Is CBD still legal in the USVI? Act 9072 explained

Yes. Plain CBD oil, tinctures, topicals, and pet products are still legal. What changed is everything else that used to sit on the same shelf.

The quick version

In January 2026, the USVI passed Act 9072. It draws a line between three categories:

1. Traditional CBD (hemp-derived, under 0.3% delta-9 THC, non-intoxicating). Still legal. Regulated by the Industrial Hemp Commission under title 7. Sellers need a Commission permit before DLCA will issue a business license.

2. Intoxicating hemp products (delta-8, delta-10, THCA, and similar). Banned from retail sale without a new OCR license. No one has one yet, because the rules that would create it are still in draft. OCR published that draft in August 2026 and opened it for public comment. DLCA ordered retailers to pull these products in early 2026. If your shop used to carry delta-8 gummies or THCA flower, that’s why the shelves are empty.

3. Adult-use cannabis (the regulated program under Act 8680). Legal to possess for anyone 21+. Dispensaries are not open yet but are expected in late 2026. This is the practical replacement for anyone who was buying intoxicating hemp products.

The catch: the law doesn’t actually define “intoxicating.” It names specific compounds in its freeze order (THCA, delta-6, delta-8, delta-10) and bans “intoxicating hemp products or artificially derived cannabinoids” as a category, but it never says what makes a hemp product “intoxicating” in general terms. If your product contains a cannabinoid that isn’t on the list and isn’t plain CBD, you’re in a gray area that the statute leaves unresolved. Full-spectrum CBD products with trace amounts of various cannabinoids sit somewhere in that gap. The regulations that would resolve it now exist in draft. OCR released a 30-page discussion draft in August 2026, 109 days past the April 23 deadline Executive Director Joanne Moorehead set at the February 12 board meeting, and opened it for public comment. Ganjactivist and Cannabis Business Times report the comment period closes September 15, 2026. OCR’s own comment page states a 30-day period without printing a date. Until a rule is adopted and approved, the safe read is unchanged: anything designed to get you high is off the shelf, and plain CBD is fine.

The details: what Act 9072 did

Act 9072 amends two separate parts of the Virgin Islands Code. Here’s what it actually does:

• It amends title 7, chapter 13, subchapter III (the industrial hemp subchapter) to add a new § 200a that makes it unlawful to “sell, possess, or manufacture intoxicating hemp products or artificially derived cannabinoids in the Virgin Islands without a valid license or permit issued by the Office of Cannabis Regulation.” Act 9072 Section 1(b).
• It amends title 19, chapter 34 (the cannabis chapter, Act 8680) to create an eleventh license category, the “Intoxicating Hemp/Artificially Derived Cannabinoid Retailer License,” and lays out its operational rules as a new § 794a. Act 9072 Section 4. The specifics:
  • Per-island caps. Up to six licenses on St. Thomas, up to six on St. Croix, up to two on St. John. Act 9072 § 4(d)–(e).
  • Who cannot hold a license. Gas stations, convenience stores, and grocery stores are barred outright. Licensees must be at least 250 feet from a school or church. § 794a(a).
  • Age. Customers must be 21 or older. § 794a(d).
  • Testing. All products must be tested by an independent ISO-certified laboratory (UVI, accredited Puerto Rico labs, or another OCR-approved jurisdiction).
  • Packaging. Child-resistant and tamper-evident. No packaging that mimics candy or snack items. § 794a(f).
  • Fee. $15,000 for the license. Act 9072 § 4(h)(3).
• It imposed a freeze on existing inventory, and that freeze has since been rewritten. As enacted, Section 3 read that retailers holding THCA, delta-6, delta-8, delta-10, or other intoxicating cannabinoid products were “strictly prohibited from selling or distributing the products until the Office of Cannabis Regulation promulgates regulations and issues retail licenses.” Act 9079, which Governor Bryan approved on March 26, 2026, struck that section and replaced it. The current Section 3 gives retailers 60 days from the effective date to file a list of their intoxicating cannabinoid products with OCR and 75 days to “sell or otherwise dispose of” whatever remains in inventory, after which OCR “shall establish and implement a plan for the lawful disposition of all remaining unsold intoxicating cannabinoid products.” Both windows have closed. OCR has published no disposition plan.

The plain-English version: the statute allows an intoxicating-hemp retail market to exist through the new § 794a license, and the August 2026 draft rules are the first attempt to describe what one would look like. A dedicated storefront still has a hard case. The license fee is $15,000, the location rules bar gas stations, convenience stores, and grocery stores outright, the 250-foot school-and-church buffer applies, and the per-island caps are two on St. John and six each on St. Thomas and St. Croix.

The draft rules change the shape of the question in two ways. They add Manufacturer, Distributor, and Transporter permits alongside the retailer license, at § 200a-6(c), and exempt all three from the retail caps. And at § 200a-8(c) they allow regulated cannabinoid product to be sold inside a dispensary licensed under Act 8680, subject to physical separation of inventory and separate tracking and sales records. Under that provision an operator would not need a dedicated hemp store at all, only a licensed dispensary and a separated shelf. Whether any of the ten conditional dispensary holders wants that shelf is the open question, and the comment period is where it gets argued.

Two framework notes that matter for any future coverage:

• CBD and intoxicating hemp sit in two different statutory books. Traditional CBD is regulated under 7 V.I.C. chapter 13 by the Industrial Hemp Commission. Intoxicating hemp moves to 19 V.I.C. chapter 34 under the OCR. Different regulator, different license, different fees. Act 9072 is what drew that line; before 2026 they sat closer together.
• Act 9072’s per-island retailer caps line up with the way the cannabis program is already built - each island has its own closed market. Product licensed on St. Croix won’t cross to St. Thomas. Brands, shelves, and licensees will be different on each island.

CBD vs. intoxicating hemp, under current law

Product category	Legal to sell?	Governing authority
Non-intoxicating CBD (hemp-derived, under 0.3% delta-9 THC)	Yes, by a permitted seller	Industrial Hemp Commission, under 7 V.I.C. ch. 13
THCA flower, concentrates, or edibles	No	Banned without an OCR-issued Intoxicating Hemp Retailer License. No such licenses exist yet. The rules that would create the category went to public comment in August 2026 (see below).
Delta-8, delta-10, and delta-6 THC products	No	Same as THCA
”Hemp-derived” vape carts marketed as intoxicating	No	Same
Plain CBD oil, tinctures, topicals, pet products (no intoxicating cannabinoids)	Yes	Permitted sellers under 7 V.I.C. § 201
Adult-use cannabis from an OCR-licensed dispensary	Yes, in principle	OCR under Act 8680. No dispensary has opened to the public yet. Ten conditional licenses have been issued across the three islands.

The legal distinction the statute draws is strict. “Cannabidiol” is defined in Act 9072 as “a non-psychotropic compound found in Cannabis sativa L. plants that contains not more than 0.3 percent delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on a dry-weight basis.” “Hemp” is the broader category of the plant and its derivatives under the same 0.3% ceiling. Anything that gets you high is carved out of both definitions and routed through the cannabis chapter instead.

A business selling non-intoxicating CBD still needs an Industrial Hemp Commission permit before DLCA will issue it a business license. Act 9072 tightens § 201 to require that step: “a person or entity seeking to sell or manufacture hemp or hemp-derived products, including cannabidiol (CBD) and other non-psychoactive hemp products, shall first obtain a permit from the Commission.”

What this means if you were buying CBD for wellness

If the product you cared about was plain CBD oil, a topical, a tincture, or a pet product, and it contained no intoxicating cannabinoids, it is still legal. You may not find it on every shelf it used to sit on, because many of the USVI’s CBD retailers were small operators for whom the intoxicating-hemp side of the counter was load-bearing. Several of those shops have closed. A few of the larger retailers are still open for their core business (food, fashion, or chiropractic, depending on the shop) but no longer carry CBD.

If you want to keep buying a specific CBD brand, the mail-order path from US mainland brands that ship to the USVI remains open. We are preparing a short list of the brands that ship reliably to the territory.

What this means if you were buying delta-8, THCA, or similar

Those products are gone from USVI retail shelves and will almost certainly stay gone. The realistic path forward is not a revived intoxicating-hemp retail category; it is the regulated cannabis program under Act 8680.

Why the intoxicating-hemp license category is unlikely to materialize:

• The market is small. At a maximum of six licenses on St. Thomas, six on St. Croix, and two on St. John, there is not enough population on any island to support a dedicated intoxicating-hemp storefront alongside a cannabis dispensary selling similar products.
• The license is expensive. $15,000 annually, plus compliance overhead for ISO-certified lab testing and child-resistant packaging.
• The rules exclude the businesses that actually sold these products. The § 794a bar on gas stations, convenience stores, and grocery stores carves out most of the locations that were the practical distribution channel for delta-8 and similar products before Act 9072.
• Adult-use cannabis is the direct substitute. Act 8680 dispensaries sell products that are both more potent and, now, unambiguously legal. A customer who walked in looking for delta-8 last year has a better product available through a regulated dispensary this year.

For any consumer who was reaching for intoxicating hemp as a cannabis alternative, the answer is the regulated cannabis program. Adult-use cannabis has been legal in the territory since Act 8680 was signed in January 2023. Ten conditional dispensary licenses have been issued:

• Five on St. Thomas
• Three on St. John
• Two on St. Croix

No licensed dispensary has opened to the public yet. The OCR has said regulated retail sales will begin in 2026. We update the dispensary directory when that changes.

Two things are worth knowing about the cannabis program as it exists today:

• Adult-use possession is legal for 21 and over, within the limits set by Act 8680 § 785 (two ounces of flower, fourteen grams of concentrate, one ounce of products).
• Each island is its own closed market. Under § 794(j) and the OCR’s current posture, cannabis products licensed on St. Croix cannot be sold on St. Thomas, and vice versa. Each island will have its own brands and its own dispensary list.

For the full picture, see the USVI cannabis legality guide.

Penalties under Act 9072

For retailers, Act 9072 adds a new § 209 to the hemp subchapter. The OCR “shall impose a civil fine of $2,500 for the first offense and not less than $5,000 for a second offense within a twelve-month period.” A third offense within 18 months can trigger a DLCA business license review. Penalty revenue is divided among the Agriculture Revolving Fund, the Consumer Protection Fund, the Cannabis Fund, and the Health Revolving Fund.

For consumers, Act 9072 does not create a new personal-possession crime for holding an old delta-8 gummy on a shelf at home. The enforcement target is the retail supply chain. Act 8680’s adult-use possession framework continues to apply to cannabis itself.

Frequently asked questions

Is CBD banned in the USVI?

No. Non-intoxicating CBD under the 0.3% delta-9 THC threshold is still legal to sell through permitted sellers, and still legal to possess.

What exactly did Act 9072 ban?

Intoxicating hemp products and artificially derived cannabinoids, including THCA, delta-6 THC, delta-8 THC, and delta-10 THC, unless the seller holds an OCR-issued Intoxicating Hemp Retailer License. No such licenses have been issued yet.

Can I still buy delta-8 products in St. Thomas, St. Croix, or St. John?

No. Act 9072 makes it unlawful to sell intoxicating hemp products without an OCR license, and OCR has issued none. The inventory provision that governed product already on shelves, Section 3, was rewritten by Act 9079 in March 2026 and now runs on a closed 75-day sell-or-dispose window rather than an open-ended freeze. The rules that would let a retailer apply went to public comment in August 2026.

Will the intoxicating hemp retailer licenses actually open?

Not yet, and the answer is no longer settled. The § 794a category exists in the statute, and OCR published draft rules for it in August 2026. An intoxicating-hemp-only store still faces a $15,000 license, a 250-foot buffer from schools and churches, a bar on gas stations, convenience stores, and grocery stores, and competition from Act 8680 dispensaries selling the same demand. What the draft adds is § 200a-8(c), which would let a licensed cannabis dispensary carry these products on a physically separated shelf. That is a different business case from a standalone store, and it is the one to watch.

When did Act 9072 take effect?

The Legislature passed Act 9072 on January 12, 2026. DLCA issued its halt order to retailers shortly after the governor signed the act in January 2026.

Is THCA legal in the USVI?

No, not as a retail product. THCA is one of the cannabinoids named in Act 9072’s prohibition, and it is named again in the Section 3 inventory provision as rewritten by Act 9079 in March 2026.

Where can I buy non-intoxicating CBD in the USVI now?

The landscape has thinned. Several former CBD shops have closed or stopped carrying CBD. Mail order from US mainland brands that ship to the USVI remains the most reliable path. We plan to maintain a short list of those brands here as it firms up.

Is this the same as the federal hemp situation?

Roughly. In late 2025 and early 2026 the federal government moved in the same direction, tightening the definition of “hemp” to exclude intoxicating derivatives. Act 9072 aligns the USVI with that direction and adds a territorial retail license category.

What to watch

• OCR announcements on when regulated cannabis dispensary sales actually begin. This is the load-bearing milestone for anyone who used to buy intoxicating hemp.
• DLCA enforcement actions. The penalty structure in § 209 is active now.
• Any federal revision to the 2025 hemp definition. Federal changes can feed back into local interpretation.
• The close of public comment on the draft Intoxicating Hemp Retailer rules, reported as September 15, 2026, and whether the Cannabis Advisory Board votes to adopt after it.
• A published fee schedule for the Manufacturer, Distributor, and Transporter permits the draft creates. The draft sets no fees for any of them.
• The lawful disposition plan for unsold inventory that the amended Section 3 requires OCR to establish. Nothing has been published.