COLUMBUS, Ga. — A Georgia police chief lost his job after testing positive for THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. But the chief says he only used perfectly-legal CBD oil.
It raises questions about how to handle drug tests in an age when CBD use is spreading rapidly.
In his 30 years in law enforcement, records indicate Thomas Barnes underwent more than 150 random drug screenings and passed all of them – until September 2020. That’s when the Columbus Technical College police chief tested positive for marijuana in a random drug test.
"He denied ever using marijuana or THC in any form. Except for the CBD," said Chris Harvey, deputy director of POST, the Georgia Peace Officers Standards and Training Council.
Records show the former metro Columbus drug task force officer had admitted to using legal CBD oil the night before his drug test – to relieve pain in his arthritic shoulder. In a sworn affidavit and during a polygraph exam, Barnes said he'd never used marijuana in his life.
The Technical College System of Georgia fired Barnes anyway. But POST declined to pull his certification.
"A positive THC test is very problematic for police officers. However, every case is going to be evaluated on the individual merits until some of this can be sorted out," Harvey said.
Barnes declined repeated requests for an interview.
The CBD industry has rapidly evolved in Georgia since 2018, when a Republican Congress passed a farm bill which removed restrictions on the growth and production of hemp. Hemp is a close botanical cousin to marijuana – but lacks its psychoactive ingredient, THC.
"This won’t show up on any kind of drug screening. It’s not THC. It’s CBD," said Caleb Carmichael, who helps staff Cloud Nine, a CBD store just up the street from the state capitol. It doesn’t sell marijuana.
But its hemp-based products can blur the lines a bit. Carmichael described one of them.
"It's still hemp-derived THC, but especially with this brand right here, when it comes down to delta eight, you can combine different THC analogs to each other," he said.
Dr. Eric Sevigny at Georgia State University says sometimes CBD converts into THC during storage. Sometimes manufacturers -- which also make THC products legal in other states -- sometimes inadvertently mix the ingredients.
"There's THC -- and that’s the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis -- in these products even when they’re advertised as being THC free," Sevigny said. "It's not out of the realm of possibility that you could take a CBD product for the first time and test positive for THC the next day, because it’s just that unregulated."
This summer, the POST council adopted a statement warning law enforcement to beware of positive drug tests after using CBD – too late for Thomas Barnes.
"There is a zero tolerance policy for illegal substances. It becomes more difficult when you’ve got an otherwise legal substance that triggers the reaction of an illegal substance," said Harvey.
Some state lawmakers have already hinted that they would like to regulate and perhaps rein in Georgia’s CBD industry. Dr. Sevigny says it won’t be easy, given that a federal law signed by then President Trump is what allowed them to flourish in the first place.