Tag: hemp

Hemp Provision in Spending Bill Could Kill Legit Industry

The hemp industry is gearing up for a lobbying effort following a provision in the recent government funding package meant to stop the sale of intoxicating hemp products but could inadvertently destroy a legitimate $28 billion industry and kill 300,000 American jobs.

The provision in the bill bans hemp products like gummies, drinks, vapes, and topical pain relief applications that contain low doses of THC — the part of the cannabis plant that can create intoxication in users at higher levels.

Hemp was legalized in the 2018 Farm Bill. It “required the FDA to establish a regulatory framework for hemp products, but it never did, allowing intoxicating hemp products to be introduced in the marketplace without oversight or standardization,” the Hill reported.

The new ban tucked into the spending bill prohibits products containing more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container and is aimed at stopping the sale of intoxicating products often sold in gas stations and convenience stores.

However, the trade group U.S. Hemp Roundtable estimates the move would wipe out 95 percent of CBD products used to treat pain and other health issues, shut down small businesses and farms nationwide, and cost states $1.5 billion in tax revenue.

According to the trade group’s statement:

Despite misleading claims this language protects non-intoxicating CBD products, the reality is that more than 90% of non-intoxicating hemp-derived products contain levels of THC that are greater than the proposed cap of .4 mg per container. As a result, seniors, veterans, and many other consumers who depend on hemp for their health and well-being would be violating federal law to purchase these products, disrupting their care and leaving them scrambling for potentially harmful alternatives.

In Texas, for example, voters overwhelmingly supported the sale of legal hemp-derived products when properly regulated, according to Breitbart News’s reporting of a statewide poll in July. In June, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) vetoed a THC ban bill that had passed the Texas Legislature.

While the spending bill was still in the Senate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) unsuccessfully offered an amendment to remove the language, but the Senate voted overwhelmingly to table it. Paul warned on the Senate floor that the measure would “eradicate the hemp industry” and “couldn’t come at a worse time for America’s farmers.”

Supporters of the provision in the bill argued it was long overdue.

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Illinois Will Revisit Hemp Regulation Debate Amid New Federal Ban On THC Products, Governor Says

Tucked into the spending legislation approved by Congress this week was a provision banning the sale of intoxicating hemp products—a move that could upend an industry with annual sales now into the billions.

Hemp was federally legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill, which defined it as a plant with less than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC. But the law didn’t account for total THC or other cannabinoids, creating a loophole that allowed companies to use compounds like delta-8 to make products with marijuana-like intoxicating effects. As a result, hemp-derived intoxicants have proliferated in gas stations, corner stores and other places with little to no regulation.

An amendment seeking to remove the language from the larger bill, proposed by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, was rejected in a 76-24 vote. Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) voted with the majority.

Durbin said the hemp language was proposed by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky.

“Throughout my career, I’ve tried my best to protect children,” Durbin said. “He asked for further regulation of the industry to make sure their products being sold at service stations and such weren’t dangerous to kids. That’s not too much to ask. I supported his position.”

Though he opposed the bill on the whole, the hemp provision hands Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) an indirect political win. The governor earlier this year pushed in vain for legislation that would have limited the sale of delta-8 and other hemp-derived intoxicants to state-licensed cannabis dispensaries. But House Speaker Chris Welch, D-Hillside, did not call it for a vote, claiming it did not have the support of 60 House Democrats.

“In the absence of action in Springfield, Governor Pritzker supports policies to protect people, including children, from being misinformed or harmed by these products,” a Pritzker spokesperson said.

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Kentucky Governor Says Hemp Is An ‘Important Industry’ That Should Be Regulated At The State Level, Not Federally Banned

The Democratic governor of Kentucky says the hemp industry is an “important” part of the economy that deserves to be regulated at the state level—rather than federally prohibited, as Congress has moved to do under a spending bill President Donald Trump signed on Wednesday.

During a press briefing on Thursday, Gov. Andy Beshear (D) was asked whether he agrees with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) that the hemp language that advanced through the appropriations legislation poses an existential threat to the cannabis market that’s emerged since the crop was federally legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill.

“I haven’t had a chance to review the language on hemp, but hemp is an important industry in Kentucky,” Beshear said. “We should have appropriate safety regulations around it, but we should make those regulations here in Kentucky—talking to the industry and making sure that we get that balance right.”

“I think that we can protect our kids. I think that we can do the right thing to protect all of our people while not handicapping an industry that supports a lot of people,” the governor said.

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A Senate-Approved Bill Would Ban the Hemp-Derived THC Products That Congress Legalized in 2018

Forty states now allow medical use of marijuana, while 24, accounting for most of the U.S. population, also allow recreational use. Yet the federal ban on marijuana, first enacted in 1937, remains in place, which means state-licensed cannabis suppliers still face legal risks and financial burdens stemming from a policy that a large majority of Americans reject. But instead of addressing that increasingly untenable situation by repealing federal marijuana prohibition, the U.S. Senate is bent on expanding the ban to cover psychoactive hemp products.

An appropriations bill that was part of the Senate deal to end the federal shutdown aims to close a loophole opened by the 2018 farm bill, which legalized hemp. That law defined hemp to include any part of the cannabis plant containing less than 0.3 percent delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. The definition also includes “all [hemp] derivatives, extracts, cannabinoids, isomers, acids, salts, and salts of isomers,” as long as their delta-9 THC content is less than 0.3 percent.

The farm bill opened the door to a wide range of hemp-derived products, including edibles, beverages, flower, and vape cartridges containing delta-8 THC, an isomer that has effects similar to those of delta-9 THC, or tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCA), which converts to delta-9 THC when heated. That explains all those seemingly illegal THC products you may have seen online or in vape shops, pharmacies, or liquor stores, which offer alternatives for cannabis consumers who live in states that still prohibit recreational use of marijuana.

Pot prohibitionists unsurprisingly view that situation as intolerable. The Senate appropriations bill, which would fund agricultural programs, rural development, and the Food and Drug Administration through fiscal year 2026, addresses their concerns by redefining hemp to exclude psychoactive products derived from hemp. According to a summary from the Senate Appropriations Committee, the bill will prevent “intoxicating hemp-based or hemp-derived products, including Delta-8, from being sold online, in gas stations, and corner stores, while preserving non-intoxicating CBD and industrial hemp products.”

The narrower hemp definition, which amounts to a broader definition of marijuana, excludes “any intermediate hemp-derived cannabinoid products” containing “cannabinoids that are not capable of being naturally produced” by the cannabis plant or that “were synthesized or manufactured outside the plant.” It also prohibits intermediate products containing more than a 0.3 percent “combined total” of “tetrahydrocannabinols (including tetrahydrocannabinolic acid)” or “any other cannabinoids that have similar effects (or are marketed to have similar effects) on humans or animals.” And it bans final hemp products that contain either synthesized cannabinoids or more than “0.4 milligrams combined total per container” of “tetrahydrocannabinols” (including THCA) or “any other cannabinoids” with “similar effects.”

Given those limits, Cannabis Business Times notes, “companies that manufacture and sell intoxicating hemp products in today’s market would have to overhaul or abandon their business plans.” The U.S. Hemp Roundtable (USHR), a trade group that represents those companies, is understandably alarmed, “arguing that [the bill] would recriminalize hemp products and threaten to eliminate a $28 billion industry that provides 300,000 American jobs.”

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The government is open, but a hemp industry shutdown has just begun

The funding bill to end the longest government shutdown in American history was not simply a “yes” or “no” to reopen the government. Tucked away in the bill, on page 163, in Title VII of Division B, was a provision to shut down the hemp industry. It wipes out the regulatory frameworks adopted by several states, takes away consumer choice and destroys the livelihoods of hemp farmers.

This could not come at a worse time for our farmers. Costs have increased while prices for crops have declined. Farm bankruptcies are rising. For many farmers, planting hemp offered them a lifeline. Hemp can be used for textiles, rope, insulation, composite wood, paper, grain and in CBD products, and growing hemp helped farmers to mitigate the loses they’ve endured during this season of hardship.

But that lifeline is about to be extinguished.

Nearly 100% of hemp products currently sold will be illegal

The justification for this hemp ban, we are told, is that some bad actors are skirting the legal limits by enhancing the concentrations of THC in their products. The hemp industry and I had already come to the negotiating table, in good faith, to discuss reforms that prevent “juicing up” hemp products with purely synthetic cannabinoids of unknown origin.

Dozens of states have already instituted age limits and set THC levels for such products. I have no objection to many of these reforms. In fact, during negotiations, I expressly stated I would accept a federal ban on synthetic THC, as well as reasonable per serving limits. All along, my objective was to find an agreement that would protect consumers from bad actors while still allowing the hemp industry to thrive.

But the provision that was inserted into the government funding bill makes illegal any hemp product that contains more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container. That would be nearly 100% of hemp products currently sold. This is so low that it takes away any of the benefit of the current products intended to manage pain or other conditions.

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Federal THC ban sends hemp companies scrambling

The Senate late Monday passed a funding package that would reopen the government and fund the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. Tucked into the funding bill is a provision that would re-criminalize many of the intoxicating hemp-derived products that were legalized by the 2018 Farm Bill.   

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) waged a last-minute fight to try to keep the provision out, threatening to drag out the process of debating the underlying bill until he got a vote on an amendment to strip the language.  

He got the vote on Monday; Paul and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) were the only Republicans who voted in favor. 

“The bill, as it now stands, overrides the regulatory frameworks of several states, cancels the collective decisions of hemp consumers and destroys the livelihoods of hemp farmers,” Paul said on the floor ahead of the vote. “And it couldn’t come at a worse time for America’s farmers. Times are tough for our farmers.” 

The provision “prevents the unregulated sale of intoxicating hemp-based or hemp-derived products, including Delta-8, from being sold online, in gas stations, and corner stores, while preserving non-intoxicating CBD and industrial hemp products,” according to a Senate Appropriations Committee summary. 

The proposal was first included in the House’s funding bill for the Department of Agriculture, but it was removed from the Senate version over the summer following a disagreement between Paul and his fellow Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell.  

Hemp industry representatives and lobbyists have spent months campaigning against the language. Many said they were caught by surprise when the funding bill text was unveiled on Sunday.  

McConnell was a champion of legalizing hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill. But he’s since soured on what he says is a “loophole” that companies use to take legal amounts of THC (or tetrahydrocannabinol) from hemp and turn it into intoxicating substances.  

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Why Is Congress Moving To Ban The Hemp Products That Saved My Son’s Life?

Before my son, Austin, was even five years old, he had been prescribed a series of pharmaceuticals for his epilepsy—opioids, benzodiazepines, rufinamide and more. That continued for years. The side effects were absolutely awful. The sheer number and potency nearly killed him several times, but they never stopped his daily seizures.

By the time he was eleven, his body was shutting down from the daily pills that had hideous physical, emotional and mental repercussions. While he was on life support, the doctors told us that if the pharmaceutical damage to his organs didn’t kill him within two years, the seizures would.

“Just take him home,” the doctors said, “there’s nothing more we can do here.” It was the most terrifying, infuriating, overwhelming moment of my life. The doctors were giving up on my son because the pharmaceuticals they had been prescribing for years had done more damage than they could repair and the seizures remained, worsened.

We couldn’t just watch our son die. We refused to accept that, we had no idea what we were going to do, what we had to do, but we knew we needed to do something for Austin. Whatever it took to help him, that was our mission.

There was a lot of information on hemp, CBD, medical marijuana gaining traction in the news with doctors and scientists speaking in favor of its potential. But my husband was a fireman in our beloved hometown, and trying plant medicines could make him a felon. Our entire family would be at risk. We could lose everything, go to jail and lose Austin.

That refusal to give up, and the desperate attempt to find lawful options, led our family to uproot our lives in Oklahoma and move to Colorado—one of the only states where families could legally access hemp and cannabis as medicine in 2014.

Now after our years-long battle to give children like Austin lawful access to this medicine, to give other parents hope when there is none, Congress is poised to re-criminalize this plant and again put hundreds of thousands of patients, and the people that love them, in jeopardy.

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Texas Officials Post Hemp Law ‘Checklist’ List To Help Businesses Comply With State Cannabis Rules

Even as Congress is taking steps to reinstitute a federal ban on hemp products containing THC, Texas officials are distributing a new hemp law “checklist” list to help businesses comply with recently enacted state cannabis rules—including age-gating to prevent the sale of intoxicating cannabinoid products to youth.

In addition to holding a license or registration with the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), hemp businesses must follow a series of new regulatory policies if they sell or deliver consumable hemp products (CHPs), the flyer says.

For each sale or delivery, employees of licensed hemp businesses must inspect a customer’s ID to determine if they’re at least 21 years old and the identification is not expired.

“Failure to comply with these requirements is a violation of state law and regulations,” the notice says, adding that consumable hemp products include CBD and THC oils, gummies and infused food or drink edibles.

“A CHP is a product processed or manufactured for consumption that contains hemp, including food, a drug, a device and a cosmetic,” the department said. “It does not include any consumable hemp product containing a hemp seed, or hemp seed-derived ingredient used in a manner generally recognized as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”

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Senate Advances Hemp Product Ban—But GOP Senator Has Last-Ditch Plan To Fight Back

A congressional spending bill containing a hotly contested ban on hemp products with THC has cleared a procedural Senate vote, teeing up consideration of final passage, expected within days. But one GOP senator has a plan to strike the provision, industry stakeholders tell Marijuana Moment.

The Senate agreed to advance the minibus appropriations package in a 60-40 vote on Sunday, with a handful of Democrats joining all but one Republican to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the legislation amid the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

Hemp advocates and stakeholders have strongly condemned the hemp language as currently included in the package, warning that its provisions would effectively eradicate the market that’s evolved since the crop was federally legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill.

One of the industry’s most active supporters, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), isn’t planning to cede the issue easily.

According to two hemp industry stakeholders, the senator is pressing for a vote on an amendment to strike the re-criminalization language—or else block leadership’s plans to advance the overall legislation on a rapid basis, which could delay the process of ending the ongoing federal shutdown for days.

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Congress Shouldn’t Bury a Hemp Ban in a Bill to Feed Families and Pay Our Troops

As Congress stumbles toward reopening the government, a quiet maneuver is unfolding, one that could devastate a thriving, new American industry.

Language added to the Agriculture-FDA Appropriations Bill would change the federal definition of hemp — the definition Congress passed in 2018 — in a way that would effectively outlaw nearly every hemp product on the market.

It’s being advanced through the appropriations process, so it’s not subject to the usual public hearings or debates.

A policy that could destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and close thousands of farms and small businesses might pass in the same vote that funds food assistance programs and pays the military.

This proposal doesn’t just threaten my company. It threatens an entire ecosystem of farmers, manufacturers, distributors and retailers that grew under rules established by Congress. The 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp products with less than 0.3% Delta-9 THC. Businesses like mine invested, hired and innovated within that framework.

Seven years later, hemp is a $28-billion-a-year industry that’s rapidly growing. It supports 320,000 American jobs and generates $1.5 billion in state tax revenue, according to Whitney Economics and USDA data. Major retailers such as Target, Circle K and Total Wine and More have embraced hemp-derived beverages because consumer demand is overwhelming.

This is no longer a niche market — it’s a national one, built by individuals and passionate visionaries. Hemp products ranging from CBD gummies to THC seltzers line shelves in stores across the country.

The proposed language would make those same products illegal overnight. It would wipe out all regulations at the state level, criminalize legitimate businesses, eliminate profitable hemp-farming acreage and force countless adult consumers to the black market, thanks to a heavy-handed federal decision.

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