DUBUQUE, Iowa (KCRG) — Law enforce­ment offi­cials in Dubuque Coun­ty are giv­ing busi­ness­es the chance to stop sell­ing CBD prod­ucts ille­gal­ly. Coun­ty Attor­ney CJ May III sent cease and desist let­ters to any­one known to have the prod­ucts.

CBD stands for Cannabid­i­ol and is the part of the mar­i­jua­na or hemp plant known to have a vari­ety of health ben­e­fits, espe­cial­ly for chil­dren with epilep­sy. By itself, it does­n’t cause a per­son to get high. How­ev­er, Mar­i­jua­na is ille­gal in Iowa unless you have a state-issued med­ical card and get your sup­ply from one of the state’s five dis­pen­saries.

Many busi­ness­es in Dubuque have start­ed sell­ing var­i­ous CBD oils, lotions, and oth­er sup­ple­ments. In 2018, TV9 spoke with the Dubuque Police Depart­ment about the legal­i­ty of these sales. At that time, Assis­tant Chief Jere­my Jensen said it was legal as long as the prod­ucts con­tained no THC. That’s the chem­i­cal in mar­i­jua­na that caus­es a high.

How­ev­er, Sher­iff Joe Kennedy says a let­ter from the Iowa Attor­ney Gen­er­al cleared things up. The let­ter explains the sale of any CBD prod­uct, no mat­ter its THC lev­el, is in fact ille­gal.

“Accord­ing to Iowa State law, any­thing that is a deriv­a­tive of the hemp or mar­i­jua­na plant is con­sid­ered to be mar­i­jua­na under state code,” said Kennedy. There­fore, CBD is ille­gal too.

Among the busi­ness own­ers to receive a let­ter in Dubuque is Cal­ly Burkle. She owns B1 Yoga in Dubuque and began sell­ing hemp and CBD prod­ucts in her store. After study­ing the law, she real­ized what she was sell­ing was ille­gal and removed the prod­ucts from her store.

How­ev­er, she then start­ed to see oth­er busi­ness­es open­ly adver­tis­ing the sale of CBD prod­ucts around town. That prompt­ed her to put her prod­ucts back on her shelves.

“I watched that hap­pen for six months and I thought it was okay so I put the prod­uct on my shelf think­ing that the local law enforce­ment did­n’t real­ly care,” Burkle explained.

But then she got a let­ter. Now she does­n’t sell the CBD prod­ucts in Dubuque, but in East Dubuque, Illi­nois at Van’s Liquor Store. Her com­pa­ny is called B1 Hemp and is based across the riv­er. Burkle can’t under­stand why Iowa has made CBD ille­gal.

“It’s giv­ing peo­ple relief. It’s mak­ing peo­ple feel human, which is real­ly impor­tant,” she said. “Ulti­mate­ly, it’s not mak­ing any­one high. It’s not pos­ing any threat or dan­ger to soci­ety. You could take CBD and get in your car and be fine.”

She hopes law­mak­ers will change the law when they recon­vene next year.

“I would hope that you know they would see the sales tax ben­e­fits and the rev­enue that could come out of sell­ing CBD because it is a boom­ing busi­ness,” said Burkle.

Now that the let­ters have been sent out, Kennedy says he’s meet­ing with May next week to see how he’d like law enforce­ment to han­dle those who haven’t com­plied.

“We can only do the enforce­ment. We need the coun­ty attor­ney’s back­ing to make sure these cas­es go through, oth­er­wise, we’re just out there look­ing like the bad guy,” Kennedy said.

You can read the orig­i­nal ver­sion at kcrg.com.