The senator who championed the federal legalization of hemp is now seeking to reverse much of the reform by pushing legislation at a committee hearing this week to ban on consumable products with quantifiable amounts of THC, industry stakeholders say.
Several sources told Marijuana Moment on Tuesday that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the former majority leader in the Senate who led the push for hemp legalization as part of the 2018 Farm Bill, is behind forthcoming language in agriculture spending legislation that would effectively wipe out the consumable hemp product market.
The bill text has not been released at this point, however, and there are efforts within the cannabis space to get it amended before it goes to a vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday. Marijuana Moment reached out to McConnell’s office for comment, but representatives did not respond by the time of publication.
Two of the sources said that the hemp provisions will be identical to what the House Appropriations Committee passed late last month, with noted cannabis prohibitionist Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) leading the charge to correct what he’s described as a “loophole” in the Farm Bill that led to the proliferation of consumable—and in certain cases intoxicating—cannabinoid products such as delta-8 THC that have gone largely unregulated.
Another source said McConnell is aware that hemp legalization is part of his legacy in the Senate and wants closing the so-called “loophole” that has allowed the proliferation of intoxicating products to be part of that history.
Industry experts say the language wouldn’t just ban controversial hemp products found at gas stations and headshops across the country, however. Based on the House text, it would prohibit all products containing any amount of THC, and the concern is that it would mean even CBD items would likely be banned because it’s extremely rare that the extraction of that non-intoxicating cannabinoid would have no THC.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Marijuana Moment recently that he’s opposed to cannabis language included in the House agriculture appropriations bill that’s now heading to the floor. He said “I think would completely destroy the American hemp industry.”
“I don’t know how you’d be able to sell CBD oil with that,” he the senator said.
While Harris amended report language attached to the bill that clarifies it’s not the intent of the committee to stop people from accessing “industrial or nonintoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoid products with trace or insignificant amounts of THC,” the House bill itself still says that products containing any “quantifiable” amounts of THC couldn’t be marketed. And it’s rare to find CBD items without any natural traces of THC.
Again, while industry sources familiar with the discussions say the Senate version will contain identical language in its current form, the text isn’t publicly available and it’s possible it could be revised ahead of Thursday’s committee markup. But if the language is the same, that would raise serious concerns in the hemp sector, significantly increasing the likelihood that it could be enacted into law.
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