Bipartisan Senators Agree To Delay Planned Federal Hemp Product Ban For One Year

A powerful Senate committee has approved a bill that contains provisions
hemp industry stakeholders say would devastate the market by banning
consumable hemp products with any quantifiable amount of THC. However,
bipartisan members agreed to delay the implementation of the ban for one
year.

On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed Agriculture, Rural
Development, FDA spending legislation that covers the next fiscal year—and
also includes provisions that would significantly revise hemp laws
following the crop’s legalization under the 2018 Farm Bill.

Ahead of the committee vote, several sources told Marijuana Moment that
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who championed hemp legalization through that
2018 legislation while serving as majority leader, was behind the
restrictive cannabis language, vying to redefine his legacy by closing what
certain lawmakers have described as a “loophole” that led to the
proliferation of intoxicating cannabinoid products such as delta-8 THC.

Ahead of the vote on Thursday, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said he appreciates
McConnell’s concerns but worries that the new prohibition would be
overbroad and impact even non-intoxicating products, saying the language
“addresses one very important issue, but causes another problem.”

“It’s been a privilege to work with Senator McConnell on hemp,” he said.
“We first brought to this committee the idea that research should be done
on hemp, and then later we put in an amendment that proceeded to allow
seeds to be transferred across states, and now there is a hemp industry.”

“The important issue it addresses is not allowing hemp to be grown to
produce hallucinogenic products, and that, unfortunately, due to the magic
of laboratories, has occurred,” Merkley said. “But then there are other
products that come from hemp such as CBD that has, in fact, been a
significant factor as a healthcare supplement in many, many products across
America that does not have a hallucinogenic effect.”

“I would like to continue to work with Senator McConnell to see if we can
develop, in the course of this year, a definition that addresses
hallucinogenic factors but does not eliminate the CBD product that is non
hallucinogenic [and] that is valued by many Americans across the land,” he
said.

“I know that there’s important work to be done on the hemp, but this one
year [delay] will enable our farmers who are growing hemp currently to
produce this year’s crop within the existing framework, and we’ll have a
conversation over the coming year,” Merkley said.

McConnell appeared less interested in using the year to establish an
alternative regulatory framework, saying that he’s simply agreeing to “give
our hemp farmers ample time to prepare for their future.”

“The 2018 Farm Bill federally legalized hemp as an agricultural product,”
the senator said. “This language had an unintended consequence that has
allowed for intoxicating hemp-derived synthetic products to be made and
sold across our country.”

“These intoxicating products have flooded the market in the absence—no
regulatory structure, and [businesses] often use deceptive and predatory
marketing towards children with packaging and logos similar to existing
food products such as Oreos, candy, gummies and cereals,” McConnell said.

“The way I see it, the language I helped secure takes us back to the
original intent of the 2018 Farm Bill, and closes this loophole,” he said,
adding that the hemp provisions prior agriculture legislation “sought to
create an agricultural hemp industry—not open the door to the sale of
unregulated, intoxicating lab-made, hemp-derived substances with no safety
framework.”

The new bill text has still not been released at this point. Sources
familiar with the legislation said the hemp language would be identical to
what the House Appropriations Committee passed late last month, with noted
cannabis prohibitionist Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD).

But the versions now differ at least with respect to the implementation
timeline, meaning they would need to be resolved in conference if the
measures are not aligned before passing their respective bodies.

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.

Paul, for his part, recently filed a bill that would go in the opposite
direction of Harris’s ban, proposing to triple the concentration of THC
that the crop could legally contain, while addressing multiple other
concerns the industry has expressed about federal regulations.

The senator introduced the legislation, titled the Hemp Economic
Mobilization Plan (HEMP) Act, last month. It mirrors versions he’s
sponsored over the last several sessions.

Hemp and its derivatives were legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill, but the
industry has experienced multiple setbacks in the years since—and the
proliferation of intoxicating cannabinoid products has led to pushes in
Congress and state legislatures across the country to reign in the largely
unregulated market.

Harris, for his part, told Marijuana Moment recently that he’s not
concerned about any potential opposition in the Senate—and he also disputed
reports about the scope of what his legislation would do to the industry.

Harris—who serves as chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on
Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related
Agencies—also noted in the interview with Marijuana Moment that there “was
no opposition [to the hemp provisions] that came up in committee, that’s
for sure.”

He also briefly weighed in on the Texas governor’s recent veto of a bill to
recriminalize hemp products with any THC—simply stating that he’s “not
paying attention to what a single state is doing” while he focuses on
enacting the proposed federal ban.

The language in the congressional bill, meanwhile, would still effectively
eliminate the most commonly marketed hemp products within the industry, as
even non-intoxicating CBD items that are sold across the country typically
contain trace amounts of THC. Under current law, those products are allowed
if they contain no more than 0.3 percent THC by dry weight.

The proposed policy championed by Harris would drastically change that. It
would instead maintain the legal status of “industrial hemp” under a
revised definition that allows for the cultivation and sale of hemp grown
for fiber, whole grain, oil, cake, nut, hull, microgreens or “other edible
hemp leaf products intended for human consumption.”

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report last month
stating that the legislation would “effectively” prohibit hemp-derived
cannabinoid products. Initially it said that such a ban would prevent the
sale of CBD as well, but the CRS report was updated to exclude that
language for reasons that are unclear.

The hemp language is largely consistent with appropriations and agriculture
legislation that was introduced, but not ultimately enacted, under the last
Congress.

Hemp industry stakeholders rallied against that proposal, an earlier
version of which was also included in the base bill from the subcommittee
last year. It’s virtually identical to a provision of the 2024 Farm Bill
that was attached by a separate committee last May via an amendment from
Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL), which was also not enacted into law.

There are some differences between the prior spending bill and this latest
version for 2026, including a redefining of what constitutes a
“quantifiable” amount of THC that’d be prohibited for hemp products.

It now says that a quantifiable amount is “based on substance, form,
manufacture, or article (as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human
Services in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture),” whereas it
was previously defined as an amount simply “determined by the Secretary in
consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services.”

The proposed legislation also now specifies that the term hemp does not
include “a drug that is the subject of an application approved under
subsection (c) or (j) of section 505 of the Federal Food, Drug, and
Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 355),” which seems to carve out an exception for
Food and Drug Administration- (FDA) approved drugs such Epidiolex, which is
synthesized from CBD.

A leading alcohol industry association, meanwhile, has called on Congress
to dial back language in the House spending bill that would ban most
consumable hemp products, instead proposing to maintain the legalization of
naturally derived cannabinoids from the crop and only prohibit synthetic
items.

Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) President and CEO Francis
Creighton said in a press release that “proponents and opponents alike
have agreed that this language amounts to a ban.”

“By pushing a rapidly evolving industry back into the shadows, Congress is
creating even more chaos in the marketplace, undermining state initiatives
and punishing responsible actors,” he said. “We urge the full House to
reconsider this approach. States can regulate intoxicating products safely
and effectively through systems that preserve consumer trust and public
safety. It’s time for Congress to follow their lead, not override their
authority.”

Members of WSWA also met with lawmakers and staffers in April to advocate
for three key policy priorities that the group says is based on “sound
principles of alcohol distribution.” They include banning synthetic THC,
setting up a federal system for testing and labeling products and
establishing state-level power to regulate retail sales.

Separately, key GOP congressional lawmakers—including one member who
supports marijuana legalization—don’t seem especially concerned about
provisions in the bill despite concern from stakeholders that it would put
much of the hemp industry in jeopardy by banning most consumable products derived
from the plant.


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Jonathan Miller, general counsel of the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, told
congressional lawmakers in April that the market is “begging” for federal
regulations around cannabis products.

At the hearing, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) also inquired about FDA inaction
around regulations, sarcastically asking if it’d require “a gazillion
bureaucrats that work from home” to regulate cannabinoids such as CBD.

A report from Bloomberg Intelligence (BI) last year called cannabis a
“significant threat” to the alcohol industry, citing survey data that
suggests more people are using cannabis as a substitute for alcoholic
beverages such a beer and wine.

Last November, meanwhile, a beer industry trade group put out a statement
of guiding principles to address what it called “the proliferation of
largely unregulated intoxicating hemp and cannabis products,” warning of
risks to consumers and communities resulting from THC consumption.

The post Bipartisan Senators Agree To Delay Planned Federal Hemp Product
Ban For One Year appeared first on Marijuana Moment.