Hemp THC Was Banned in a Shutdown Deal. Its $28 Billion Reprieve Is Riding on the Next One.

On the last Thursday in July, the concession stands in Chicago's Grant Park began selling a cocktail with a federal expiration date. The drink was a Señorita margarita, 12 ounces, canned, five milligrams of hemp-derived THC, poured for a Lollapalooza crowd expected to top 100,000 people a day. The brand behind it, Rythm, trades on Nasdaq under the ticker RYM and shares a chairman, Ben Kovler, with the marijuana multistate operator Green Thumb Industries. Lollapalooza became at least the third mainstream Chicago venue to pour hemp THC drinks, after the United Center and Navy Pier. (S4)

Every can sold that weekend was legal because of a definition: the 2018 Farm Bill's decision to treat any cannabis plant with no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight as hemp rather than marijuana. And every can carried the same quiet deadline. Under a provision Congress passed last November, the federal definition of hemp changes on November 12, 2026, and drinks like the Señorita become Schedule I contraband. As the first chords played in Grant Park, the products on sale had 15 weeks to live. (S4, S12)

Then, on Sunday, August 2, the festival's closing day, the Senate Appropriations Committee released the text of a stopgap spending bill, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027. On page nine of its extensions division, between routine renewals, sat a clause delaying the new hemp definition until December 11. No press release named its author. Committee Chair Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, called the bill 'straightforward.' (S5, S6)

The clause offers a potential reprieve to an estimated $28 billion market. At publication on August 5, the Senate still needed to pass the measure. The House had passed a different stopgap, running through December 4, with no hemp language; agreement between the chambers and President Donald Trump’s signature would still be required. The reprieve, if enacted, would be 29 days. (S1, S5)

The stakes are close to total. The November law replaces the delta-9 test with a cap of 0.3% total THC, including THCA, and, more consequentially, bans any consumable hemp product carrying more than 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container. The lowest-dose hemp drinks on the market contain about two milligrams. The U.S. Hemp Roundtable, the industry's main trade group, estimates the rule would eliminate 95% of hemp products from the marketplace. (S5, S8, S10)

The ban was born the same way its rescue now travels: as a line item in a must-pass bill. Last November, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky attached the hemp redefinition, Section 781 of the agriculture division, to the spending package that ended the government's 43-day shutdown. Trump signed it on November 12, 2025, starting a one-year fuse. For McConnell, who wrote hemp's legalization into the 2018 Farm Bill, it was a correction of his own statute. 'My 2018 hemp bill sought to create an agricultural hemp industry, not open the door to the sale of unregulated, intoxicating, lab-made, hemp-derived substances with no safety framework,' he said in explaining the provision. (S11, S12)

In the seven years between those two McConnell bills, the loophole became an industry. Hemp-derived THC sales grew from roughly $200 million in 2020 to $2.8 billion in 2023, according to Brightfield Group data cited by operators, a 1,283% climb, on the way to the $28 billion estimate now attached to the category. The products moved from vape shops into Total Wine & More, into Target coolers in Minnesota, and onto festival menus, sold in most states with no federal age requirement, no standard testing regime, and no tax structure resembling marijuana's. (S9, S1, S3)

The mainstreaming ran ahead of any rulebook, and, at moments, ahead of the government's own left hand. A Trump administration Medicare pilot now offers up to $500 a year in reimbursement for hemp-derived CBD treatments, even as the DEA prepares to classify the same shelf's stronger products as Schedule I. Minnesota caps hemp edibles at 5 milligrams per serving and drinks at 10, sells them through liquor stores and groceries, and taxes them, the regulated middle path no federal bill has yet managed to write. (S3)

Trump's own position has traveled furthest. Nine months after signing the ban, his administration is working to soften it. A December 18 executive order, the same order that set medical-cannabis rescheduling in motion, asked Congress to update the definition of hemp-derived products so Americans could keep 'access to appropriate full-spectrum CBD products' while restricting 'products that pose serious health risks.' In June, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought wrote to House Speaker Mike Johnson asking him to revise the hemp rules. The House said no three times in one day: on June 4, it rejected amendments to delay the ban two years, to halt it outright, and to replace it with a regulate-and-tax scheme. (S2, S3, S5)

On August 5, the New York Times supplied a name for the pressure. The paper reported that the White House campaign for a hemp reprieve was 'led in part' by Bret Worley, president and CEO of Colorado-based MC Nutraceuticals, a hemp entrepreneur whose mother-in-law is Susie Wiles, Trump's chief of staff. Worley declined to comment; a First-Citizens Bank lawsuit filed in March seeks $961,000 from him, his father, and his company over a defaulted loan. The White House pushed back: Worley 'had nothing to do' with the president's position, a spokesman said, and Wiles 'has never lobbied in favor of this or any other position on hemp with Capitol Hill.' (S2)

Senator Amy Klobuchar tells the story differently. The Minnesota Democrat, now running for governor of a state where 5-milligram hemp seltzers sit on Target shelves, says the delay language came from her bill with Senators Rand Paul and Jeff Merkley. 'Brewers, farmers, small businesses, and customers in Minnesota have made clear that the federal ban on hemp products will be devastating,' she said in a news release claiming credit. Both accounts can be true; the Appropriations Committee itself named no champion. (S7)

Whatever Washington does, the states are not waiting. Texas outlawed delta-8, delta-10, and THCP products on July 31, the finish line of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick's two-year campaign, one that survived Governor Greg Abbott's 2025 veto of an earlier, broader ban. Virginia hemp operators sued this week to block that state's ban as North Carolina drafts its own. Minnesota is going the other way: its top cannabis regulator, Eric Taubel, says the state will keep licensing and regulating hemp THC even if the federal government makes it Schedule I. 'Or do they fully get out of the hemp business?' he asked of the liquor stores and breweries in his system. (S14, S2, S3)

Schedule I status would do more than pull products. Hemp companies would land in the same federal tax trap licensed marijuana spent a decade fighting: Section 280E, which bars ordinary business deductions for Schedule I sellers. Banks and insurers that service hemp beverage makers today, because hemp is a legal crop, would face the compliance calculus that keeps most of them out of marijuana. The legal side of the cannabis plant would suddenly look like the other one. (S3)

For the hemp industry, a month reads as survival. Jonathan Miller, the U.S. Hemp Roundtable's longtime general counsel, called the Senate language a potential 'landmark victory for the hemp industry, our biggest win since the 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp.' The alcohol retail lobby lined up beside him: the Beverage Alcohol Merchants Coalition, whose members include Total Wine & More and BevMo!, said the resolution 'creates an important opportunity to achieve meaningful hemp regulation.' (S1)

Thirty-five attorneys general read the same clause as a betrayal. In an August 4 letter to congressional leaders, a bipartisan group co-led by Indiana's Todd Rokita urged Congress not to 'delay, repeal, suspend or weaken' the ban. 'Reject the delay, keep your promise and let the law take effect,' Rokita said. Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin warned that reopening the loophole 'would create confusion, invite litigation and undermine the progress we've made to protect consumers.' (S8)

“If the product gets someone high, it should be regulated like something that gets someone high, regardless of what plant it came from.”

— Kema Ogden, Founder and Partner, Top Notch THC

The sharpest opposition may come from inside the cannabis industry itself. Licensed marijuana operators spent years watching hemp stores sell intoxicants next door without their testing costs, their age-verification rules, or their taxes. Kema Ogden, a founder and partner of the licensed Las Vegas dispensary Top Notch THC, wrote in June that the November ban is 'much-needed relief', provided someone actually enforces it. Curaleaf, one of the country's largest marijuana companies, is exiting the hemp THC business entirely rather than betting on a reprieve. (S9, S1)

Enforcement is the asterisk on every side's plans. The Congressional Research Service concluded in December that the DEA and FDA 'may lack the resources' to police a national ban on products sold in tens of thousands of gas stations, liquor stores, and supermarkets. Which means the most likely November outcome, ban or no ban, may be the one nobody is lobbying for: a law on the books that mostly goes unenforced, while state regimes like Minnesota's and Texas's do the real sorting. (S3)

1. Congressional action: the Senate still needed to approve its proposal at publication. The House would then need to agree to the hemp provision, followed by the president’s signature.
2. Nov. 12: the original statutory effective date. Under the proposed extension, products containing cannabinoids incapable of natural production would remain subject to this date.
3. Dec. 11: if the delay becomes law, the new cliff, with fewer than 30 Senate session days over the next four months to write anything permanent.
4. Three regulate-don't-ban bills, the HEMP Act, the Hemp Safety Enforcement Act, and the Lawful Hemp Protection Act, are pending. None has had a hearing.

In Grant Park, the margarita stands closed with the festival on August 2, the same day the Senate posted the text that will decide whether they can reopen next summer. Green Thumb's Kovler got his cans in front of 100,000 people a day, this year at least, with neither a DEA action nor an appropriations crisis intervening. (S4, S6)

The hemp THC business was created by one sentence in a farm bill and sentenced by one section of a shutdown deal. It now lives the way Washington governs: continuing resolution to continuing resolution, 29 days at a time.

Correction (September 8, 2026): The original version reported Senate passage before it occurred. Passage was still pending at the article’s August 5 publication. The exception to the proposed hemp delay has also been clarified: cannabinoids incapable of natural production are distinct from every product made through chemical conversion. A link to the Texas story has been updated.

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