A Maryland hemp industry association and hemp businesses are suing the state over cannabis licensing and seized products, the Baltimore Sun reports. The Maryland Hemp Coalition, 10 businesses owners, and consumers of the products at the heart of the lawsuit argue that state laws illegally regulate hemp-derived products that are federally legal and that state agents are now selectively enforcing “erroneous testing standards” to seize items from shelves.
The lawsuit also attacks state laws that cap cannabis licenses and how they are issued, including the state’s lottery for new businesses and social equity provisions. Nevin Young, the attorney representing the groups, told the Sun that the state’s licensing system was an unnecessary control intended to inflate cannabis prices and increase business values. He called it “communist cannabis.”
The lawsuit asks a federal judge to rule that the social equity program and limits on the number of cannabis licenses, and how they’re issued, are unconstitutional.
In a statement, Levi Sellers, president of the Maryland Hemp Coalition, said the law is “a model of regulatory overreach and economic favoritism,” and that the state is “stripping the rights of compliant hemp businesses and handing the market to politically connected cannabis dispensaries.”
The state issued 205 licenses last year via its social equity lottery. 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.”
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