US Senate Democrats Forgo Addressing Intoxicating Hemp in 2024 Farm Bill Summary

Regulatory barriers for industrial hemp farmers in the grain and fiber markets would be lowered and a felon ban on participating in the marketplace would be repealed in the U.S. Senate Democrats’ version of a reauthorized Farm Bill.

Leaders in the Democratic-controlled Senate Agriculture Committee released a 94-page summary of their reauthorization proposal on May 1, while leaders in the Republican-controlled House Agriculture Committee released a five-page summary for their proposed framework for the 2024 Farm Bill.

Both have yet to address intoxicating hemp products that have proliferated in marketplaces across the nation since the 2018 Farm Bill.

The Farm Bill, which was first adopted in 1933 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in an effort to help improve the lives of those still suffering from the Great Depression, is renewed roughly every five years to regularly address the nation’s current agricultural and food policies through a variety of programs. While the industrial hemp provisions included in the 2018 Farm Bill legitimized the U.S. hemp industry through legalization and regulation beyond state pilot programs, the 530-page bill covers much more beyond hemp.

The Farm Bill includes nutrition assistance programs like SNAP as well as myriad farm-related matters, from fertilizer and energy use to crop insurance, commodity support and conservation. The U.S has passed 18 farm bills since 1933, according to the Library of Congress.

With only a small portion of the Farm Bill dealing with hemp, GOP House leaders like Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., who chairs the Agriculture Committee in the lower chamber, did not mention hemp in their five-page summary released this week.

The U.S. Hemp Roundtable (USHR), a nonprofit industry coalition that advocates for equitable and inclusive laws for hemp industries, including extracts like CBD, said in a press release responding to the summaries that stakeholders shouldn’t read too much into that omission.

“We’ve had numerous meetings with House Republican and Democratic committee leaders who have indicated that they are looking to promote hemp farming, and we are hopeful that several items of our agenda will be incorporated,” according to the USHR release.

RELATED: Hemp Industry Organizations Unite on 7 Key Objectives for 2024 Farm Bill

Meanwhile, the Senate Democrats’ 94-page summary dedicates one section to “hemp production” with two single-sentence bullet points:

• Defines “industrial hemp” and lowers regulatory barriers for farmers who are growing industrial hemp for grain and fiber.
• Eliminates the ban on persons who were previously convicted of a felony relating to a controlled substance from participating in the program or producing hemp.
  

The Senate Democrats’ summary for the 2024 Farm Bill—titled The Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act of 2024—did not include a provision to possibly redefine hemp in a manner that addresses intoxicating hemp products. Twenty-one state attorneys general called on Congress to address these products in a March 2024 letter to the House and Senate agriculture committees’ chairs and ranking members.

While CBD is the main nonintoxicating compound in cannabis and hemp, many operators connected to the extraction side of the hemp industry found a lifeline in intoxicated hemp-derived products that include chemically synthesized cannabinoids like delta-8 THC, delta-10 THC, THC-O or HHC following a CBD price crash that began in 2019.

Specifically, CBD isolate prices fell from a high of $9,480 per kilogram in October 2018 to $4,133 per kilogram in August 2019—a 56% decline in less than a year, Cannabis Business Times reported that year. With chemically synthesized cannabinoids not tightly defined in the 2018 Farm Bill, many industry operators found new opportunities following that price crash.

Hemp manufactures also began producing edibles containing intoxicating amounts of delta-9 THC, the main naturally occurring intoxicating compound in cannabis, and selling these hemp-derived delta-9 THC products via interstate commerce, something licensed cannabis businesses are unable to do under federal prohibition.

While the 2018 Farm Bill separates cannabis from hemp by defining hemp as containing no more than 0.3% THC on a dry-weight basis, processors can extract the delta-9 THC from hemp plants, infuse products with concentrated amounts of this THC, and then still meet the “dry-weight” basis threshold in heavier edible products. For example, a 100-gram chocolate bar with 300 milligrams of THC hits that 0.3% THC mark on a dry-weight basis.

Fueled by this example as well as the absence of a definition for chemically synthesized cannabinoids like delta-8 in the 2018 Farm Bill, sales have taken off. Today, the U.S. hemp-derived cannabinoid market is “conservatively” estimated to be $28.4 billion, according to Whitney Economics’ National Cannabinoid Report.

For many licensed cannabis companies that face stringent regulations and hefty taxes, this represents an unfair advantage in the market.

Last month, the U.S. Cannabis Council (USCC), whose members include many of the largest cannabis companies in the world, such as Curaleaf, Green Thumb Industries, Verano, Cresco Labs and others, wrote a letter urging the Senate and House Agriculture committees’ leaders close “loopholes” that have created an unregulated, intoxicating hemp-derived product market.

Many of the intoxicating hemp-derived products are not only shipped across state lines, but they’re often available for purchase in gas stations and convenience stores, and without age-gating or labeling requirements, which can mislead consumers about the safety of their purchases, USCC Executive Director Edward Conklin said in the letter.

While many cannabis industry stakeholders hold the position that intoxication should be the defining factor between cannabis and hemp products, many hemp stakeholders don’t see it that way.

Leaders at the U.S. Hemp Roundtable stood behind “popular hemp products that have rescued the industry and farms in recent years” in Wednesday’s press release.

“Some marijuana organizations have joined prohibitionists to propose bans that could federally criminalize products with any amount of THC, even nonintoxicating, full-spectrum CBD products,” the release states. “We continue to lobby Congress against such restrictions and are hopeful that our approach—regulating all products and keeping products that may impair out of the hands of children—will prevail in the end.”

Just because a redefinition of hemp wasn’t mentioned in the Senate Democrats’ 94-page summary released May 1 doesn’t mean it won’t be included in legislative language that the USHR expects to be released in the weeks ahead.