USPS Inspectors Targeting CBD
USPS Inspectors Targeting CBD – this story should be a HUGE WARNING TO ANYONE THAT IS THINKING ABOUT SHIPPING CBD, HELP OR CANNABIS through the US Post Office or any of the overnight carriers. So here is the story.
Chris Martin’s Arizona-based CBD business has increased steadily over the past few years without
too many hitches, so he was surprised a few days ago to receive an ominous letter from federal criminal investigators.
“I’ve never had a package seized,” he said on Friday, “all of a sudden there’s a criminal investigation.”
He noted that the letter came less than a week after President Donald Trump signed the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018. The collection of agricultural-law updates contains a historic provision that removes hemp from the federal Controlled Substances Act, allowing it to be grown widely — under various restrictions — in the United States for the first time in decades. But industry experts caution that the effects of the law and how it can be applied, especially to end-use hemp products with CBD, is far from settled.
Martin said he fears the timing of his letter may indicate that the feds are cracking down on one end of the business following the Farm Bill’s passage.
He and his family run Hempful Farms, an expanding chain of stores that sell hemp-based items and an online service offering CBD-infused products for people and pets. Phoenix New Times featured him last year in an article about the industry, “The CBD Oil Boom: Making Money on Medical Marijuana for the Masses.”
The letter dated December 26 to Paw Puddy, the company’s pet division, from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s Criminal Investigations Services Center doesn’t exactly indicate an investigation is ongoing. But given the sender and the tone, it doesn’t sound good for Paw Puddy:
“The purpose of this letter,” it states, “is to advise you that pursuant to 39 U.S.C. [article] 3001, and U.S. Postal Service regulations, an item placed into the U.S. Postal Service mail stream is currently being withheld from delivery as there are reasonable grounds to believe its contents are nonmailable as proscribed in U.S. Postal Publication Service 52, Hazardous, Restricted, and Perishable mail.”
The products sent to a customer weren’t perishable — they were soap and CBD oil, Martin said. In other words, they were the typical goods mailed out to customers. The letter, (see below), asks the company to call the postal service for questions and gives instructions on how to appeal the decision. No other products have been stopped by the post office, but Martin is concerned.
“We called and let them know we didn’t give them permission to search the package,” he said. “They can talk to our attorneys.”
The post office said they might hear back in a couple of days, he said. He noted that the post office made a decision in November that mailing CBD was legal.
In the meantime, while some mailed CBD continues to be the target of police actions in other states, such enforcement doesn’t seem to be happening on a state level in Arizona.
Whether or not the timing of the letter means Paw Puddy’s in actual trouble, Martin’s concern is a reminder that a crackdown on CBD remains possible given current federal guidelines. Hemp, made from the cannabis sativa L. plant, contains 0.3 percent THC by law, and can’t get people stoned. But it remains under much tighter federal regulation than tomatoes or alfalfa.
On the day Trump signed the bill, the Food and Drug Administration issued a lengthy update about the agency’s powers and policies concerning CBD.
See the complete article at source: Postal Inspector’s Warning Letter to Arizona CBD Maker Shows Farm Bill’s Limits
