Nashville’s many new cannabis stores can feel like adult candy stores. There is candy, of course — primarily popular cannabis gummies that dose out single psychoactive servings in tropical flavors. Colorful, creative labeling tries to help cannabis products stand out in overstuffed showcases and wall-to-wall shelving. Also like candy, technically, each one does something to the body and brain. 

Regulated cannabis industries in other states, like Colorado and Massachusetts, have helped introduce legal THC-based products to a growing national clientele. Tennessee’s industry has persisted through a period more like the Wild West, where retail products meet exploding demand in the gray legal area surrounding plants of the cannabis genus. Different cannabis varietals vary in concentrations of the chemical compounds known as cannabinoids — including THC, a psychoactive compound that offers users a brain and body high, and cannabidiol (best known as CBD), a non-intoxicating cannabinoid recreationally sought for its perceived (but not clinically proven) therapeutic relief from anxiety and pain. Cannabis plants contain more than 100 additional cannabinoids, allowing ample room for botanical and laboratory manipulation and countless permutations to highlight in retail consumable products.

While hemp “derivatives, extracts, cannabinoids, isomers, acids”  remain legal at the federal level, Tennessee retailers and their suppliers can use the plant’s enormous cannabinoid bouquet to navigate around current and future state regulations. This leads to increasingly obscure products based on cannabinoids like THCV, THCA and delta-8 THC, all chemical cousins of the THC cannabinoid that defines marijuana. As new state law set to take effect on Jan. 1 bans these cannabinoids, retailers expect suppliers — including industry-leading gummy vendors Camino, Wyld and Incredibles, all of which have legally compliant products currently sold in Tennessee — to adapt new products for the state’s lucrative market. This might include products based on HHC, one retailer opined to the Scene, a less developed and less understood psychoactive cannabinoid that can mimic a THC high. 

Currently, THCA flower — the general term for the fragrant dried plant matter commonly ground up and smoked — dominates sales in the Nashville area, according to multiple cannabis stores. It’s the same plant as marijuana, but its cannabinoids have not been “activated,” allowing it to skirt regulation. Routine use includes user activation, whether by digestion or smoking, resulting in a psychoactive experience.

Frustrated employees say new regulations will likely lead users to less natural forms of the hemp plant, like lab-derived THCP, a highly potent cannabinoid synthesized from the cannabis plant. Lawmakers’ earnest exercise to ban specific cannabinoids, rather than regulate all cannabinoids, starts to resemble a futile game of Whac-A-Mole in which steady demand produces new products labeled with various combinations of T, H, C, B, D, A, G, N, P and V.  

Common retail products with psychoactive cannabinoids are currently quickly identified by any reference to THC on their packaging. Again, this rule of thumb may change after Jan. 1, when retailers may introduce products with psychoactive cannabinoids like HHC to stay compliant with new state laws. 

Products made from CBD will stay on shelves. Stores say people seek CBD for its perceived medical benefits without risking impairment. CBD isolate and broad-spectrum CBD do not contain any THC, enabling users to pass most drug tests, while full-spectrum CBD typically contains trace amounts of THC.

Shoppers may recognize two other compounds, CBN and CBG, in off-the-shelf products. The first, cannabinol (CBN), is psychoactive and understood as a milder form of THC. The second, cannabigerol (CBG), is a non-psychoactive alternative similar to CBD cultivated for its potential anti-anxiety and pain-relieving properties. 

Most stores also contain a handful of non-cannabinoid recreational drugs, specifically kratom and nicotine. Both are addictive. Kratom can produce an hours-long high when its key compound, mitragynine, binds to opioid receptors in the brain. Some opioid users look to kratom for help quitting pain medication, especially in Tennessee, according to one cannabis store employee; as a personal rule, he steers first-time users away from his store’s shrinking kratom inventory. Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin have all banned the sale, possession and use of kratom outright. 

Nicotine vapes and pouches, like popular Swedish brand ZYN, join cannabis displays in many stores. Tobacco and cannabis flower are often smoked together, and vape habits can be interchangeable. The health destruction wrought by nicotine has been well-documented. In recent years, vapes introduced a generation to the stimulant, and smokeless pouches have helped drive a post-COVID nicotine surge, sometimes introducing people to the drug rather than helping smokers cut cigarettes.

With legal changes on the horizon, we take a three-part look at the cannabis industry and related regulations