Why South Carolina’s Proposed Hemp Bills Miss the Mark

For a long time now, we have said that South Carolina needs a clearer and more enforceable framework for hemp. Regulation is not something our company has resisted, rather it's something we have consistently supported publicly, because consumer safety and long term market stability depend on it.

Carolina Dream has never tried to operate in gray areas. We've long supported age limits, third party testing, clear labeling, and enforcement that actually has teeth, and we planned for regulation well before it became a legislative priority.

House Bills 3924 and 4759, now moving through the South Carolina State House, do not reflect that goal.

The proposed hemp bills take a category that is diverse and already partially regulated and reduce it to something blunt. They treat hemp as a single risk category rather than focusing on how products are formulated, tested, labeled, and sold, which ignores how consumers actually use these products and how responsible operators already manage risk.

Hemp products are not interchangeable. A CBD dominant wellness product does not carry the same risk profile as a synthetic THC analog, and dose, formulation, and serving size materially affect outcomes. Responsible operators already account for these factors when making decisions.

The current proposals do not meaningfully distinguish between companies that have invested in compliance and those that have not. Businesses that have paid for third party lab testing, kept formulations conservative, labeled products clearly, and restricted sales to adults are treated the same as operators who ignored those responsibilities entirely, which undermines the incentive to operate responsibly in the first place.

Eliminating lawful product categories does not eliminate demand. It redirects consumers toward less transparent alternatives, interstate shipments, or unregulated channels where oversight is weaker and consumer protections are harder to enforce.

There is also a real economic cost to consider. South Carolina has local manufacturers, farmers, retailers, and logistics partners who chose to build businesses here with the expectation that operating responsibly mattered, and when those businesses disappear, jobs go with them and investment slows while enforcement becomes harder, not easier.

Carolina Dream has consistently advocated for a framework that rewards compliance and creates clear expectations, including enforceable 21 and up age limits, mandatory third party testing tied to specific batches, clear cannabinoid disclosure, and targeted enforcement against companies that ignore the rules.

If the goal is consumer safety, the path forward is to make unsafe behavior difficult and responsible behavior viable. Broad bans and narrow carve outs do not achieve that outcome and instead simplify legislation while complicating enforcement.

South Carolina still has an opportunity to get this right. Doing so requires slowing down, listening to operators who have been acting in good faith, and building a regulatory framework that can be enforced without dismantling the market it is meant to govern.

That course correction is still possible.