CBD Legality Uncertain as Missouri AG Remains Silent

October 1, 2019 08:00:35

Tax officials and the attorney general of Missouri have remained tightlipped about the legality of cannabidiol (CBD) within the state and this has left the business community unsure of whether they are operating legal businesses or not.

In documents that were accessed by some local media outlet, the former director of the Missouri Department of Revenue, Joel Walters, wrote to Attorney General Eric Schmitt in March asking for a legal opinion on the issue of giving sales tax licenses to businesses selling CBD.

Walters left the Department of Revenue toward the end of March. However, before he did, he suggested that CBD could be illegal based on the 2014 law under which hemp cultivation and processing programs were created in different states.

Under that 2014 law, Missouri issued hemp cultivation and extraction licenses to two businesses. The oil extracted could only be accessed by patients who needed it as medicine for epilepsy.

According to Walters, any company that sells CBD oil on the open market could be doing so illegally since that oil can only be sold as medicine to permit holders. That was his opinion by the time he left office.

The memo Walters wrote also indicated that the Department of Revenue didn’t yet have an opinion on whether CBD businesses could be issued sales tax licenses since his department had written to the AG and had not yet received a reply to their query.

Whether or not the Attorney General’s office eventually replied the letter from the Revenue Department is uncertain because neither the AG’s office nor the Revenue Department made public the information about that legal opinion.

The reality on the ground now is that CBD businesses that apply for licenses get those licenses as long as the documents that they submit together with their applications don’t mention CBD anywhere.

In the past three years, more than 20 CBD retail shops have sprung up in Missouri. It isn’t immediately clear what their sales tax licenses state, but the department of revenue is adamant that they haven’t licensed any business to sell CBD.

State lawmakers removed hemp having less than 0.3 percent THC content from the definition of marijuana, but that 2018 law didn’t make it clear whether CBD was now legal in the state.

The confusion over the legal status of CBD in the state is likely to deepen next year when hemp starts to be grown commercially. Experts are sure that industry actors like ChineseInvestors.com Inc. (OTCQB: CIIX) and Earth Science Tech Inc. (OTCQB: ETST) would want clarification to be given early so that Missouri farmers make informed decisions when choosing which type of hemp to grow next year.

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