CBD.
“The market is taking off for everyone who makes it,” Bartels said of delta-8.
The chemical structure of delta-8 is nearly identical to the main psychoactive component of marijuana, known as delta-9 THC, with the only difference being the position of a double bond on the compound, said Daniele Piomelli, director of the Center for the Study of Cannabis at the University of California-Irvine.
It’s a “good educated guess” both THC compounds, which bind to the same brain receptors, have similar psychoactive effects, said Piomelli, who has a doctorate in pharmacology. But with minimal research conducted on the traditionally overlooked delta-8, Piomelli said “we really don’t have the type of data that we need to be able to affirm that with certainty.”
Despite the slight difference between the two compounds, he said consumption of delta-8 could produce a positive result for THC in a urine-based drug test.
Piomelli heads up the scientific journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, which he said recently received its first paper on delta-8.
The product can be made locally. For example, Green County Hemp uses hemp grown on a 15-acre farm in southern Dane County to make its CBD products as well as convert some of the CBD into delta-8, Bartels said.
The company is in the process of opening an extraction lab on Madison’s East Side for the growing business, said Scott Chalmers, another co-owner and operator of Green County Hemp. The lab, which is waiting on final city approval before production can begin, would help Green County Hemp process more CBD and delta-8 products, Bartels said.
“That’s what Green County Hemp is: high purity, high potency, that’s all we do,” Chalmers said. “We do it for far less than everybody else does, because we’re seed to sale.”
Other retailers, such as Herbal Aspect, purchase delta-8 products from third-party manufacturers. Robinson and his two partners are looking to open a store for Herbal Aspect on University Avenue near Hilldale because of the growing demand.
Robinson, who is the executive director of the Wisconsin chapter of marijuana-advocacy organization NORML, said delta-8 customers usually don’t report the “things that would typically associated with being uncomfortably high,” such as anxiety and paranoia.
When describing the effects of delta-9 compared to delta-8, Robinson uses an analogy appropriate for a college town.
“If (delta-9) were a college student, it would be a frat boy: ‘Party, party, party,'” Robinson said. “If delta-8 were a college student, it would be a sorority girl. She parties too — not quite like the frat boys, which is often a good thing — but she certainly parties.”
Under a 2018 federal law legalizing hemp and hemp-derived products, plants must be kept under a strict threshold for delta-9 THC — the main intoxicating ingredient of marijuana — but no limit on delta-8 THC is mentioned.
Legal status
Despite businesses making significant investments in delta-8, the legal status of the product is surrounded by uncertainty, according to a legal brief produced last month by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Council.
State and federal laws place a strict threshold on how much delta-9 THC can be contained in hemp or its byproducts but mention no limit on delta-8 THC.
According to the legal brief, the debate over legality boils down to whether delta-8 converted from hemp-derived CBD is protected by the federal 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp and derivative products, or if the processing makes it a synthetic THC, which would be an illegal controlled substance.
The state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, which oversees Wisconsin’s hemp program, hasn’t tested any delta-8 products to see whether they’re above the delta-9 limit, but instead focuses on hemp production, said spokesperson Leeann Duwe.
The complicated question over its legality crosses multiple regulatory jurisdictions, Duwe said, and “these questions are still under discussion across various agencies and entities at different levels of government.”
Several states, including those where marijuana is legal and others where it’s illegal, have banned delta-8 products in the past year. Producers and retailers contend the recreational marijuana industry feels threatened by the burgeoning popularity of delta-8.
“The legal cannabis industry, ironically, isn’t thrilled with delta-8 THC,” Robinson said. “It’s a real disrupter because of the price point, because of anecdotal similar efficacy and relief that it provides in regards to delta-9 THC. It’s really quite similar.”
Bartels and Chalmers both want to see regulation of the industry. In the absence of state oversight, they said Green County Hemp polices itself to provide quality products, such as testing all goods through a third-party lab before sale and being selective about what retailers it partners with.
Green County Hemp, which is co-owned by Brook Bartels, left, Scott Chalmers, right, and a third partner, has sales split nearly in half between its CBD products and those infused with delta-8 THC.
“I very much welcome regulatory measures implemented by the state, which I believe should be in place,” Bartels said.
Robinson said Herbal Aspect also gets third-party lab results for potency and leftover residuals, known as certificates of authenticity, on all the products the company sells. Both Herbal Aspect and Green County Hemp have a 21-or-older policy for delta-8.
But Piomelli, the cannabis research director, takes a skeptical view of the delta-8 trend, calling it a “rather misguided ruse” to circumvent already muddy federal and state laws across the country on marijuana regulation.
“I’d rather the people use delta-9 THC, which we know and understand, and then use it responsibly because we know what the risks are, in terms of acute risks and long-term risks, rather than now experimenting on a relatively different compound, (about) which we have so little information,” he said.
Market conditions
Despite a majority of Wisconsin voters favoring legalized marijuana, the GOP-controlled state Legislature has rebuffed several attempts to adopt medical and recreational marijuana. Wisconsin has become an “island of prohibition,” a group of Democratic state lawmakers said when introducing the latest legalization attempt earlier this month, as all surrounding states have some form of legal cannabis use.
Tim Nicholson sells delta-8 gummies through the website of his hemp-farming business, Driftless Dreams, and partnered with Woodman’s to sell them inside the grocery stores. If marijuana were legal in Wisconsin, Nicholson believes the market for delta-8 would largely dry up.
“People want legalized marijuana, which I will not be a part of — not morally and ethically, just because I think I’d get crushed by the bigger players,” he said.
But Robinson said delta-8 products appeal to casual users of cannabis because of its comparatively lower potency, especially when, he said, the marijuana black market emphasizes high potency.
“A much more casual user can really get a lot of enjoyment out of what we have available,” Robinson said.
Wisconsin started an industrial hemp pilot program in 2018 after decades of prohibition on growing the plant.
Driftless Dreams’ entry into the delta-8 market was driven by consumer demand, Nicholson said. He started his 3-acre hemp farm in 2018 on property Nicholson has owned near Viola for 20 years after former Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill allowing an industrial hemp pilot program.
Despite knowing nothing about hemp farming or processing CBD from the plant, Nicholson said he wanted to grow the crop to spur economic activity in the area. But more than three years on, Nicholson is blunt about his experience with the demand for CBD products: “There’s no market for it. I mean there’s a small market. Very small.”
Nicholson said he has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into infrastructure and equipment to process his hemp into CBD products. But since the market for CBD is small, Nicholson says, he has turned to selling delta-8 gummies, which are purchased from a third-party supplier.
“If delta-8 does become illegal, then that will put every CBD farmer, every CBD shop out of business in Wisconsin,” he said.
Know Your Madisonian 2021: Profiles from the Wisconsin State Journal’s weekly series
They’re your neighbors, co-workers or friends you may not have met yet. And they all have a story to tell.
Lessner started out in the laundromat business when he was about 10 years old helping his dad.
The Madison Police Department’s new public information officer Tyler Grigg wants to be timely, open and maybe even a little creative in his new position.
Rowan Childs, 44, wanted to fill her home with books for her own children to enjoy but knew not all children are able to have the same experience.
“I did find my passion,” says Sally Zirbel-Donisch, “… it was working with not only students and families but staff and partners in the community.”
In 1992, Kathy Kuntz enrolled in UW-Madison, expecting to earn a PhD in history, but it was a temp job as a receptionist at a nonprofit that led her into what would become a career in energy.
Michael Graf has written five screenplays: “Winter of Frozen Dreams,” “The Last Indian War,” “Throwing Hammers,” “Venice of America” and “Picket Charlie,” a just-finished environmental action picture tackling climate change.
A poll worker and volunteer interviewer for the Fire Department, Pranee Sheskey says she enjoys being part of making democracy work.
John Adams and Michael Moody founded the nonprofit Catalyst for Change in January 2020 to eliminate human suffering one life at a time by placing human dignity and development at the forefront of poverty, addiction and homelessness.
Harambee Village Doulas is trying to improve infant mortality, maternal health.
For more than two decades, the Droids Attack front man has refurbished games at his business Aftershock Retrogames. Now, he’s looking to open an arcade bar.
Tiffany Olson owns 120 plants, a Willy Street greenhouse store and a loving Havanese named Mia.
Matt Reetz has spent years studying birds, doing postdoctoral research around the United States, Australia, the Caribbean and southern Chile.
Tony Gomez-Phillips’ prairie-inspired planting connects Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture with a garden style that embodies his views of nature and how it interacts with humans.
Since 1962, the McCann family name led efforts to make sure Hilldale shopping center is clean and safe. Now Tom McCann has retired to fish, hunt turkeys and catch Dungeness crabs.
Out Health, run by Dr. Kathy Oriel, is in a former dentist’s office on University Avenue.
Ken Fager turned pandemic boredom into a popular public art campaign of 3D-printed miniature state Capitols placed throughout Downtown.
Teresa Holmes became Madison Rotary Club president in July.
The legal question boils down to whether delta-8 converted from hemp-derived CBD is protected by the federal 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp and derivative products, or if the processing makes it a synthetic THC, which would be an illegal controlled substance.
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