Chattanooga CBD business owner confused why store’s Facebook page has been ‘deactivated’

A CBD business in Chattanooga says they’ve been promoting their business “no problem” for two years … Until now.

Dwayne Madden, the Owner of Hemp House, tells us their Facebook was shut down on Tuesday.

“The message said that we violated ‘community standards’ by promoting the use of drugs,” Madden said. “But it’s very apparent that if you looked at our Facebook page, we promote a lot of hemp products, which we sell — and they are all legal.”

CBD oil and hemp-based creams are just a couple of the products Madden sells at Hemp House, which has a location on the Northshore in Chattanooga.

“We only sell CBD products,” he said.

Tennessee’s state website shows that CBD products are legal to sell and consume in Tennessee as long as they have a .3 percent THC level or less.

“It was a complete shock to me — we haven’t had any issues with Facebook until now,” Madden said. “We use it as a way to reach out to customers directly.”

And Hemp House wasn’t the only local store affected. I called SnapDragon Hemp in East Ridge, and owner Josh Manning says their Facebook page hasn’t been taken down — but their Instagram page was deactivated twice.

Manning says the deactivation message read “for promoting drug paraphernalia.”

“Their community standards are very generic, ‘You can’t sell drugs,'” Madden said. “That’s what it says, and we’re not a drug.”

I reached out to Facebook to get a better understanding of their policies, specifically when it comes to legal hemp-based products.

They did not respond, but their website does say, “ads must not promote the sale or use of illegal, prescription, or recreational drugs.”

“We’ve absolutely felt the hit of not having that availability — of letting them know what’s going on in the store,” Madden said. “This deals with the new products we’re bringing in and things like that.”

Tennessee’s state website shows that the requirements for THC levels in hemp products have actually gotten stricter in recent years. It was as high as .9 percent in 2016.