A federal court has issued a significant ruling that could set a precedent allowing marijuana paraphernalia to be legally imported from other countries into states that have enacted legalization.
While the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) prohibits the import or export of drug paraphernalia, the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) determined in a ruling late last month that state-level legalization provides an exception to the ban.
The case was raised after the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) blocked the import of cannabis trimming equipment from Canada to Washington State in 2021, denying entry on the basis of its interpretation of the paraphernalia statute of the CSA.
The company, Eteros Technologies USA, filed suit, arguing both that the paraphernalia rule doesn’t apply to them because the device is primarily intended to be used to trim federally legal hemp, and that even if it were for marijuana, a provision of federal law protects the importation of paraphernalia that’s “authorized” by localities or states.
Federal law defines drug paraphernalia as “any equipment, product, or material of any kind which is primarily intended or designed for use in manufacturing, compounding, converting, concealing, producing, processing, preparing, injecting, ingesting, inhaling, or otherwise introducing into
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