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The word was out among Chester County teens: West Grove Smoke Shop wasn’t checking IDs.

“Many students frequented it,” a student told a Pennsylvania State Police officer investigating how scores of local high schoolers were getting their hands on an array of marijuana products. “So many, in fact, that there were long lines at the smoke shop after school.”

The tip — revealed in a grand jury report released in October — launched one of the largest stings of smoke shops in Pennsylvania this year. While those shops are allowed to sell hemp-based THC products that fall below a certain potency threshold, undercover detectives found widespread deception. After investigators made purchases from 19 stores in Chester, Delaware, and Lancaster Counties, lab tests determined all but one were selling unregulated marijuana falsely labeled as hemp.

It was a striking, if rare, example of local law enforcement cracking down on smoke shops selling hemp-based THC products, which an Inquirer investigation this year found are often just black market weed, sometimes contaminated with harmful toxins and chemicals. Several teens in Chester County told police they got sick from such products, with one landing in the hospital.

Confusion over federal hemp law, and the inability of lawmakers in Harrisburg to pass regulations in a state lacking a recreational cannabis program, has led to smoke shops popping up all over Pennsylvania. But the emerging effort to police these shops has so far been inconsistent and haphazard.

Philadelphia City Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson has advanced a series of bills designed to crack down on scofflaw operators, who typically pull fraudulent grocery store licenses to open up shop. An Inquirer analysis found that the city has taken a stricter approach to smoke shops that operate under grocery store permits while peddling drug products and paraphernalia — with investigators doubling violations for improper licensing over the last two years.

“[It] marks important progress in the city’s efforts to better enforce against illegal smoke shops and nuisance businesses devastating our neighborhoods,” Gilmore Richardson said.

But block after city block, smoke shops remain open and continue to operate with relative impunity — sometimes within view of a similar shop that authorities have closed down.

Many use thinly veiled references in their names, such as “High Time Convenience” or “Hi Baby,” the latter featuring a logo meant to resemble the popular RAW rolling paper brand. Since 2022, nearly 100 zoning permits filed by the Frankford-based permit expediter Tina Accounting & Tax Services on behalf of would-be grocery store proprietors were later cited by inspectors as invalid, an Inquirer analysis found. (“There is no assumption that they are aware that these businesses may later become nuisance businesses,” a city official said.)

With the city short of investigators, many shops simply reopen even after they are shut down. Philadelphia has cited at least 42 stores, many of them smoke shops, for resuming operations after receiving an official shutdown order from inspectors over the last two years. One store, Market Mini Mart, located in the shadow of the 52nd Street El station, was cited 10 times for illegally reopening, records show.

City officials said the lack of a specific “smoke shop” permit makes it difficult to track the scope of the problem. Yet an Inquirer analysis of the city’s list of top 35 “nuisances businesses” found more than a third either had “smoke shop” in their names or advertised drug paraphernalia.

Going after technical violations remains one of the few tools available to local authorities, short of conducting raids and lab tests to determine if the over-the-counter products comply with federal law.

The supply line for smoke shops, however, could dry up next year. A provision in a federal spending bill would ban intoxicating THC products derived from hemp nationally, potentially closing a loophole that has created a glut of these quasi-legal products across the country.

The grand jury investigation acknowledged that the growing number of smoke shops presents a daunting challenge. The lead investigator in the Chester County case “quickly realized the sheer number was overwhelming, and many stores were interconnected, operating across multiple counties,” according to the grand jury report.

That investigation resulted in the September arrest of Satish Parsa, 33, the owner of three establishments, including the West Grove Smoke Shop, a redbrick storefront that now sits empty. Parsa faces more than 60 counts of drug trafficking and related charges, according to court records.

His attorney, Elliot Marc Cohen, said Parsa, who has pleaded not guilty, intends to “vigorously” fight the prosecution.

Ellie Siegel, CEO of Longview Strategic, a Philadelphia-area cannabis consultancy firm, argued that selective enforcement is ineffective.

When the federal ban goes into effect late next year, she reasoned, many smoke shops will shut down as the supply line dries up, while others will attempt to pivot toward the regulated marijuana market.

“The manufacturers won’t have a way to manufacture the intoxicating hemp products they’re making now,” she said. “It’s the closing of a loophole.”

The rise and fall of the Philly smoke shop

In interviews with about a half dozen Philly-area smoke shop owners over the last month, several told The Inquirer that they are bracing for closure, saying survival is nearly impossible in an already saturated market.

Others said they are confident they can endure.

On South Street, more than a dozen smoke shops crowd the mile-long stretch east of Broad Street. The longtime operator of Munchies Reloaded recalled thriving years when bongs and pipes brought in roughly $600,000 annually, before he expanded into hemp.

Now, he said, business has plunged nearly 80%. City inspectors have increasingly fined and shuttered stores for selling glassware used for smoking. Those items are easier to classify as “drug paraphernalia” prohibited by city codes, rather than quasi-legal hemp, which is superseded by federal laws.

“There used to be good money in it,” said the store owner, who declined to give his name. “Now there is no money.”

Smoke shops proliferated during the pandemic, often launched by marijuana enthusiasts, immigrant entrepreneurs, or small grocers looking to replace revenue lost to increasingly strict tobacco sale regulations.

Some shop owners have migrated to Philadelphia from the New York City area, lured by lower rents and higher demand in a state without legal recreational cannabis. A business permit for Green Broad Smokeshop on Broad Street, for instance, lists an owner based in Queens.

At the peak, a single shop could net between $250,000 and $1 million annually, depending on foot traffic and product line, according to two owners who spoke with The Inquirer on the condition they not be named so they could speak frankly about their businesses. Low overhead and high demand made for a tempting copycat model — a cheap pound of hemp might cost $600 in bulk but retail for more than $5,500.

On the same block as Munchies Reloaded, Abtein Jaeger and his brother in January opened Two J’s Pushin’ Weight. Jaeger said he sources high-grade hemp from West Coast farmers, positioning his store as a premium dispensary amid competitors selling a lower-quality product.

He said he is upbeat about surviving a potential crackdown on stores like his next year.

“It’s not the worst thing in the world,” Jaeger, 34, said.

He added that he would comply with any testing requirements and try to apply for a license, and that he already enforces a 21-plus age limit.

Reforming the Wild West of weed

Unlike in state-run cannabis programs, which mandate costly contaminant testing, hemp products need only carry a certificate of authenticity showing the flower tested under 0.3% Delta-9 THC at harvest.

The Inquirer, in its investigation earlier this year, commissioned a lab to test 10 products. Nine of them exceeded that limit, and most were tainted with banned pesticides, harmful mold, or heavy metals. Manufacturers had also used forged certificates to make their products appear safe and legitimate, The Inquirer found.

But the complexity of federal drug law makes it difficult to prove products are illegal, as many hemp-based products use THC variants like Delta-8 or Delta-10 that are not specifically banned.

For now, most shop owners say, local police leave them alone. Undercover stings, like those led in the suburbs, remain rare because they demand expensive lab testing and significant resources.

One South Street establishment has a singular strategy for surviving a potential crackdown.

South Street Cannabis Museum, whose logo includes a Liberty Bell festooned with marijuana leaves, exhibits a small collection of Reefer Madness-era newsprint, historical pamphlets, and other weed-themed memorabilia.

“We are a museum, first and foremost, where we can engage with the public about the history, science, culture, and art of cannabis,” said owner Kristopher Wesolowski, 42, a former neuroscience lab manager and event planner, who pivoted into hemp sales after the pandemic.

The back half of the museum is a gift shop where visitors can buy hemp-derived THC flower under glass display cases.

“It’s almost like a simulated dispensary,” Wesolowski said. “But it’s not like some spot where people can just go and get high. … You can get historically stoned at our museum, in a sense.”

Like other proprietors, Wesolowski said the hemp industry has been “screaming for regulation,” as “bad actors” gave well-intentioned store owners a bad name.

But he also cautioned that overregulation would only create new problems, like increasing demand for unpredictable designer drugs on the black market.

“When you close one door, another will open,” he said. “And that one might be a little bit more dangerous.”

This article was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism