JACKSONVILLE, FL. Back in February 2026, state inspectors walked into a Jacksonville smoke shop and found it selling hemp extract and kratom products without a valid food permit, without child-resistant packaging, without expiration dates, and without the basic labeling that would allow anyone to trace a product back to whoever made it.
The February 9 inspection of Smokes R' Us Smoke Shop LLC, a specialty hemp retailer, turned up 13 total violations and triggered a cascade of stop sale and stop use orders covering dozens of individual products. Two of the violations were repeats, meaning inspectors had flagged the same problems before.
Not a single violation was corrected on site before the inspector left.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector's report documented that the shop was "open and operating without a Food Permit" and that an application had only been submitted, not approved. That alone triggered a citation requiring the business to complete the permitting process within 10 days.
The labeling failures were extensive. Hemp extract products on the shelves were missing expiration dates, batch numbers, serving sizes, and scannable barcodes or QR codes. Some products lacked the name and address of the processor, packer, or distributor entirely. The inspector noted that hemp extract intended for inhalation was being sold without the required statement "Not Intended For Ingestion, Do Not Eat."
The kratom products had their own set of problems. The inspector found kratom items missing the net quantity of package contents, as well as the name and location of the manufacturer, packer, or distributor, and no nutrition or supplement facts panel.
Some hemp extract products also contained color additives, which the inspector flagged as making the products attractive to children, a separate violation under Florida's hemp regulations.
The Stop Sale Orders
The inspector issued stop sale orders covering products in three broad categories: items deemed adulterated under Florida food law, items with labeling violations, and items failing container requirements. Products voluntarily discarded during the inspection were released from the orders, but the volume of orders issued indicates the scope of what was on the shelves.
Eighteen stop sale orders were issued under the adulteration statutes alone. Another nine were issued for labeling violations, and four for container requirement failures, including the missing child-resistant packaging.
Two stop use orders were issued for the absence of a handwashing sink in the food processing and warewashing area. A third stop use order covered the lack of a three-compartment warewash sink. The inspector noted: "No warewash sink provided for open processing of food products."
What These Violations Mean
Hemp extract and kratom are regulated as food products in Florida, which means the same traceability rules that apply to a jar of peanut butter apply to a bag of kratom powder or a hemp gummy. When a product is missing a batch number, an expiration date, or the name of whoever made it, there is no way to trace it back to its source if a customer gets sick. That is not a paperwork problem. It is a public health problem.
Child-resistant packaging requirements exist because hemp extract products, including those containing CBD or other cannabinoids, can be dangerous to young children who mistake them for candy. The inspector found products at Smokes R' Us that were not in child-resistant containers and that contained color additives, a combination the state specifically identifies as a risk to children.
The missing "Not Intended For Ingestion, Do Not Eat" label on inhalation products matters for a different reason. Without that warning, a customer has no way of knowing the product is not meant to be swallowed, and the consequences of ingesting a product designed for inhalation can be serious.
The absence of a handwashing sink in the food processing area is a contamination risk. When employees handling open food products have no accessible sink, there is no reliable mechanism to prevent the transfer of pathogens from hands to product.
The Longer Record
Two of the 13 violations documented in February were marked as repeats, meaning inspectors had cited the same shop for the same problems on at least one prior visit. The operating-without-a-permit violation was one of those repeats. So was the missing handwashing sink.
A business selling ingestible products, including kratom and hemp extracts marketed for human consumption, operating without a permit on a second documented occasion is not a first-time oversight. It is a pattern.
The inspection was classified as an "Operating Without a Valid Food Permit, Met Sanitation Inspection," meaning the visit was triggered specifically by the permit lapse. That the inspector arrived for one reason and left with 13 violations, two of them repeats, says something about the state of the operation at the time.
None of the 13 violations were corrected on site.