Senators remove hemp product ban from federal funding bill

A Politico article states that the Senate Appropriations Committee’s agriculture subcommittee, which is responsible for drafting spending bills, removed Tuesday language intended to ban federally all intoxicating hemp-based products after legislators couldn’t agree on this issue.

Kentucky Republican Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul disagreed over the language — McConnell was pushing for a provision added earlier this month that sought to prohibit the sale of intoxicating hemp products, although the language would have delayed the change by one year. Paul said he would block the entire appropriations act if this language wasn’t removed. Paul argued the change will “destroy the” booming hemp industry in the United States.

John Hoeven, the Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Agriculture and FDA subcommittee said that they could not reach an agreement.

McConnell led the bill to legalize industrial hemp at federal level to victory in 2018, but since then hemp companies began to produce and sell hemp products which contain psychoactive compounds like delta-8 or delta-9 THC. According to the report, McConnell has indicated privately that he wants to fix the so-called loophole before retiring next year.

McConnell said in an article in the Lexington Herald Reader published on 15 July that “rooting out bad actors and reinforcing our original legislative intention is a important step both toward greater child safety as well as greater economic certainty.”

In the meantime, advocates of the hemp industry praised Kentucky’s junior senator for taking an stance.

The U.S. Hemp Roundtable issued a public statement saying, “We deeply appreciate Senator Paul’s support of the hemp industry.” “We support Rand in his leadership of this issue.”