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MIDWAY — Tom Race used to operate a wrecking ball.
“I didn’t like the back-breaking work,” Race said.
So he opened Mary Jane’s Smoke Shop, 5407 S. Harlem Ave., where he now shows customers around glass display cases “making sure everyone gets what they want,” whether that be a bong or a bowl, CBD cream — or enough hemp to get you stoned.
Race is in the crosshairs of a political effort to shutter his stores if Democratic lawmakers don’t soon compromise on regulations for the hemp industry, which has propped up hundreds of city businesses like his legally selling hemp’s THC extract in edibles, drinks, vapes and pre-rolled joints through a loophole in a federal farming act.
While negotiations in Springfield stall, Ald. Marty Quinn (13th) is quickly advancing a local ordinance to not only ban the sale of “cannabinoid hemp products” but compel the city to not renew any retail tobacco licenses in a part of the Southwest Side he calls the “Midway Residential Area.”
That would all but force Race to close two stores near Midway Airport this year. The ordinance is expected to be up for a vote before City Council Wednesday.
The store owner feels he’s being singled out and made an example of.
“I’m ready to fight this,” said Race, who has nine employees and a 5-year-old son. “We’re OK with regulations … there has to be some sort of rules to follow. But I’ve already invested a lot into what I’m doing, and you’re telling me to start fresh.”
The unregulated hemp products have confused customers and undercut prices at licensed dispensaries, which are quality tested and heavily taxed by the state.
A state bill championed by Gov. JB Pritzker to ban intoxicating hemp products outside of dispensaries failed to pass after some Democrats criticized the proposal for not giving small business owners a second chance at selling a more regulated buzz.
“It’s too hard to get a dispensary license,” Race said. “We’re not here to get rich. We’re here to provide a service at a more reasonable price.”
Tom Race, co-owner, poses for a portrait at Mary Jane’s Smoke Shop, 5407 S. Harlem Ave., in Garfield Ridge on Jan. 9, 2025. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club ChicagoAld. Marty Quinn (13th) looks on during a City Council meeting where the 2025 budget was passed 27-23 on Dec. 16, 2024. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
Quinn’s ordinance was applauded by allies on the city’s consumer protection committee last week who said they’ve heard horror stories of kids getting sick after buying hemp from gas stations marketed to look like popular snacks and candy.
Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) flashed a photo of a cookie package labeled “Trips Ahoy.”
“This stuff is going straight into the kids in our schools,” Waguespack said. “It looks like it’s Halloween stuff being passed out door-to-door by our neighbors, and who’s to say it doesn’t end up in one of their bags.”
Quinn — who was the first to pass a Restricted Cannabis Zone to block licensed dispensaries from moving into his ward — said he collected letters of support from the principals of every nearby public school to ban smoke shops like Race’s in the ward.
“These janky storefronts … are popping up everywhere without any warning, communication or collaboration with my office, our community” Quinn said. “These are bad actors.”
But Race says he’s not one.
His products have scannable QR codes, showing the results of lab tests. Customers ring a doorbell to enter the store, where Race posts a 21-and-older policy and checks IDs, even though there is currently no legal age restriction for hemp products.
He said he’s read up on what he sells and has tried it all himself.
There are murals painted on the store’s ceiling of a Snoop Dogg album cover and the South Park character Towelie hitting a bong, but no Trips Ahoy in sight.
“I have Mickey Mouse on keychains because my son loves it, but I wouldn’t sell Mickey Mouse on a THC product,” Race said. “Everybody does their due diligence.”
The entrance to Mary Jane’s Smoke Shop, 5407 S. Harlem Ave., in Garfield Ridge on Jan. 9, 2025. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
Hemp that gets you high has found its way to city smoke shops through a loophole in the federal 2018 Farm Bill, which aimed to help farmers grow industrial hemp for a booming CBD industry, said Reggie Gaudino, a molecular geneticist and director of the Cannabis Research Institute.
Hemp and marijuana are both variants of the cannabis plant, but hemp contains much smaller traces of THC, its main psychoactive ingredient, Gaudino said. The federal law defines hemp as not containing more than 0.3 percent THC at its dry weight.
“So people started taking thousands and thousands pounds of legal hemp, extracting it and concentrating it,” Gaudino said. “An entire industry rose from gaming the system.”
Gaudino has seen hemp-derived edibles with hundreds of THC milligrams and hemp-derived “Cheech and Chong” pre-rolled joints because “it doesn’t become THC until someone heats it,” he said.
A label on a pouch of THC-A pre-roll joints at Mary Jane’s Smoke Shop, 5407 S. Harlem Ave., in Garfield Ridge on Jan. 9, 2025. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
Gaudino said he wouldn’t smoke or eat anything from hemp stores, given the stuff from licensed dispensaries is tracked from “seed-to-sale” and grown in-state. He knows it’s tested for pesticides, mold, metals, adulterants and the accuracy of its potency.
“But if all this is regulated the same, it’s essentially the same product. Hemp is also cannabis,” Gaudino said. “But the reality is the hemp products are not going through the same regulatory process. When they’re made to have too much THC, that’s the stuff that puts people in the hospital freaking out.”
A 2023 University of Illinois Chicago study tested 15 hemp edible products and found 14 did not have accurate dosages on the labels “with inaccuracies ranging from 61 percent less THC to 456 percent more.” Thirteen of the products were manufactured out of state. The study was sparked by “multiple instances of school children” going to hospitals with overdose symptoms from eating THC.
But even licensed dispensaries aren’t perfect.
A 2021 investigation by the Sun-Times testing nine pre-rolls from licensed dispensaries in the Chicago area found eight of them contained mold, yeast and bacterias that exceeded state standards, with the potency of two of them “far less than advertised.”
A small business owner, who asked not to be named in fear her hemp store could be targeted, said she mostly sells lightly dosed THC drinks “to yoga moms who want to take edge off at night,” some made by brands already carried in licensed dispensaries.
“I’ve seen the stuff at the fly-by-night truck stops,” she said. “But that’s not the stuff I carry.”
The hemp stores are harder to regulate now that they’re already open and the market floods with products, Gaudino said.
“The cat is out of the bag,” he said.
The entrance to Mary Jane’s Smoke Shop, 5407 S. Harlem Ave., in Garfield Ridge on Jan. 9, 2025. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
Freshman Ald. William Hall (6th) was given a tall order by Mayor Brandon Johnson to chair a committee searching for new tax revenue for a city that struggled to pass its 2025 budget and on Tuesday had its credit rating downgraded.
In November, Hall vowed to introduce an ordinance that would have the city set its own quality standards and regulations for intoxicating hemp products, restricting its sale to people 21 and older.
By Hall’s estimates, the city can make somewhere between $20 and $60 million a year by raising taxes on hemp-derived products. The state makes the lion’s share of taxable revenue from dispensaries; but for hemp stores, Hall suggests an even split with the city.
“We set the standard, draw the line, and the state can join us as partners,” Hall said. “Everyone can win.”
Last week, Johnson said in a statement he was “pleased” that the state bill did not move forward, while Pritzker slammed Johnson for not calling him about it and rarely calling him at all since Johnson became mayor.
State Rep. La Shawn Ford said he appreciated Hall’s enthusiasm to regulate locally, but new state-level licensing requirements for hemp would supersede any comparable city measure, with the state making the most tax revenue.
Ford, whose work on the issue has been championed by the Illinois Hemp Business Association, said he’s workshopping a new state bill to “limit the potency level” of hemp products — but not completely sober them up.
“You got to go the dispensaries for the high potency stuff, I think that’s fair,” Ford said. “They can have the spirits, the Crown Royal, and the hemp shops can have the beer and wine, so to speak.”
A label on Delta 9 THC-P gummies at Mary Jane’s Smoke Shop, 5407 S. Harlem Ave., in Garfield Ridge on Jan. 9, 2025. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
Ford and Hall, who represent parts of Chicago’s South and West sides, think their efforts will mostly benefit minority-owned businesses, who deserve more than they got when the state first legalized cannabis five years ago.
The nascent regulated cannabis industry has been criticized for limited licenses and costly barriers to entry that favor corporate pockets.
“I know dozens of people whose cannabis dreams went up in smoke as white people went up the mountain to legally sell all different strains of this stuff,” Hall said. “There’s a new economic apartheid of cannabis.”
Green Thumb Industries, one of the largest licensed cannabis companies in the state, said it will sell its own hemp-derived “THC Margaritas” at the Salt Shed music venue, in a statement released days after the Pritzker-backed bill to ban the products outside dispensaries fell through.
Edie Moore, who owns city dispensaries with licenses awarded in the state’s social equity lotteries, said hemp stores that cut corners should just “stop selling weed.”
“You found a loophole, you built your business and livelihood on it, how can you be surprised when it close up?” Moore said. “There’s people who stuck it out, got their businesses open and are following the rules.”
Ford said Tuesday state lawmakers are “far” from an agreement.
“Right now there’s still a lot of wounds from the last bill,” Ford said. “Dispensaries don’t want a competitor.”
Hall called Quinn a “separatist” for moving ahead with a ban for hemp products in his ward while regulations are still being negotiated.
“You’re going around threatening businesses,” Hall said.
Quinn said he was stepping up for his community.
“It’s a black market,” Quinn said. “We’re not for that.”
Race said he’d welcome Quinn into his stores anytime to “get schooled” on what he’s selling.
“What the market asks for, we produce,” Race said. “We’re talking about Chicago. Everyone finds a way to make something happen.”
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“}]] Ald. Marty Quinn is pushing an ordinance that would force smoke shops selling hemp-derived THC to close while Democratic lawmakers argue over how to regulate the “loophole” products — and who can make money from selling them. Read More
