A year ago, members of Florida’s hemp industry were lobbying Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to veto a bill regulating hemp-derived THC products that many claimed if signed into law would be a devastating blow to their livelihoods.
Their mission was accomplished when he did in fact veto the proposal last June.
That won’t be required this year; the Legislature failed to pass anything on hemp before unofficially ending the legislative session on Friday night (although they are expected to return to Tallahassee later this month to deal exclusively with budget-related matters).
The central problem appeared to be the substantive differences between the Senate bill sponsored by Polk County Republican Colleen Burton (SB 438) and the House version (HB 7027) sponsored by Panhandle Republican Michelle Salzman.
The two measures would have capped the potency of hemp-derived THC products, placed advertising restrictions, and required hemp to be tested by a certified medical cannabis laboratory. But there were some big differences: The Senate bill (like its 2024 version) called for the outright ban of synthetic cannabinoids like Delta-8 and said that the newly popular hemp-infused drinks could only be sold through a retailer holding a liquor license.
Salzman’s bill in the House did not ban Delta-8. Neither did it call for retailers to have a liquor license, but it did include a 15 percent excise tax on all hemp purchases. Jonathan Miller, general counsel for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, said the House bill was better for his industry than the Senate’s version, and said he appreciated the work that Rep. Salzman devoted to trying to find the right balance.
“In its final form, we said that it wasn’t perfect, but it was a significant improvement on the Senate bill and so in the end nothing passing was better than the Senate bill passing,” Miller said. He’s “hopeful,” he said, that between now and next year’s legislative session “people will realize that the House version is the model to start working from and hopefully produce something that really both protects farmers and consumers at the same time.”
Hellbound and Down 