They’re scattered across Tampa Bay — dispensarylike stores lined by glass shelves containing a colorful assortment of intoxicating products. Gummies, joints and vape cartridges promise consumers an unforgettable high.

These shops aren’t marijuana dispensaries. But they sure look like them.

After Amendment 3′s failure, small hemp retailers, which thrive in a legal gray area, may profit from a continued ban on recreational marijuana. Local vendors St. Pete 420, The Hemp Spot and Chillum Mushroom & Hemp Dispensary all expanded in the last year.

More than 9,500 Florida shops, from gas station convenience stores to smoke shops, are licensed to sell marijuana-like products derived from hemp plants. Around 1,500 are in Tampa Bay.

Some hemp products, which consumers 21 and older can buy, meet the state’s definition of marijuana, but escape detection by regulators, a Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald investigation found. Others purchased by reporters were revealed to contain harmful levels of mold and pesticides. Since June 2023, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Safety has uncovered more than a million hemp products on store shelves that violated state law.

Had Amendment 3 passed, hemp shops would have faced overwhelming corporate competition. Florida’s massive medical marijuana companies, which abide by strict product safety regulations, would have been able to sell pot to consumers without requiring a medical card.

The amendment “gave all the control to huge companies,” said Micky Morrison, co-owner of St. Pete 420, a hemp dispensary. “There’d be no mom-and-pop pot shops, period.”

The hemp industry lobbied fiercely against Amendment 3, alleging that it would create a corporate monopoly among the 28 companies already licensed to sell medical marijuana in the state. Gov. Ron DeSantis helped them win that fight, a partnership between “strange bedfellows,” cannabis attorney Zack Kobrin said.

“It was less to do with hemp and more how to kill Amendment 3,” he said.

But business owners wonder how long the freewheeling industry will escape federal or state regulations that could threaten their livelihoods. And health experts wonder about consequences for consumers, who can easily purchase marijuana-like products — without the same safety regulations imposed on medical marijuana companies.

What’s hemp and what’s marijuana?

Consumers looking for a marijuana-like “high” in Florida have two options. They can, with a licensed physician’s help, seek a medical card if they have a qualifying condition — think cancer, epilepsy, post-traumatic stress disorder or comparable ailments. The process can cost hundreds of dollars. These cards allow consumers to shop at licensed marijuana dispensaries like Trulieve and Surterra.

Without a card, consumers can walk into a smoke shop and find joints and edibles that, while not technically marijuana, contain similar intoxicating chemicals derived from hemp plants. Places like St. Pete 420 have capitalized on that easy access, declaring “no medical card needed” on storefronts.

So what’s the distinction between hemp and marijuana?

Per federal law, a hemp plant, and products thereof, must contain less than 0.3% of the specific intoxicating substance rich in marijuana plants — delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, commonly referred to as THC. Any higher percentage makes it a marijuana plant.

Both hemp and marijuana are cannabis plants. They look virtually identical.

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Delta-9 THC isn’t the only chemical hemp producers can harvest and replicate to create intoxicating products. Popular variants like delta-8 and delta-10 THC — considered less potent, but still psychoactive — are legal in larger concentrations.

A state bill would have banned the sale of delta-8 THC, which helps make hemp stores profitable. But DeSantis vetoed that bill earlier this year, arguing it would devastate the thousands of small businesses that sell those products — and cementing his alliance with the hemp industry.

How could future regulations threaten hemp shops?

Hemp businesses fear that a repeat of this year’s legislation could reemerge next year. But Kobrin said it’s not likely to go far.

The hemp industry has aggressively organized, hiring influential lobbyists like Republican Party of Florida Executive Director Bill Helmich. If DeSantis stays in office, his advisers are partial to hemp’s interests, Kobrin said.

“The hemp industry realized if they don’t organize, they’re dead,” Kobrin said.

Republican state legislators will also likely wait for the White House and Congress to weigh in on hemp’s legality nationwide, Kobrin said. Congress is poised next year to update the farm bill, which legalized hemp-derived THC products, for the first time since 2018.

The possibility of federal regulations has owners like Morrison and Jordan Meservey of Tampa Bay Hemp Co. holding their breath.

“A (restrictive) federal law would effectively shut down anything,” Morrison said.

Would Amendment 3 really have destroyed small businesses?

Florida’s medical marijuana laws exclude all but the largest operators. That’s because medical marijuana companies must grow, process, distribute, market and sell their products in-house, without middlemen or contractors.

An application to obtain a license already costs $146,000. And the state has so far distributed only 28 licenses — soon to be 50 — to companies with the cash to operate.

Had recreational marijuana become legal, Florida’s rules favoring large operations likely would have remained, said Jeff Sharkey, founder of the Medical Marijuana Business Association of Florida. But the Legislature could have changed the laws to allow small businesses to enter the marketplace.

The Trulieve-sponsored amendment that failed on this year’s ballot had to be narrow to pass state Supreme Court review, Kobrin said. It couldn’t have added opportunities for small businesses even if its authors wanted to.

But the message that Amendment 3 was a cash grab by the state’s largest medical marijuana vendor at the expense of small businesses resonated with voters, Kobrin said.

Some hemp shops, like Carlos Hermida’s Chillum Mushroom & Hemp Dispensary, with stores in Ybor City and St. Petersburg, are already shifting from exclusively selling knockoff pot. He thinks he could have remained afloat with the sales of other products, like legal mushrooms and kratom.

Morrison thinks Amendment 3 could have been fatal for her business.

“We’d be lucky to still be in business a year from now, if not two years from now,” she said.

What are the health risks of hemp products?

Medical marijuana companies abide by strict product safety regulations that help protect consumers and limit improper access, said Amie Goodin, a marijuana researcher at the University of Florida.

Product labels must include detailed testing information and a recommended dosage. A separate regulator, the Office of Medical Marijuana Use, enforces those rules.

By contrast, hemp products are required to display a certificate of analysis which includes independent lab test results and confirmation that the product does not contain contaminants like mold or pesticides. The Times/Herald investigation found that the labels provided for hemp products were inaccurate in shops across the state.

The proliferation of hemp shops across the state, plus the little-known intoxicating chemicals that products could contain, means inspectors with Florida’s agriculture department are playing a game of regulatory “whack-a-mole,” even if more restrictions go into effect, Goodin said.

Few large-scale studies have explored how chemicals that act as alternatives to marijuana, like delta-8 THC, affect the body, Goodin said.

“It’s hard to provide guidance to the general public if we just don’t know,” she said.