Cannabis: cannabinoids: industrial hemp.

Assembly Member Aguiar-Curry’s measure presents a sweeping reorientation of California’s cannabinoid regime, weaving industrial hemp regulation into the state’s cannabis framework while extending licensing, enforcement, track-and-trace, labeling, advertising, and tax administration to hemp-derived products that enter the licensed market. The bill vies to align MAUCRSA-regulated activities with a tightened definition of industrial hemp, broaden regulatory oversight of hemp products, and codify a more integrated set of rules across agencies, including labor-and-safety provisions and consumer protections embedded in labeling and testing requirements.

A central change would redefine industrial hemp as a product derived from the cannabis plant containing no more than 0.3 percent total THC on a dry-weight basis, aligning with specified statutory standards and bringing hemp into the cannabis regulatory orbit when it enters the licensed market or is used in cannabis products. The measure would prohibit sale or in-state consumption of hemp flowers and prerolls, as well as inhalable hemp products that contain cannabinoids derived from hemp. It would require hemp entering the licensed market to comply with cannabis regulations, including tracking, testing, security, and advertising restrictions, and would prevent transfer of hemp if cultivation used banned pesticides. In addition, MAUCRSA would not apply to CBD isolate alone, with conforming changes to maintain regulatory coherence.

To implement these goals, the bill expands the state’s track-and-trace infrastructure to cover cannabis, industrial hemp, and hemp products, mandating unique identifiers for plants, harvest batches, and manufactured batches, and creating an interoperable, third-party–accessible data system that can flag irregularities and support enforcement. It imposes new labeling and consumer-safety duties, such as requiring certificates of analysis linked by quick-response codes to product information, batch data, and cannabinoid and contaminant levels, and it tightens advertising rules to restrict likenesses of regulatory symbols and other marketing practices. The enforcement framework would broaden civil penalties for unlicensed activity, empower seizures by multiple agencies, and introduce penalties related to misrepresentation and systematic violations, while aligning tax administration to a wider set of products deemed cannabis or cannabis products, with enhanced collection authority and penalties for noncompliance.

The proposal also integrates labor standards and occupational-safety requirements into licensing, including mandates for labor peace agreements for larger licensees, required OSHA safety training for key personnel, and robust disclosure duties around land ownership and operating procedures. It carves out a staged implementation with dates for specific conformity measures and cross-references to a companion measure that could shape the timing of several provisions, underscoring the package’s regulatory heft and its reliance on interagency coordination among the cannabis control, public health, and tax agencies. Taken together, the changes seek a more unified, safety-focused regime that treats hemp entering the cannabis market as subject to the same core regulatory disciplines, supports stronger consumer information and enforcement mechanisms, and expands the fiscal and administrative tools available to state and local authorities.