Key GOP Congressional Committee Chairman Pushes To Delay Hemp THC Ban...

The Republican chair of a key congressional committee is joining with
farmers to push for a delay in the planned enactment of a federal law that
threatens to recriminalize hemp-derived THC products.

“The hemp industry is facing significant challenges and growing
uncertainty, and is long past time for Congress to provide farmers and
business owners with the clarity they need to succeed,” House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said at a press
conference on Thursday. “This uncertainty is not abstract. It’s impacting
real people, real jobs and real communities all across our
country—particularly in rural America.”

Comer is calling on colleagues to pass a new bill that was filed in the
House this week, the Hemp Planting Predictability Act, that would push back
by two years the implementation of legislation President Donald Trump
signed last year to reverse the federal legalization of most hemp-derived
products that he had approved during his first term in 2018. The renewed
ban is currently set to take effect this November.

“The crisis that are facing everyone in this room that’s involved in hemp,
it’s not a crisis of supply and demand. It’s not a crisis of a trade
dispute or terrorists or anything like that. The Senate passed language
that was no debate or no discussion that…has the potential to impact hemp
in a fatal way.”

“The hemp industry’s impact on my home state of Kentucky and nationwide is
substantial,” the chairman said. “Hemp supports 320,000 American jobs,
generates $28.4 billion in market activity and contributes $1.5 billion in
state tax revenue.”

If the delay bill were to be enacted, Comer and other stakeholders feel it
could give them enough time to convince a majority in Congress that, rather
than an outright ban on most consumable hemp products, lawmakers could
address concerns about youth access and quality control for intoxicating
cannabinoids through a more targeted regulatory approach that includes
age-gating and testing requirements.

“We’ve got to set up a regulatory framework, and you could stop the wild
west out there. And it’s not the growers; fault, it’s not the processors’
fault. People in this room are doing it right,” he told assembled hemp
industry participants on Thursday. “But there are some people in America
that aren’t doing it right. There are people that are importing counterfeit
CBD products from China. There are people that are selling products that
aren’t what they say on the label.”

“Nobody’s spot checking the labels. That’s what the [Food and Drug
Administration] is supposed to do.”

Comer said that “nearly every farmer I know who grew hemp last year was a
former tobacco farmer.”

To that point, Brian Furnish, an eighth-generation farmer from Kentucky who
said his family has grown tobacco since the 1700s, spoke about the
challenges he and others face in light of uncertainty over federal policy.

“If we don’t get a two-year extension, as a farmer I can’t sell my current
inventory that I harvested legally and planted legally in 2025. As of right
now, [my crop] has lost over $600,000 in price in the last six weeks,” he
said. “Our buyers are also telling us that we can’t ship any more biomass
to them until they move their inventory. And so it’s a ripple effect
through the whole industry, from the people who make the retail product all
the way back to the farmer.”

Ken Meyer, a farmer from South Dakota, said hemp is a valuable part of his
operations.

“Farmers grow hemp and rotation with corn and soybeans. It provides another
income on the farm, and a valuable one, and it improves their soil,” he
said. “Farmers are hurting right now. It is difficult to sell soybeans.
Corn prices are low. It is not a time to ban a crop that is so important to
the farmers of America.”

Abram Phillips, another Kentucky farmer, similarly said that hemp is an
“alternative crop that has a higher value that’s good for the soil” and is
“an alternative to other extensive and heavier requirement crops.”

Comer called on his colleagues to “act swiftly to pass legislation that
protects jobs, eliminates bad actors standardizes labeling and requires
third party testing.”

“These steps are essential to providing certainty for business owners and
confidence for consumers,” he said. “Today, American farmers are facing
serious, a lot of challenges for farmers all across America, the last thing
they need is inaction from Washington that puts a growing, multi-billion
dollar industry at risk.”

The lawmaker said that if the bill to delay the hemp ban by two years can
pass the House, he is “confident we can get it through the Senate.”

“I urge both Republicans and Democrats to come together to support this
common sense legislation,” he said. “I look forward to continuing to work
with my colleagues in Congress and industry stakeholders to get this bill
to the president’s desk as quickly as possible.”

A recent poll shows that four in five marijuana consumers say they oppose
the recriminalization of hemp THC products under the spending bill Trump
signed in November. However, it should be noted that that poll was
conducted weeks before he issued a cannabis rescheduling order and took
steps to protect access to full-spectrum CBD.

Trump signed an executive order last month directing the attorney general
to complete the process of moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III
of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

Part of that announcement also hold implications for the forthcoming hemp
law. The president’s order also urged Congress to examine updating the
definition of hemp to ensure that full-spectrum CBD is accessible to
patients.

A further redefinition of hemp would be part of a novel proposal to allow
Medicare recipients to access non-intoxicating CBD that’d be covered under
the federal health care plan.

To effectuate that, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will
be announcing “a model that will allow a number of CMS beneficiaries to
benefit from receiving CBD under doctor recommendation at no cost,” a White
House official said during a briefing that Marijuana Moment first reported
leaked details from ahead of the signing event.

Trump seemed endorse a more flexible CBD policy last summer when he shared
a video calling for that specific reform while promoting the health
benefits of cannabidiol, particularly for seniors.

Meanwhile, a separate recently filed Republican-led congressional bill
would stop the implementation of the hemp ban under the enacted
appropriations legislation.

Hemp businesses and industry groups have warned about the potential
ramifications of the ban, but despite his support for states’ rights for
cannabis and a recent social media post touting the benefits of CBD, Trump
signed the underlying spending measure into law without acknowledging the
hemp provisions.

GOP political operative Roger Stone said recently that Trump was effectively
“forced” by Republican lawmakers to sign the spending bill with the hemp
THC ban language.

However, a White House spokesperson said prior to the bill signing that Trump
specifically supported the prohibition language.

The Democratic governor of Kentucky said that 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.

Also, a leading veterans organization is warning congressional leaders that
the newly approved blanket ban on consumable hemp products could
inadvertently “slam the door shut” on critical research.


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Since 2018, cannabis products have been considered legal hemp if they
contain less than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC on a dry weight basis.

The newly enacted legislation specifies that, within one year of enactment,
the weight will apply to total THC—including delta-8 and other isomers. It
will also include “any other cannabinoids that have similar effects (or are
marketed to have similar effects) on humans or animals as a
tetrahydrocannabinol (as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human
Services).”

The new definition of legal hemp will additionally ban “any intermediate
hemp-derived cannabinoid products which are marketed or sold as a final
product or directly to an end consumer for personal or household use” as
well as products containing cannabinoids that are synthesized or
manufactured outside of the cannabis plant or not capable of being
naturally produced by it.

Legal hemp products will be limited to a total of 0.4 milligrams per
container of total THC or any other cannabinoids with similar effects.

Within 90 days of the bill’s enactment, the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) and other agencies will need to publish list of “all cannabinoids
known to FDA to be capable of being naturally produced by a Cannabis sativa
L. plant, as reflected in peer reviewed literature,” “all
tetrahydrocannabinol class cannabinoids known to the agency to be naturally
occurring in the plant” and “all other known cannabinoids with similar
effects to, or marketed to have similar effects to, tetrahyrocannabinol
class cannabinoids.”

The language slightly differs from provisions included in legislation that
had previously advanced out of the House and Senate Appropriations panels,
which would have banned products containing any “quantifiable” amount of
THC, to be determined by the HHS secretary and secretary of agriculture.

The post Key GOP Congressional Committee Chairman Pushes To Delay Hemp THC
Ban, Saying It Will Hurt Farmers appeared first on Marijuana Moment.