For many years, we’ve written about California’s truly bizarre animus towards hemp-derived CBD. Many efforts to regulate CBD failed. Last year, the state finally managed to pass AB-45 but the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) hasn’t really done anything since. That will change soon. Finally, California will regulate CBD.

California is getting CBD regulations

At the end of April 2022, CDPH published proposed emergency CBD regulations. The comment period runs through the end of May 2022. We strongly encourage stakeholders to submit comments to any part of the regulations they find objectionable. Once the regulations are finally adopted, they will be notoriously hard to change. CDPH posted guidance for submitting comments here.

How will California regulate CBD?

CDPH’s proposed emergency regulations are not as exhaustive as, say, its old cannabis regulations were. They clock in at around ten pages, and deal mostly with registration for industrial hemp manufacturers. Here are some of the key points:

• Different kinds of hemp product manufacturers get different kinds of registrations, licenses, and/or authorizations from the agency. Manufacturers who make different types of product may need multiple registrations.
• Some out-of-state manufacturers must register with CDPH to import products here.
• There is a separate “enrollment and oversight authorization” that lasts one year. Manufacturers need them at each location and cannot transfer them.
• Applications for oversight authorizations require detailed information about sources, types of product, extract methods, etc. Owners have to sign them under penalty of perjury.
• Fees are based on gross revenue in the trailing 12 months. New applicants need to estimate fees. There are complex formulas for calculating fees. There is one fee structure for extract manufacturers and another for all other CBD product type manufacturers.

This is just a basic overview of how California will regulate CBD in the near future. Inevitably, we’ll see more detailed regulation for things like marketing, advertising, and consumer sales. But it’s at least heartening to know that four years after the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, California is finally regulating CBD.

California Will Regulate CBD on Harris Bricken Sliwoski LLP.