What implications can be drawn from the recent decision on Indiana’s smokable hemp ban?

Although opponents of the ban had their positive result overthrown by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the decision is not as bad as a headline might suggest.

The Appeals court merely decided that the lower court went too far in restricting the enforcement of Indiana’s ban. This means that smokable hemp has still be a viable product in the state. The case returns to the lower court that decided in the favour of the companies looking to overturn the ban to see if there is a better way to strike a better balance between the state’s right to regulate hemp production and the Farm Bill’s mandate that states not interfere with the transportation of industrial hemp.

However, what may be an issue is that one of the arguments supporting the initial case was that the ban interfered with federal law guaranteeing interstate commerce in hemp. And in between the court decisions, the Indiana state government enacted a law to clarify that smokable hemp may be transported through the state “from a licensed producer in another state in continuous transit through Indiana to a licensed handler in any state”.

But opponents of the ban had other arguments and those may be enough to lead to a further positive ruling.

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