Archive for the ‘marijuana’ tag
Crowntown Cannabis, 610 Harden Street: 2023-ish no comments
This head shop was in the news back in 2023 as they were found to be, or thought to be, selling actual marijuana ("green plant-like material believed to be marijuana") rather than the more legal "almost" products.
The local store of the NC based chain claimed the substance was just hemp, and legal. I'm not sure how all the legal wrangling turned out, and I don't see any actual articles on the store closure, but it is definitely gone now.
Here is WLTX on the raid, and here are WIS & WACH.
Here is the store's side of the story from NC based alternative weekly:
Since opening his first Crowntown Cannabis location — then called Charlotte CBD — in east Charlotte in 2018, Michael Sims has moved comfortably in what could sometimes be considered a gray area.
Sims was under the impression that he was given the green light to sell hemp products by the passing of the 2018 U.S. Farm Bill, followed by a statewide pilot program allowing those who obtain a license in North Carolina to grow industrial hemp.
“Ultimately, we were okay with the gray area at first because we didn’t think it was that gray,” Sims tells Queen City Nerve. “Here’s the clearly defined definition of what hemp is by Congress. It’s no longer under the DEA. It’s now under the USDA. Here’s the rules. Okay, we’ll follow them.”
And follow them he did, as Sims and his partners have rapidly expanded their business, opening a second location in Columbia, South Carolina the following year and opening two more in the Charlotte area since — one in NoDa and another in Concord.
But on Jan. 18, things got a lot grayer for Sims after the Columbia Crowntown Cannabis store was raided by Columbia police and the state’s South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED). During the raid, agents confiscated pounds of inventory from the shop that they “perceived to be marijuana,” arresting the store manager and charging her with conspiracy to sell marijuana.
Sims and his team dispute any such allegations, stating that all product in the store was hemp flower, which he believed to be legal in both North and South Carolina as long as it stayed below the .03% THC level stated in law.
As I said, I didn't see any follow-up articles online, but the place was gone at least by this September according to Streetview, and I suspect it went rather before that.
