Colorado is on the verge of becoming the most permissive varies by state drinks with up to 10 milligrams of THC per serving — up from the current 1.75 milligrams — and scrap the existing CBD-to-THC ratio requirement that’s kept most products off the menu.
The same week that bill was made public, a ProPublica investigation revealed that Colorado has been struggling for more than a year to keep hemp out of its licensed marijuana dispensaries.
Those two facts don’t cancel each other out. But together, they do raise a practical question that Colorado’s legislature hasn’t answered: how do you safely expand a category you haven’t figured out how to regulate?
What the Bill Would Do
Right now in Colorado, hemp-derived THC beverages can be sold at liquor stores and bars, but only if they contain 1.75 mg of THC per serving and maintain a 15:1 CBD-to-THC ratio. In practice, that’s kept the products quiet — low enough in effect that most casual consumers don’t notice much difference from a non-alcoholic drink.
The proposed bill, backed by Sen. Julie Gonzales and Reps. Matthew Martinez and Steven Woodrow, would raise that ceiling to 10 mg of THC per serving and eliminate the ratio requirement entirely. Anything above 10 mg would still have to be sold through licensed marijuana dispensaries, where age verification and tracking are mandatory. Products at 10 mg and under would flow through the alcohol-licensed hospitality channel — bars, restaurants, liquor and grocery stores.
The legislation is being pushed by the Colorado Hemp Beverage Coalition, a newly formed industry group. Its advocates argue that loosening the rules will generate roughly $30 million in annual tax revenue, help Colorado compete with states like Minnesota that have built large hemp-THC retail ecosystems, and give consumers a low-key social drinking alternative that doesn’t involve a dispensary trip.
The licensed marijuana industry is not enthusiastic. Chuck Smith, CEO of Colorado Leads, the marijuana industry trade group, framed the bill as a way for hemp companies to “bypass the entire regulated industry” built since 2012 — the testing requirements, the seed-to-sale tracking, the compliance infrastructure. His objection isn’t about whether hemp-derived THC should exist. It’s about whether the oversight framework that surrounds it is actually equivalent to what licensed operators face.
That argument lands differently in the context of the week’s other Colorado hemp story.
What ProPublica Found
The ProPublica and Denver Gazette investigation, published earlier this month, documented how Colorado banned chemically converted intoxicating hemp products — and then failed to keep them out of its licensed marijuana market.
The story starts in April 2024, when the owner of a Denver cannabis testing lab says he alerted a state regulator after routine tests found methylene chloride in a popular dispensary vape brand. As regulators dug in, they discovered the product wasn’t derived from marijuana at all. It came from hemp.
From there, the investigation outlines a series of structural failures: a testing system where manufacturers select which samples go to labs; no requirement to test for methylene chloride until this past summer; no random shelf-testing program until it was being built as a response to this specific scandal. One major vape manufacturer surrendered its marijuana license. Two other operators were suspended. The state issued a public health advisory — roughly two months after the initial alarm was raised.
The hole that allowed this to happen wasn’t illegal at first. Colorado’s 2023 law banned hemp-derived intoxicants for in-state sale but included a carve-out: registered hemp companies could keep manufacturing those products as long as they were exported out of state. A former Denver marijuana inspection official warned lawmakers that this provision would function as “an open invitation for bad actors” and would lead to “misbranded products” in the system. That warning, the investigation concludes, was accurate.
What the Gap Looks Like in Practice
Hemp and marijuana are both cannabis plants. They are legally distinct because of a single number: hemp cannot contain more than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC by dry weight, a threshold established by the 2018 the federal hemp ban taking effect in November 2026. Products that fall under that threshold are federally legal and largely exempt from the state-level licensing, testing, and tracking requirements that govern the licensed marijuana industry.
That distinction has created a parallel retail universe. In most of the country, hemp-derived THC products — delta-8, THCA flower, infused beverages — are sold at smoke shops, gas stations, convenience stores, and now potentially Colorado bars and restaurants, with far less regulatory oversight than equivalent products at a dispensary. The licensed cannabis industry has been pointing to this gap for years, arguing that consumers have no reliable way to know whether what they’re buying has been tested to the same standard.
Colorado’s ProPublica problem isn’t that the gap exists. It’s that the gap was exploited inside the licensed system — the one that was supposed to be airtight.
For consumers shopping at a Colorado dispensary, the reasonable assumption has always been that the product on the shelf meets the state’s regulatory standards. What the ProPublica investigation shows is that assumption can be wrong, and that regulators may take months to find out and longer to act.
Now comes a bill asking regulators to oversee a much larger population of hemp-THC products, in a much more distributed retail environment, at a higher potency level than currently permitted.
What It Means for People
If you’re a Colorado consumer, the 10 mg hemp beverage bill doesn’t fundamentally change what you can already access. Hemp-derived THC drinks exist in the market now, and stronger versions are available in neighboring states and online. What the bill would change is where you can buy them conveniently — at the bar, not the dispensary — and how much THC is in the product you’re buying.
That second part matters more than the first. A 1.75 mg drink is a very different experience from a 10 mg drink, particularly for people who are new to cannabis. Minnesota’s experience with hemp-THC beverages — the state that helped prove the market exists — has included ongoing debates about labeling clarity, potency consistency, and whether consumers at bars understand what they’re actually consuming.
For the licensed marijuana industry in Colorado, the bill is partly a business threat and partly a regulatory fairness question. A dispensary product goes through seed-to-sale tracking, mandatory testing, age verification at point of sale, and a state-run compliance system. A hemp beverage sold at a liquor store does not, at least not to the same degree. If both products can now deliver 10 mg of THC to the consumer, the question of why one category faces heavier compliance costs than the other becomes harder to dismiss.
For retailers — particularly smoke shops and convenience stores in states where delta-8 and THCA products have proliferated under hemp rules — Colorado is a proxy for a fight happening everywhere. You can track how states are responding to questions about delta-8 and THCA legality across states and follow pending regulatory changes in the cannabis legislative tracker.
What to Watch
The Colorado hemp beverage bill hasn’t been formally introduced yet. When it is, watch for two things: whether the final language includes any enhanced testing or labeling requirements to address the enforcement gap concerns, and whether the licensed marijuana industry can build enough opposition to slow or amend it.
The ProPublica investigation creates a problem for the bill’s sponsors — not a fatal one, but a complicating one. It’s harder to argue that hemp products deserve a streamlined path into mainstream retail when a news investigation just documented those products slipping through the state’s most regulated channel undetected.
Colorado was the first state to legalize adult-use marijuana. For more than a decade, it has been the country’s most-watched test case for how legal cannabis works. What it does next with hemp-derived THC — expand permissively or shore up the oversight structure first — will get watched closely by the 30-plus states where the same tension is playing out.
The bill’s advocates say the enforcement failures are a reason to bring more products into a cleaner regulatory framework, not a reason to ban them. The licensed marijuana industry says you need to fix the framework before you expand it.
Both arguments contain something true. That’s usually what a grey zone looks like.
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