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.
The industry is largely unregulated, they argue, and Congress in 2018 failed to distinguish between intoxicating and non-intoxicating hemp products. As such, THC products are widely available for sale on store shelves.
The new language, McConnell said, will "keep the dangerous products out of the hands of children while preserving the hemp industry for farmers."
The House is scheduled to take up the funding bill as early as Wednesday. If it passes, industry groups said the nearly $30 billion legal hemp market will disappear.
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