Mike Simpson is one of Rhode Island’s biggest cheerleaders for hemp cultivation and the plant’s derivative products—remedies, he believes, that may help where pharmaceutical medicines cannot.
It’s that very reason Simpson helped co-found Rhode Island’s only outdoor hemp farm, where he says many of the business’ products ship all across the country.
But Lovewell Farms may cease operations now that Congress has approved reopening the federal government under legislation that would effectively ban hemp products containing more than 0.4 milligrams of THC. Now that it has been signed by President Donald Trump, the ban will go into effect in a year.
“This might be the final straw,” Simpson said in an interview Wednesday. “I may have to shut my whole company down.”
Simpson doesn’t sell intoxicating products, but said crops grown at his Hopkinton farm can contain up to 1 milligram of THC in it, as is allowed under existing Rhode Island hemp regulations.
“I have 700 to 800 pounds of flower that I grew this year that under that law would not be legal,” he said.
Simpson said he would grow crops with lower concentrations, but as a USDA-certified organic farm, there aren’t that many seed suppliers he can buy from.
“We’re really at the whim of what those folks are providing,” he said.
The provision in the shutdown-ending appropriations bill was championed by GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky in order to close a loophole in the 2018 Farm Bill that legalized hemp but inadvertently paved the way for the proliferation of hemp-derived THC products like infused drinks—products which states have since scrambled to either regulate or ban.
Hellbound and Down 