Hemp Hemp Hooray owner Kevin Halderman has sold hemp products like edibles, decor topicals and vapes since 2019. His Columbia shop has remained open through shifting consumer taste, a global pandemic and the legalization of marijuana in Missouri. But five years on, legal and market challenges have forced him to close his doors.
The move follows Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s executive order this month that is threatening to make popular hemp-derived intoxicants illegal to sell.
Halderman said he was already facing market pressure from an oversaturated CBD and THC market, but the executive order was the nail in the coffin.
“Our lease was actually up at the end of next month, and so we kind of had to make a decision,” he said. “So we made it officially the day that he signed that executive order."
Parson’s order targets all psychoactive products made from hemp. Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft refused to sign the emergency order, which caused the ban to be delayed by at least six months. Halderman said had he known about the delay, he still would have closed the store because of the looming threat.
“If we had to shift to where we couldn't sell anything intoxicating, I mean, it would be about 50% of our sales,” he said.
Halderman said the influx of dispensaries that have cropped up since Missouri legalized marijuana has also hurt business.
“I think the saturation of the industry has really, really hurt some of our mom and pop stores, and not just me,” he said. “There's a lot of traditional CBD stores that had supported the industry, and then through recreational happening, we just lost our customer base.
“A lot of the other issues were some of the illicit (products) that were coming in, probably from China. It made the market very hard to work in, and you had to do super high volumes to compete on a price. And that just really, really hurts the whole industry that way too.”
Halderman said overseas companies that ship their products into Missouri have also damaged the hemp industry because their products seemed to be the impetus for Parson’s order. At the press conference announcing the order, Parson focused on products coming in from out-of-state and did not address the impact the ban would have on local producers.
“There's nobody in this room that can tell me where this product comes from,” Parson said at the press conference announcing the order, referring to a cannabis edible that from a distance looked indistinguishable from a normal bag of candy. “My guess is these products are coming from overseas. Places, well could be China, could be overseas suppliers, that are supplying this to our kids here in the United States."
At the press conference, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said he is conducting an investigation “to determine the source of these illicit products.”
Halderman and others in the Missouri hemp industry have said they support regulations, but believe they have been unfairly maligned.
“This store that we're in, we've been here for years,” he said. “I mean, we paid a lot of taxes, we paid a lot of rent up here, and I think we've done everything that we could do to make sure our products were safe.”
Hemp Hemp Hooray’s Osage Beach location will stay in business.
