A Texas hemp company is accusing a local television station of misleading its viewers during a Dec. 5 broadcast that covered a police and federal agent warehouse raid in Farmers Branch, a Dallas suburb.
Farmers Branch police officers worked with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to execute a search warrant the previous morning at the warehouse, where law enforcement officials said they seized more than 4,600 pounds of cannabis products and roughly $400,000 in cash, according to FOX 4, a network affiliate for the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
The Farmers Branch Police Department told local reporters that the seized products were unregulated cannabis masquerading as hemp through repackaging at the warehouse, from which the products were shipped to vape shops across the metroplex as well as to other cities in Texas and across the country.
During the Dec. 5 news coverage, FOX 4 featured FVKD Exotics products “in prominent positions in the story’s visuals,” according to FVKD. FVKD is a high-potency, hemp-derived product brand that maintains its finished goods are legally defined as hemp under state and federal law.
The company is known for producing THCA rosin disposal vape pens, with the nonintoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoid concentrate turning into intoxicating THC when heated by consumers.
“FOX 4 has misled the public. It made an editorial decision to present FVKD’s products in an unfavorable light,” FVKD Attorney David Sergi said in a statement provided to Cannabis Business Times. “We are confident that the FVKD products shown in the report are 100% compliant.”
Editor’s note: CBT reached out to Fox 4 for comment.
Sergi is a managing partner at San Marcos, Texas-based law firm Sergi & Associates P.C.
“FVKD is proud to provide legitimate and fully legal hemp products,” he said. “On their website, they provide access to all the certificates of analysis so that people may rest assured that they are getting the products that can truly help them. Every day, these products help some veterans cope with challenges brought on by PTSD or someone’s grandmother having trouble sleeping due to pain.”
According to Farmers Branch police, lab tests on the confiscated products from Dec. 4 revealed high THC levels, including some products with THC potencies in the range of 60% to 70%, as well as various concentrations of psilocybin, FOX 4 reported.
“Detectives uncovered a complex drug operation that involved forged certificates for legal hemp and CBD products,” the news outlet reported.
However, FVKD officials have since provided CBT with 19 certificates of analysis performed for its products in October and November by Arlington, Texas-based Armstrong Forensic Laboratory Inc.
According to FVKD, the company chose to have Armstrong Forensic test its products because law enforcement agencies also trust and use the laboratory to test hemp products.
“Armstrong maintains a reputation for being more strict than most accredited labs,” according to FVKD.
“In the past, law enforcement in North Texas has relied on faulty field tests,” according to a company statement. “These tests are so unreliable that a Texas Department of Public Safety official testified in front of a legislative committee that the test was insufficient for testing hemp products.”
Although it’s not uncommon for law enforcement officials throughout the country to deem intoxicating hemp products as illegal based on THC testing of finished goods, the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (the 2018 Farm Bill) only requires that hemp meets a 0.3% THC definition on a dry-weight basis during pre-harvest testing requirements. Nothing in the federal statute requires THC testing of finished goods.
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FVKD maintains that each product it sells has the necessary certificates of analysis and that the company double-checks to ensure that its products are indeed legal.
“FVKD has a two-pronged approach to ensuring its products are compliant,” according to a company statement. “First, FVKD only uses the highest-quality lab-tested raw materials to produce its products, and then the finished products are sent for a secondary lab test to ensure they are 100 percent compliant.”
The local police and DEA’s joint raid in Farmers Branch came the same day that Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick launched a legislative initiative to ban all forms of consumable THC from being sold in Texas via Senate Bill 3.
“Everyone knows that agriculture is part of the fabric of Texas,” Patrick said in a news release, pointing to a 2019 law, House Bill 1325, that paved a path for the state’s commercialization of hemp following the federal government’s 2018 Farm Bill.
“Dangerously, retailers exploited the agriculture law to sell life-threatening, unregulated forms of THC to the public and made them easily accessible,” he said. “These stores not only sold to adults, but they targeted Texas children and exposed them to dangerous levels of THC. Since 2023, thousands of stores selling hazardous THC products have popped up in communities across the state, and many sell products, including beverages, that have three to four times the THC content which might be found in marijuana purchased from a drug dealer. Under Senate Bill 3, these products, and all forms of THC, will be banned in Texas.”
The Texas Legislature meets in odd-numbered years, with its next legislative session scheduled to run from Jan. 14 through June 2. Senate Bill 3 will be carried by Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock.
Under Texas’ highly restrictive medical cannabis law, the 2015 Compassionate Use Act, products can contain no more than 1% THC by weight of the final product, meaning a 1-gram gummy may contain up to 10 milligrams of THC.
FVKD maintains its products are legal hemp and that FOX 4 misled the public in its coverage of a warehouse raid near Dallas. Read More