ALLENTOWN – The proprietor of a vaping products business has launched litigation against Lancaster County, its district attorney and police officers, for allegedly conducting warrantless raids of both his and other businesses in the county this past April to seize such products, who have claimed they are Schedule I controlled substances under Pennsylvania law – while the plaintiff counters they have been legally sold in the state for years.
Smooth Vape, LLC filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on Aug. 4 versus Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, District Attorney Heather L. Adams, Lt. Jeffrey R. Krause and John Does 1-3.
“This suit concerns the warrantless search and seizure of certain hemp-derived products carried by plaintiff Smooth Vape, which products are and have been legally sold for years in Lancaster County and all over Pennsylvania – by Smooth Vape and many others – pursuant to Pennsylvania law and the policies of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture,” the suit says.
“The products at issue in this case – derived from hemp and containing various tetrahydrocannabinol isomers known in abbreviated form as ‘delta-8,” ‘delta-10,’ and so forth – have been openly and legally sold in Pennsylvania for years, following certain amendments to Pennsylvania and federal law.”
The amended laws were the state Agriculture Code and the federal Farm Bill, the latter of which removed hemp from the federal schedule of controlled substances.
The suit claims that despite these changes in the law, Lancaster County District Attorney Adams allegedly directed warrantless raids of Smooth Vape and dozens of other businesses in Lancaster County in April 2023 to seize large quantities of such products, claiming they were Schedule I controlled substances under Pennsylvania law.
The suit adds that while Adams gave the order authorizing the raids, the other law enforcement defendants are the individuals who carried them out.
“To plaintiff’s knowledge, Adams is the only District Attorney in the state to take such a position, which flies in the face of the Pennsylvania statutes and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s policies and public statements on the matter, as described below. The products at issue are legal to possess and sell in Pennsylvania, and defendants therefore lacked any basis for the seizure of such products. Further, even if the products at issue were still controlled substances, the defendants’ warrantless search and seizure as undertaken here violated Smooth Vape’s rights under the Fourth Amendment,” the suit states.
“Smooth Vape has not only suffered the loss of tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of inventory from the seizure, which is now likely destroyed, but Smooth Vape has suffered and will continue to suffer lost profits and damage to business goodwill unless and until this Court provides relief that protects Smooth Vape from such illegal enforcement by Lancaster County.”
For counts of illegal search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a Monell claim against Lancaster County and a declaratory judgment, the plaintiff is seeking compensatory damages and punitive damages for the violation(s) of plaintiff’s constitutional rights, a declaratory judgment that products derived from Cannabis sativa L. that contain no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC, including products without any delta-9 THC, are not subject to enforcement under the Pennsylvania Controlled Substance Act, reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs and any other relief that the Court deems just and appropriate.
The plaintiff is represented by Jerad Najvar of Najvar Law Firm in Houston, Texas and Tina O. Miller of Comber Miller, in Pittsburgh.
The defendants have not yet obtained legal counsel.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania case 5:23-cv-03000
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com