If you run a business in Tennessee, here is a thing worth knowing: out-of-state operators are now quietly writing your state off, and they are doing it before the federal rules even change.
Mark Gillilan founded Kyoto Botanicals in Colorado in 2020. He sells THC-free hemp wellness products nationally. When the conversation on Unscripted Cannabis turned to state-level regulation, Tennessee came up first and it came up as a warning:
“a lot of states have started to draft language similar to what the federal government is putting together, Tennessee being the most obvious and alarming example”
— Mark Gillilan, Kyoto Botanicals
And then the practical consequence:
“we don’t ship to Tennessee anymore. nobody should be. Tennessee doesn’t allow any out-of-state shipments of CBD products whatsoever. They regulate the entire industry… it’s basically regulated like alcohol now.”
— Mark Gillilan
He adds his own caveat, which I will repeat rather than paper over: “I’m not a policy expert, so don’t quote me on this.” That is an operator describing how his own shipping rules changed, not a lawyer describing the statute. Check the current rules before you act on it either way.
Why this matters beyond one category
Tennessee did not get singled out because of anything unusual about Tennessee. It got singled out because it moved first and moved hard, and that turns a state into a template. Other states are drafting from it.
The pattern is the interesting part for anyone running a business here:
- A state-level restriction can remove a national supply line overnight. Not through enforcement against you, but through out-of-state sellers deciding you are not worth the compliance risk.
- The retailer inherits the problem. If shipping stops, the only remaining channel is in-state, regulated retail — which is a very different business with very different overheads.
- Being early is not always being right, but it is always being copied. Whatever Tennessee gets wrong here, six other legislatures are about to get wrong in the same words.
The Nashville construction market is running into its own version
Rick Haggerty has been in home improvement for 25 years and runs a set of companies out of Nashville covering civil engineering, land survey, exterior building material supply, residential remodelling and custom closets. He was equally direct about the current climate:
“the economics aren’t great… money’s expensive. So there’s a lot of challenges we’re facing right now too inside the construction industry in Nashville.”
— Rick Haggerty, Unscripted Home Improvement
Two very different Tennessee industries, one shared condition: the constraint is arriving from outside the business and there is nothing to do about it except decide early how you will respond.
What Rick is doing about it instead of waiting
His answer is service radius discipline. Locally his closet company covers the ten-county middle Tennessee MSA with daily delivery, from roughly Columbia to Clarksville, because that is the area where he can actually hit the commitment he made:
“That’s a really good service area for us that we feel like we can hit the service commitment that we make on on-time deliveries and on-time projects.”
— Rick Haggerty
Outside that radius, only the categories that survive the trip go: DIY closet kits with an instruction list, and building materials shipped across the Southeast. Even there he is picky, because CDL drivers are at a premium and trucking is its own constraint now.
That is the same decision Mark made about Tennessee, run in the opposite direction. Both men drew a line on the map based on what they could actually deliver, rather than on where they would like to sell.
The takeaway for a Tennessee business owner
Know which of your suppliers are one legislative session away from writing you off, and know it before they do. If a category you depend on is under regulatory pressure anywhere in the country, assume the compliance-cautious vendors will exit your state first and the cowboys will stay longest. That is a bad set of remaining options to discover in December.
Quotes are verbatim from the raw Riverside transcripts of both episodes, trimmed only for false starts and filler. Nothing here is legal advice. More conversations at Unscripted Tennessee and Unscripted Small Business.