Politics
GOP Senator Worries Hemp Could Be Banned In ‘Next Two Weeks’ As Debate Has ‘Swung Hard On The Prohibitionist Side’
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is cautioning that the cannabis policy movement has “swung hard on the prohibitionist side” amid the ongoing debate over intoxicating hemp products. And he worries that, if things go awry, the hemp market could be decimated “within the next two weeks.”
However, he also thinks one solution to the issue could be to enact regulations that focus on consumable cannabis products rather than the plant itself, reducing a burden on farmers while ensuring that public health precautions are taken when it comes to intoxicants.
In an interview with The Dales Report on Wednesday, the GOP senator was asked about the status of negotiations over legislation concerning THC hemp products, which some members such as Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have proposed to ban.
There was a sense within the industry that Paul’s role in stripping the ban language from the Senate’s agriculture spending bill meant the market would be at least temporarily protected from such a policy change—but Paul warned that there’s still a possibility it could make it into the final appropriations legislation following a conference with the House, despite the fact that the chamber’s own version hasn’t advanced on the floor yet.
Paul said that a chief issue in the debate is the perception that certain hemp businesses are marketing products with high levels of intoxicating cannabinoids such as as delta-8 THC to youth. And that’s caused a knee-jerk reaction from lawmakers and officials like McConnell and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).
“Instead of having an age regulation or having some sensible regulation, they have written language that we think would kill the industry completely,” the senator said. On the congressional level, the provisions Paul is concerned about would redefine hemp–which was federally legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill that McConnell championed and President Donald Trump signed during his first term—to prohibit products with any quantifiable amount of THC.
Industry stakeholders say that policy change would effectively eradicate the hemp market.
“We think there needs to be a slow-down–put the brakes on things,” Paul said. “Our best hope is that nothing happens in the next couple of weeks” as Congress moved through appropriations legislation. The senator managed to leverage a procedural tactic last month to get McConnell to back down on the hemp ban language on the Senate side, but it remains intact in the House.
“It’s not that the House and the Senate are different,” Paul said. “The House has no [agriculture] bill at all, but they’re still going to conference on the Senate bill, so there still is some danger that the prohibitionist language will be in there.”
“I’ve talked to a lot of the players on this and tried to convince them to change the language—and we’ve at least had an audience and we presented things. None of it’s exactly to my liking, but it’s less bad,” he said. “We’re hoping for less bad right now, and we’re trying everything we can do to stop it from being prohibited. I think that it’s like anything else: People see a problem and they want to do something, and they react in an emotional way, but they don’t think through what their words will actually do.”
While acknowledging that the hemp market is in need of regulations that were omitted from the 2018 Farm Bill that legalized the crop and its derivatives, Paul said the solution isn’t an outright ban. Rather, “we need to try to shift the regulation from the plant to the consumable.”
“I’ve been saying this forever. I don’t want the farmers tested at all. I think it’s complete waste of time,” he said. “The make farmers plow under their crop if they have one plant that exceeds the limit. So I’d be much more liberal with the farmer.”
The senator was referring to the current federal definition of legal hemp, which is a cannabis crop containing no more than 0.3 percent THC by dry weight.
“It’s ineffective to test the plants anyway, because the consumable can be anything you want it to be. And so I think the testing, if we’re going to have testing, needs to be on that. And then I think that just needs to be something within reason that has limits. And I think ultimately, to put it in simple terms, you have cannabis that has more significant THC levels, and you have hemp products that would have a smaller amount of hemp of THC products in it. And so one would be a much milder thing, and it would be legal everywhere, and the other one would be legal in the states that legalized it.”
Paul recognized that, with the patchwork of state and federal cannabis laws, “it is complicated” to develop a regulatory framework for hemp that aligns with his ideal plan. But a beoader ban on hemp with any THC could end up leading to a trend where “everybody goes into the illegal market.”
“I think if everybody goes into cannabis, then basically you develop illegal markets is what happens,” he said. “It doesn’t go away. People will switch. And there may be some argument that the smaller THC products might be something that is a better avenue, and a lot of people actually like that.”
“The main concern I have is that, in the next two weeks, I don’t want language to pass that completely eliminates the hemp industry. I think that’s a big mistake. It’s not fair. It’s not right,” Paul said. “I’ve got a farming family in Northern Kentucky that does this [and] makes a good living doing it. They’ve invested a lot of time and energy in growing hemp, and I don’t want to put them out of business.”
The senator specifically called out the ambiguity of hemp ban proposals that have given significant deference to federal officials on determining what a “quantifiable” amount of THC in hemp would be. He pointed out that, with a prohibitionist at the helm of the designated agency, that could mean that “all sudden we have no more hemp industry.”
“I think we have to be very careful. The logical way would be to go from testing the plant to testing what has been being eaten,” he said.
Asked about recent conversations with McConnell and Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), a prohibitionist championing a hemp ban on the House side, Paul said “we’ve been working diligently” with the staff “trying to reach a compromise.”
“A lot of the conversations have been constructive. They say, at least on the surface, they’re not trying to eliminate it—but I think we are, in some ways, talking past each other,” he said.
“But I still am very fearful that the whole industry could be made illegal within the next two weeks,” the senator said. “So people who are interested in this need to be calling their senators and congressmen and saying, ‘Look, there’s no reason to make something like this illegal—and can’t we figure out a way to regulate it without prohibiting it?'”
A ban “could happen with the spending bill that’s happening in the next week. It also could happen in a conference committee report, where it’s coming together,” Paul said. “And the same way people lobby me, I have to lobby those members. I won’t be on the conference committee. I’m not on those spending committees that are making these decisions.”
“I spent a lot of my time lobbying them to try to make sure we don’t make a mistake here. But if you follow legislation, the history of legislation is mistake after mistake. People get in a rush,” he said. “I would prefer that we do nothing for now and send this back to the committee and study it for a year and not be too rash so we don’t ruin the industry.”
The senator also briefly discussed the proposal to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) that Trump is actively considered. He said a drug’s Schedule I status poses an “extraordinary obstacle” to businesses, and while he’d prefer ending prohibition altogether, a Schedule III reclassification “would help.”
“Ultimately, I think states have been tending towards being more permissive [toward cannabis] and let adult make their own decisions on these things. But I would say the pendulum is coming back,” he said. “The pendulum is going to get somewhere in the middle. But I think we just have to be aware, as we’re doing this, not to try to destroy people’s livelihoods who put a lot of money and time into businesses.”
“But I think I know what the reasonable compromise is. Let’s switch from testing the plant to testing what’s being consumed. Let’s get us a small but reasonable amount of THC. It has to have probably some THC, because, frankly, people are using all these products because probably the effect they’re getting is from the THC. And that’s not all bad. If it relaxes you, calms you [and] allows you to have less anxiety and to sleep at night, I’d much rather be having people take a hemp product than Oxycontin.”
The senator made similar comments in an interview with LEX 18 last week.
Meanwhile, Paul recently filed a standalone bill that would go in the opposite direction of the hemp 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, in June. It mirrors versions he’s sponsored over the last several sessions.
Harris, who championed the hemp THC ban in his chamber version of the agriculture spending legislation, told Marijuana Moment that he wasn’t concerned about any potential opposition to the hemp ban in the Senate—and he also disputed reports about the scope of what his legislation would do to the industry.
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report in June 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.
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.”
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 at 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.
