Louisiana may have accidentally legalized THC products. Now officials want to crack down.

In November, John Williams, the top beer lobbyist in Louisiana, sent out a mass email to legislators with an alarming subject line: “Recreational THC is now legal in Louisiana.”

He distributed pictures of gas stations and smoke shops advertising products full of THC — the psychoactive chemical found in marijuana – many of which hit the shelves after House Speaker Clay Schexnayder ushered through legislation to set up a legal hemp industry in the state. In a followup email, Williams, who opposed the hemp legislation, said the businesses selling the THC-laden products play by a looser set of rules than alcohol retailers.

The effort to loosen the rules on hemp, which followed a similar action in the federal farm bill in 2018, was initially pitched as a way to establish hemp — a cousin of marijuana with far lower levels of the psychoactive chemicals — as an agricultural commodity. But Schexnayder’s 2022 bill set up an “adult-use” market for consumable products made from hemp. Schexnayder assured fellow legislators, many of whom oppose legal recreational marijuana, that his legislation wouldn’t give people access to products that get them high.