Investigating a Tip Involving Dogs, Hemp and the Governor's Son (2024)

When I get news tips, they’re normally pretty aligned with my interests. Someone might tell me about a cool cemetery, or a shrub in their neighbor’s yard that kind of looks like Bigfoot, or an old map at the Tennessee State Library and Archives, or a spot in a rural park that smells like pancakes. Low-level stuff I can be trusted to not screw up as I go check it out.

This week, I got a tip that the governor’s son might be selling marijuana to dogs down in Williamson County. An actual potential crime? A possible political scandal?! I had hit the bigtime. I never get these kinds of tips. Like any seasoned reporter, I immediately got to work coming up with a headline for the story I had not yet written. Something ... something ... "Pot for Pups"? "From God’s Plant to Dogs’ Plant"? I settled on “Dogs’ Plant Scandal: Politico’s Progeny Profits From Pot for Pups?” Keep in mind that I don’t normally write my own headlines, but it’s good for old dogs to learn new tricks. (Note to editor: Patrick, if you pupprove, feel free to use it.)

Sadly, it turns out you can’t just run a tip about potential lawbreaking. You need to investigate. So investigate I did. I had a series of crucial questions: Does Gov. Bill Lee even have a son? And does that son sell marijuana to dogs? Where do dogs keep their money for drugs? Very few dogs are over the age of 18. Is selling marijuana to dogs contributing to the delinquency of a minor? Is Gov. Lee in any way supporting this corruption of the canine youth of this state? If a dog gets the munchies, how do you tell? Does my dog like the Grateful Dead? Is that an unfair stereotype of Deadheads? Am I outing myself as being 95 years old by calling it “pot” and making hippie jokes? How many people are sitting in jail in Williamson County right now for pot possession? Do dogs not get in trouble for that because, frankly, it’s too hard to catch a dog when he doesn’t want to be caught?

Turns out, yes, Bill Lee has two sons: Jacob and a guy not involved in this. Back in March, Jacob was the subject of a case study written by two dudes from the Yale School of Management who impart to their reader all kinds of important information about how often Jacob’s spirit is lifted by birds and how he might be pleasantly haunted by his grandfather through contact with his grandfather’s old office chair (I’m making this sound much more interesting than it actually is) and his propensity for staring at spreadsheets, but nothing about how his dad is the governor of Tennessee. Reader, I laughed.

If you’re trying to give students a case study in how to be a successful entrepreneur, it seems a little derelict to not mention that one key to success is having your dad be governor of a state. Another key is having a wealthy family who can support you while you try out your new venture. In Jacob’s case, according to this write-up, “earnings from his family business back in Tennessee were covering his expenses” while he was scaling up his new business venture. Man, you can do a lot in this world when you’ve got family business earnings to fall back on.

Jacob is a franchisee of Scenthound, which is a subscription-based dog grooming place — the site of the scene of the potential scandal at his Franklin location. If Bill Lee’s business was supporting Jacob as he started up his business, and if (and let me be clear this is a big if), because of Jacob, there were dogs on the grass in Williamson County, it sure seems like Bill Lee would share some responsibility.

But before we get to the meat of our investigation, I want to share with you the absolute best two sentences in this whole case study, if not the best two sentences to come out of Yale since Reinhold Niebuhr prayed for the serenity to accept what can’t be changed: "Prior to launching Scenthound, Lee had had very little experience working with workers near minimum wage. He tried to find employees who were passionate about pets and animal care and give them pride in their work by having them complete a Scenthound certification program called ‘Trimmer Training’ over a six-month period.”

“Lee had had very little experience working with workers near minimum wage.” Oh, you don’t say? The nepo-baby of a nepo-baby of a nepo-baby of a dude with an office chair has very little experience with near-minimum-wage workers? Who could have guessed? And giving them a certificate to motivate them?! Jacob, they’re just poor. They’re not kindergarteners. You can motivate them to stick around by paying them more. They can’t buy groceries with a certificate.

Anyway, if you subscribe your dog to Scenthound, they have advice for how to calm your anxious dog, and if you choose, you can get your dog Scenthoud’s own Houndswell’s Hemp Calming Aid— doggy gummies. I thought, all right, here we go! No dog needs a gummy. Hell, one time when I was dogsitting my brother’s dog, she got up on the counter and scarfed down half a frozen pizza in two chomps. A dog gummy is like a raincoat for a duck — not necessary. So what was with the gummy format? Was I onto an open-secret pot dispensary for rich Williamson County folks?

I had to find out if the “hemp” in this hemp calming aid is actually hemp or if it’s marijuana. As some of you — those of you with glassy eyes and a mouth full of Cheetos — already know, we’re currently living in farcical times, when we pretend like there’s some clear difference between hemp and marijuana. The truth is that, once upon a time,a scientist was like, “OK, we need a firm boundary between hemp and marijuana. Um, let me arbitrarily make one up real quick.” That arbitrary line is 0.3 percent THC content by dry weight. Less than that, you’ve got hemp. More than that, you have weed. Even worse — or better, depending on your love of ridiculousness — by law, there’s no such thing as a marijuana seed. All seeds from cannabis plants, regardless of how full of THC the plants that may come from them are, are hemp.

I tried to find out the exact ingredients of Houndswell’s Hemp Calming Aid, but neither Scenthound nor Houndswells (which appears to be a subsidiary of Scenthound) has an ingredient list. You’d think this would be something poison control hotlines would be miffed about. But the site did have some information. I learned: “Formulated for veterinarians, Houndswell’s Hemp Calming Aid is made of high-quality ingredients and is grain, corn, and soy free.” If this is true, then it doesn’t contain hemp, because hemp is a grain. (Well, technically hemp is an oilseed crop rather than a "true grain," but even so, let’s take that with a grain, so to speak, of salt.) The site also says that the chews are chicken-liver-flavored and contain hemp and chamomile. Oh, hey, chamomile! Also, technically an oilseed grain. Two feels like a lot of types of grain to be in a grain-free supplement, but I’m not a scientist, so I could be wrong. (I didn’t find any warnings on the Scenthound site, but I would be wary of giving your dog chamomile if your dog is taking baby aspirin for arthritis without consulting with your vet first, just FYI.)

One downside was that I could not go into a Scenthound location to look at the calming aid myself, because I’m a sucker for spoiling my dog, and I know the second I set foot in there, I’m driving down to Franklin once a month so that my dog can benefit from the services of a dog groomer with a fancy dog grooming certificate. So I had to look at the ingredients of other calming chewies for dogs. They all seem basically the same. And here’s the big secret: Many of them contain melatonin, and most of them contain tryptophan (though if this is in addition to what’s in hemp seeds isn’t clear). No wonder it calms your dog down. You’re giving your dog Thanksgiving dinner in a pill.

So, what have we learned at the end of all this? The line between hemp and marijuana is basically arbitrary and stupid. Poor people don’t care about certificates. My dog has no strong opinions on the Grateful Dead. We could all use the support of the ghost of Jacob Lee’s grandpa from time to time. And sadly, Jacob Lee isn’t selling pot to dogs in Williamson County, which would have been a fun and harmless scandal.

But while we’re all laughing at someone selling “calming” hemp to dogs without worry of actually being investigated for potentially selling the form of cannabis that definitely does calm people down (pot), let’s not lose sight of what our stupid attitude toward cannabis costs people who don’t have a lot of money or a powerful dad. According to the TBI’s crime stats, in 2022 (the last year for which there are records available), through the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office, 82.8 percent of the criminal activity related to narcotics violations was just for people having drugs on them, and 59.1 percent of the drugs the sheriff’s office seized was pot. The TBI reports that, in 2022, all of the narcotics violations in Franklin were possession. And again, more than half of the drugs seized in Franklin (55.9 percent) was pot.

This means that one of Jacob Lee’s near-minimum-wage employees can sell calming hemp supplements all day long and that’s fine, but if they get caught with the actual calming hemp (marijuana) outside of work, they’re going to be arrested. Maybe if Jacob actually believes in the health benefits of calming hemp, he could, on behalf of all of the rest of us, go talk to Republican legislators about legalizing cannabis whether it’s been arbitrarily called hemp or not.