Key Takeaways
- Ohio SB 56 creates a divide between the regulatory frameworks for marijuana and hemp, leading to different enforcement standards.
- Hemp businesses argue they face stricter regulations compared to marijuana dispensaries, impacting their market participation.
- The Ohio Department of Commerce claims they are enforcing a law based on voter-approved regulations, with no provisions for hemp.
- Federal court rulings temporarily block SB 56 enforcement for certain companies, complicating the legal landscape for hemp businesses.
- The ongoing regulatory disparity raises questions about fairness and consistency in enforcement across Ohio’s cannabis market.
Ohio spent years building a legal marijuana market from the ground up. Voters approved it, regulators licensed it, and the state built an entire division to police it. Hemp businesses, meanwhile, grew out of a federal loophole nobody planned for and operated with almost no oversight for years. Senate Bill 56 tried to fold those two worlds into one regulatory framework. What it actually produced looks more like two separate cannabinoid markets running side by side, with different rules, different enforcement bodies, and, according to hemp operators, very different levels of scrutiny.
A Ohio hemp distribution and manufacturing business owner, put it bluntly to Ohio’s Statehouse News Bureau: “Ohio has created two different standards, one standard for big marijuana and the other standard for Ohio’s hemp industry and its consumers.” That’s a serious accusation to level at a state regulatory system, and it deserves a real look at what’s actually happening on the ground, not just what each side claims.
This isn’t a simple story of a state versus an industry. It’s a story about two regulatory bodies with different legal mandates, a THC potency gap that looks arbitrary from the outside, and an enforcement agency caught policing both systems at once. We already broke down what SB 56 does to Ohio’s cannabis laws when it took effect in March. This is about how the state is actually enforcing it, and why the answer depends on who you ask.
What Hemp Businesses Say Is Happening on the Ground
The argument centers on a straightforward comparison. Before SB 56, his hemp manufacturing business could sell THC beverages and other hemp-derived products directly to consumers. After the law took effect in March 2026, those sales became illegal outside the state’s licensed dispensary system.
Meanwhile, dispensaries operating under the adult-use system Ohio voters approved in 2023’s Issue 2 can sell marijuana extracts with THC concentrations up to 70%, far above the 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container now allowed for hemp products.
“I don’t accept the idea that one group of businesses gets the full weight of the government brought down on them, while the other group gets a different standard,” Wesley Bryant told Ohio’s Statehouse News Bureau. He also pointed out that entering the licensed dispensary system isn’t a realistic option for most small hemp operators. Ohio caps active dispensary licenses at 400 statewide, and the cost of acquiring one of those licenses is, in Bryant’s words, “unattainable for most.”
Bryant’s hemp manufacturing company falls under the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s jurisdiction, not the Division of Cannabis Control. That matters because two separate agencies regulate hemp businesses and dispensaries, yet the same enforcement arm steps in when either industry runs into trouble.
How the State Defends the Regulatory Split
The Ohio Department of Commerce, which houses the Division of Cannabis Control, pushes back on the idea that hemp businesses face an unfair standard. The department roots its position in what Issue 2 actually authorized back in 2023.
According to a statement from the department, “the Division of Cannabis Control is simply enacting the initiated statute that was approved by voters in 2023, which included a very strict regulatory system for marijuana in Ohio.” The agency emphasized that the ballot initiative “did not include any provisions governing hemp,” which means the DCC’s regulatory authority was never intended to extend to hemp products in the first place.
The agency directly addressed the comparison hemp businesses are drawing, stating that some parties claim voters approved all THC products including intoxicating hemp, but calling that characterization “simply not true.”
There’s a legal nuance worth noting here too. Under SB 56, the DCC does hold statutory authority to modify potency limits for cannabis products that aren’t plant material, which is part of why dispensary extract caps sit where they do.
From the state’s perspective, this isn’t a case of picking favorites. It’s two different legal mandates producing two different sets of rules, because only one of those mandates ever touched hemp to begin with.
Why the Same Enforcement Agency Polices Both Markets
Here’s where the split market gets genuinely complicated. Even though hemp and marijuana fall under separate regulatory agencies, on paper, the Ohio Investigative Unit enforces the rules for both industries in practice. That single point of enforcement is part of what fuels the hemp industry’s frustration. Bryant and others argue that if one agency is responsible for policing both sectors, the disparity in treatment becomes harder to explain as simply a matter of jurisdiction.
The Ohio Investigative Unit operates under the Department of Public Safety. Under SB 56, agents can make arrests, execute search warrants, and enter licensed premises where they suspect violations. That authority applies across both the hemp and marijuana spaces, which means the same officers enforcing dispensary compliance are also the ones responding to hemp retailers selling products that exceed the new 0.4 milligram THC cap.
Whether that produces uneven enforcement in practice is difficult to verify from the outside. What is verifiable is that the statutory framework gives one agency broad enforcement reach across two markets that operate under entirely different rules. That structure alone creates the appearance of inconsistency, even if every individual enforcement action is technically defensible under the letter of the law.
Federal Injunctions Have Made the Market Even Harder to Track
If the state and hemp regulatory split wasn’t complicated enough, federal court intervention has carved out yet another layer. Two separate federal cases have resulted in preliminary injunctions blocking SB 56’s enforcement, but only for the specific companies named in each lawsuit.
In July 2026, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction in Titan Logistics Group LLC et al. v. Tischler, protecting ten named companies. Then in September, Judge Jeffrey Helmick issued a broader preliminary injunction in Delta Beverages Inc. et al. v. Canepa et al., this time citing a likely dormant Commerce Clause violation.
Helmick wrote that “Ohio law clearly restricts the commercial market for federally legal intoxicating hemp products to only those companies that source, manufacture, and distribute their products solely within Ohio,” which he found to be exactly the kind of economic protectionism the Commerce Clause is meant to prevent.
Between the two cases, roughly two dozen companies now have federal court protection to keep selling hemp products that remain illegal for everyone else in the state. Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson didn’t mince words about the result, describing it as creating “confusion and chaos into Ohio’s marijuana markets” and warning of “a patchwork intoxicating-hemp market that will harm consumers, businesses, and law enforcement.”
That patchwork is the practical reality the Ohio Investigative Unit now has to work within. A product’s legality in Ohio today depends not just on its THC content, but on whether the company that made it happens to appear in a federal court docket. That’s an enforcement puzzle few regulatory agencies are built to solve cleanly.
The Irony Hemp Businesses Aren’t Talking About
There’s a piece of this story hemp businesses tend to leave out, and it’s worth stating plainly: the hemp industry’s current position looks very different from where it sat just a few years ago.
The 2018 Farm Bill created the loophole that let intoxicating hemp products flourish in the first place, by legalizing hemp containing less than 0.3% THC without meaningfully addressing how much total THC a finished product could contain. That gap let manufacturers produce delta-8 THC gummies, drinks, and vapes sold in gas stations and convenience stores with essentially no age verification, inconsistent lab testing, and minimal labeling requirements.
Meanwhile, marijuana businesses spent years navigating expensive licensing processes, strict testing mandates, and buffer zone restrictions just to open their doors.
That history doesn’t settle whether SB 56’s enforcement is fair today, but it does complicate the fairness argument hemp businesses are making. For years, hemp operated with far less oversight than the dispensary system now accused of getting preferential treatment. The current complaint from hemp businesses isn’t that regulation exists. It’s that the regulation lands harder on them than on dispensaries selling similar products under a different label. Whether that’s a double standard or simply the cost of two industries maturing on different timelines depends largely on which side of the counter you’re standing on.
Where Ohio’s Two-Track Cannabis Market Goes From Here
Ohio’s cannabinoid market isn’t likely to simplify anytime soon. New federal restrictions will cap total THC at 0.4 milligrams per container starting in 2026, which could narrow the scope of what the Delta Beverages injunction protects. Since the order ties its relief to whatever qualifies as hemp under federal law, any shift in that definition will directly affect the injunction’s reach.
The Titan Logistics case is currently on appeal to the Sixth Circuit, and a ruling there could either extend protection to more companies or eliminate it entirely, depending on which way the court leans.
Meanwhile, the Ohio Healthy Alternatives Association has signaled it intends to keep fighting on behalf of hemp businesses, and the underlying legal question, whether SB 56’s structure violates the dormant Commerce Clause, remains unresolved at the merits stage in both federal cases.
Whether Bryant’s “two standards” framing holds up may ultimately depend less on regulatory intent and more on how consistently the Ohio Investigative Unit can apply one set of rules across a market that currently has at least three: dispensaries operating under Issue 2, hemp businesses left outside it entirely, and a small cluster of companies operating under federal court protection nobody else in the state has access to.
Regulatory disparity, real or perceived, tends to persist until someone with authority forces a single standard. In Ohio, that hasn’t happened yet.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ohio SB 56 is a law that took effect March 20, 2026, redefining hemp-derived products with more than 0.3% total THC as marijuana. The law caps hemp-derived cannabinoid products at 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container and requires retailers to sell any products exceeding that limit exclusively through licensed marijuana dispensaries.
Ohio hemp businesses argue that the adult-use system voters approved in 2023 lets licensed dispensaries sell marijuana extracts with THC concentrations up to 70%, while a far stricter 0.4 milligram cap applies to hemp products, which the dispensary system largely excludes.
The Department of Commerce maintains that Issue 2, the 2023 ballot initiative that legalized adult-use marijuana, never included provisions governing hemp. It says the Division of Cannabis Control’s authority is confined to marijuana regulation and that claims voters approved intoxicating hemp under Issue 2 are inaccurate.
The Ohio Investigative Unit oversees both hemp and marijuana industries, despite them being regulated by different state departments.
Federal courts have temporarily blocked SB 56 enforcement for a small number of specific companies named in two lawsuits, based on dormant Commerce Clause grounds. For all other hemp businesses, SB 56 remains fully in effect.
