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For the first time, more young women are using cannabis than men — and that’s got retailers rethinking their strategies.
Two employees of a shuttered Columbia vape shop who were accused by police of illegally selling hemp claim they were falsely imprisoned and maliciously prosecuted following a police raid. They’re now suing.
Crowntown Cannibis, vape shop in the Five Points district in Columbia, S.C. closed in 2024 following a police raid where charges were brought …
Connie Jackson and Alessandra Morales are suing the City of Columbia and SLED Chief Mark Keel after Columbia police officers and SLED agents charged the women with illegally possessing hemp without a license while working at the now defunct Crowntown Cannabis in Five Points. Jackson was also charged with conspiracy to distribute marijuana as police claim she misrepresented the sale of a product as hemp during a transaction with an undercover officer.
Charges against the women followed a 2023 raid where police confiscated 15 to 20 pounds of “green, plant-like material” the officers “perceived” to be marijuana at the vape shop. The officers ticketed employees at the shop, including Morales, and arrested Jackson, who was the store manager.
Jackson and Morales, who were eventually cleared of the charges, claim in a lawsuit they suffered a slew of damages because of the raid, including emotional and psychological injury, mental anguish and distress and embarrassment.
Crowntown Cannabis, also a plaintiff in the suit, claims the City of Columbia contributed to the store’s demise when the city refused to renew the store’s business license after Jackson and Morales were charged.
Following litigation, however, the city granted the business a conditional license, provided it removed any signage that included the word “cannabis” from outside of the store, the suit said.
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But in light of financial losses from defending their employees and their lost wages, litigation over the business license issue, and lost sales, Crowntown permanently closed in 2024, according to the lawsuit.
The shop’s owner, Mike Sims, previously told The State he thinks Columbia police wanted to make an example of the shop, but he doesn’t think the store was breaking the law. He asserts that the store was never selling marijuana, but it did sell hemp-derived THC products he believes are legal under federal and state law.
Sims declined to comment recently about the lawsuit until he received approval from his attorneys.
The Columbia Police Department said its policy is to not comment on pending lawsuits. SLED did not respond to a request for comment.
The key point of contention in the lawsuit is whether the hemp sold in Crowntown Cannabis was legal. Under state and federal law, products made from hemp plants that have been processed and “prepared in a form available for commercial sale” are legal, according to the lawsuit. “Unprocessed or raw plant material” is illegal.
South Carolina law gives examples of legal products that can be made from hemp, including cosmetics, personal care products, food intended for animal or human consumption, cloth, fiber, fuel, paint, paper, and particleboard, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also said that marijuana and legal, processed hemp can often smell the same. In 2018, Keel announced that SLED was canceling its marijuana certification and testing programs because it “cannot differentiate between industrial hemp and marijuana,” according to the lawsuit.
On Jan. 10, 2023, an undercover CPD officer approached Jackson in the store seeking “fire.”
“Fire” is a term a CPD investigator regarded as slang for “high grade marijuana,” according to the lawsuit.
“In reality, ‘fire’ can be used to describe anything one finds ‘really good, amazing, crazy (in a good way),’ the suit read.
Jackson told the undercover officer that such products were only available via shipment and not available in the store. The undercover officer completed a transaction in the store that would later be shipped.
When the CPD undercover officer received the package, it was forwarded to SLED’s lab for testing, where it tested positive for marijuana, according to a CPD report.
The lawsuit maintains that the “fire” sold by the store was legal hemp.
On January 18, 2023, the Columbia Police Department and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division descended on Crowntown Cannabis to investigate the vape shop, located at 610 Harden St. The raid resulted in the charges brought against Jackson and Morales.
CPD’s claims “about contents of the hemp product being ‘consistent with high grade marijuana’ is a knowing self-serving statement, as defendants know there would be no distinguishable physical or olfactory difference between ‘high grade’ hemp or marijuana,” the lawsuit said.
Moreover, the suit claims that Johnson provided a receipt and business card to the undercover CPD officer in case of problems with the delivery of the product.
“Illegal drug deals are rarely consummated with the person selling illegal drugs providing a receipt and business card to the person purchasing the illegal drugs,” the suit said.
In their lawsuit, Jackson and Morales argue that South Carolina’s law on the manufacturing, processing and selling of hemp is murky and problematic in that it fails to clarify guidelines for the production, processing and sell of hemp.
Indeed, inconsistent enforcement has surrounded the sale of hemp products in South Carolina, law enforcement, hemp farmers and retailers have all agreed.
The South Carolina General Assembly passed the Hemp Farming Act in 2019, which define parameters relating to “hemp,” “hemp products,” the “handling” and “processing” of hemp along with the permissible level of THC in the product.
“South Carolina’s laws governing the production, processing and selling of hemp and CBD … were ‘not drafted with the greatest of clarity and needs legislative or judicial clarification,’ ” the lawsuit said, citing a 2019 opinion by South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson.
Confusion essentially surrounding the law involves whether a person needs a license, issued by the South Carolina Department of Agriculture, in order to sell hemp out of a retail store.
Plaintiffs argue that under the law, only persons manufacturing and processing raw hemp must have a license, and that requirement that does not extend to retailers selling processed hemp, such as Jackson and Morales.
“Under the plain-language of the (law), there is no licensure requirement to possess, handle, transport or sale hemp products,” the suit said.
Wilson and police, however, say possessing raw hemp — something police say they seized at Crowntown — requires a license.
Plaintiffs maintain that hemp “trimmed, cut, measured to weight, commercially packaged, labeled and priced-for-retail sale” cannot be deemed raw under the law.
In addition to claims of emotional and psychological injury, mental anguish and distress and embarrassment, the plaintiffs are suing for damages related to apprehension and anxiety, out-of-pocket expenses, lost income/sales revenue, pain and suffering, attorney fees and court costs in defending the criminal charges, injury to reputation and standing in the community, personal humiliation and wounded feelings caused by injury to reputation.
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For the first time, more young women are using cannabis than men — and that’s got retailers rethinking their strategies.
Crowntown Cannibis, vape shop in the Five Points district in Columbia, S.C. closed in 2024 following a police raid where charges were brought against employees.
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