Feds warn Florida breweries to stop making marijuana-flavored beer

The problem is pressure from the alcohol/tobacco lobbyists who don't wanna Big Canna cutting in on their action

 

From the article:

"If you’ve used an ingredient, like 1/8cannabis 3/8 terpenes oil, you would need to come to us for formula approval first, since that product isn’t recognized as a traditional beer ingredient," Hogue says. Depending on the recipe’s complexity, he says, oil-infused beers may also need independent approval from the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration."

 

In fairness navigating the current state of marijuana laws is something of a baffling and random moving target. States have different laws, and the federal laws that in theory supersede those laws are at best capriciously applied.

 

Call it a pharmaceutical beer and they'll allow experimental studies on people though. I'll be the guinea pig.

 

Thing is, this has nothing to do with pot laws (at least, not yet). It has to do with alcohol industry regulations, which any professional brewer should be familiar with. The "TTB" is the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.

 

I have an example. I smoke a vape that inside it is CBD oil. I use it for medicinal reasons. My doctor knows...etc...etc.... it is "weed" the thc is extracted so i get benefits of marijuana without feeling stoned. It helps. The reason its relevant is because terpenes could have thc extracted BUT good look explaining this to peoplr who dont know what it is and it looks or smells exactly like weed, (because it is) but scientifically wouldnt alter your mind. Cbd, terpenes etc are not FDA regulated and rules vary by state. Federally only the THC chemical is illegal. Remove it, and you "should"? Be fine. Semantics causes the latter to technically be ok. But again, its semantics.

 

This is what I still don't understand. Terpenes are the chemicals that we recognize as smells. They are not unique to cannabis, they are present everywhere and a skilled nose can make any smell they desire out of the full palette of terpenes. THC doesn't have to be removed from terpenes, they can be synthesized or extracted from just about anything (herbs, citrus peels, woods, etc..) and they are widely available, in fact my understanding is that cannabis derived terpenes are more expensive than any others.

 

Again, over-focusing on the pot. TTB regulates what can go in beer without submitting for review by the feds. Since their "special" ingredient is not on the pre-approved list, the recipe needed to be submitted for TTB review and approval.

 

Generally regarded as super safe- GRASS. It seems as if (part of) the non THC part of cannabis
has been approved today for treatment of epilepsy. It is a complex recreational and medicinal plant for longer than we know. Cannabis has applications yet to be discovered. Legalize the stuff nationally, collect the revenues, and take it away from the illicit markets! I agree with John Boehner!

 

Sure, but I can't say that I'd call anyone stupid or inexperienced because they thought that this particular rule wouldn't be tightly enforced. There are any number of "obvious" violations involving marijuana that go completely ignored these days.

If you wanted to say they shouldn't complain too hard that they got busted then I'd grant you that, but saying that only Beavis and Butthead would make a similar decision is at odds with how randomly this stuff is enforced.

 

Again, my comment has nothing to do with law enforcement.

The brewers claimed in the article that they did not know about TTB requirements. Borderline incompetence, IMO, for a professional brewer to be ignorant of such regulations.

 

But I'm saying that there is all sorts of regulatory crap that is routinely ignored or at best inconsistently enforced. If you're saying that the TTB would have been just as likely to send them a cease and desist letter if they used an unapproved rose hip extract than if they used something cannabis related then I'll have to defer to your greater knowledge on the subject.

 

Yes, that seems to me to be what he is saying. See post #22 above for a quote I posted.

A few years back Flying Dog had to even go the extra step and get FDA approval to use four leaf clover in their St. Patrick’s day beer.

 

Thanks, and I do see where our disconnect appears to have been now. But, the article also says this:

"After reading the cease-and-desist letter, Gillis called the TTB. An agency representative explained the crackdown on breweries started after recent media coverage alerted the agency to South Florida’s marijuana-beer trend."

So it sounds like if there wasn't recent media coverage (and there wouldn't have been media coverage if it wasn't cannabis related) it would have flown under the radar. And the brewers sent their oil to a lab to confirm it had no THC or CBD, so they were attempting to make an effort to do what they assumed was necessary and right even if they were ignorant of the TTB requirement. I think treating them like a bunch of dumb stoners who don't know what they're doing is unnecessarily harsh (not that you did that).

 

Yes, it could have flown under the radar if not for the publicity, but as @MNAle says, professional brewers should know the TTB regulations that apply to their business. That's part of being a professional. Doesn't matter how well you brew if you don't know the laws governing the operation of a brewery and selling your product.

My point about Flying Dog example is that the same thing could have happened to them (the C&D) if Flying Dog had not known and followed the rules for approval of an ingredient. Flying Dog even had to go to the extra step of getting FDA approval since a four leaf clover had never been approved for use as an ingredient in any food product.

 

This is probably veering into a boringly minute point of disagreement but I guess my assumption is that this level of ignorance is not all that uncommon with very small businesses. They didn't face a massive fine or anything, they just got a cease and desist letter and now they know. Flying Dog is a comparatively large company and once you've been distributing beers across state lines I'm sure your level of knowledge (and exposure) grows considerably. If we weren't calling them stupid I wouldn't have an issue with saying they perhaps should have known better.

 

No. Not exactly. Hops have all of the components the TTB have their tits in a clamp over. With it becoming an industrial product with no THC near it. ANd also probably no CBD either. It's just a benign substance with no redeeming value as contraband for recreational purposes.
In fact. It's highly interesting to see what kind of detail brewers can learn from what they know about them.
https://bit.ly/1QoDIhY

 

You don't consider investing something like your life savings, the money of friends and family, the future of employees and possibly your own future (in the form of taking of a large debt) into a business without knowing how to run a business knowing the laws governing that business "stupid?"

You're right that level of ignorance is not uncommon in start ups and that level of ignorance is one of the reasons that across the board roughly 50% of all startups fail within 5 years.

It's not exactly hard to find the TTB rules and procedure or the Trademark rules and procedure online if one takes the trouble to look for them.

Yes they could have learned on the job, but as a friend of mine used to say, "I have to learn from the mistakes of others, I don't have time to make them all myself."

 

I think this is a little melodramatic given the magnitude of the discipline that was handed to them.

And I think we've probably beaten this topic into the ground at this point so let's just agree to disagree

 

Some of you guys (@MostlyNorwegian and @meefmoff just above, and perhaps others... too lazy to scroll back up) keep focusing on the pot laws, lax or inconsistent enforcement, how the TTB got wind of them, etc. None of that has anything to do with my original quotes from the article or my comment about them.

There guys are professional brewers, yet they say openly that they are ignorant of one of the major federal regulations governing brewing beer to sell to the public. If not being actually stupid, it is certainly acting stupid.

Hence, the Beavis and Butt-head reference.

Hey, dude, heh, heh, we're gonna brew beer heh, heh, we're gonna score!

I may be insulting someone's favorite brewery (or 2), but, IMO, that admission by them is inexcusable.