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If Oregon wasn't already the weed capital of the West Coast, it is now.
On Aug. 1, new rules went into effect in Washington state banning CBD food and drinks from being sold outside of licensed cannabis retailers, Leafly reported. That means Oregon is now the last state left on West Coast where consumers can buy CBD products from the grocery store.
Although the Farm Bill, which congress passed in 2018, legalized the production and sale of hemp-derived CBD, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved CBD as a legal food product.
State legislators in New York, California, and now Washington have all instituted bans on CBD food and drinks being sold outside of licensed dispensaries in order to comply with FDA regulations.
"Part of the challenge here is just overcoming misinformation around what the impacts of the 2018 Farm Bill were and people not understanding exactly what the regulatory environment is," Steve Fuller, assistant director of the Food Safety and Consumer Services division of the Washington State Department of Agriculture, told Leafly.
Fuller added that the department aims to crack down on CBD products with "outreach and education" rather than aggressive enforcement.
The FDA is still in the process of testing CBD as a legal food product, and is expected to issue findings later this year.