UPS Rewrote Its Hemp Rules for Dec. 11. Square Left Oct. 15. The Ban Hasn't Started Yet

In early September, Dylan Raap faced a purchase order he did not want to sign. Raap is the founder and chief executive of Upstate Elevator Supply Co., a family-owned Vermont company that sells THC, CBD and botanical products in both the state-licensed cannabis market and the hemp market. "This week my team has to decide how much product to build for a portfolio that may be illegal to sell on Dec. 12," he wrote in Cannabis Business Times on September 8. "It's a purchase order with a number on it, and somebody has to sign it." (S1)

Congress had just moved the date. A stopgap spending law pushed most of the federal ban on intoxicating hemp products from November 12 to December 11, 2026. Raap thanked the people who fought for the extra 29 days and then explained why they did not help much. His company buys raw material about six months ahead of the products it goes into. Co-packing runs are booked 90 days out or more. Packaging prints in runs of tens of thousands. "Nothing in that chain moves in 29-day increments," he wrote. (S1, S2)

And the chain was already moving without him. Square, he noted, had told sellers to clear CBD and hemp items out of their catalogs by October 15, nearly two months before the ban takes effect. "Banks and national retail buyers are running the same calculation," he wrote. "They're managing risk against a date, and the date is the problem." (S1)

Seven weeks later, the clearest example of what Raap described is sitting on UPS's website. The carrier has rewritten its rules for shipping hemp to match the new federal definition, effective December 11, and by the account of hemp attorney Michelle Bodian it is the first major carrier to do so. Square's catalog deadline has already passed. The law itself has not taken effect, but the private rails that move hemp products, the trucks, the card readers and the merchant accounts, have been adjusting on their own calendars for months. For a hemp company, the federal effective date is the last deadline on the list, not the first. (S3, S4, S5)

The law being anticipated is section 781 of Division B of Public Law 119-37, the agriculture spending measure President Donald Trump signed on November 12, 2025, to end the government shutdown. It replaces the 2018 farm bill's test of 0.3 percent delta-9 THC with a cap of 0.3 percent total THC, counting THCA, on a dry-weight basis. It excludes from the definition of hemp any finished hemp-derived cannabinoid product holding more than 0.4 milligrams of total THC and similar cannabinoids per container, along with cannabinoids synthesized outside the plant. Products that fall outside the definition become marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act. The September stopgap, Public Law 119-103, delayed most of it to December 11; cannabinoids a cannabis plant cannot produce naturally still lose hemp status on November 12. (S2, S6)

UPS splits its hemp policy into raw hemp and hemp derivatives. Raw hemp, the plant itself, moves only for pre-approved shippers as a contractual service: a shipper has to open a dedicated account, provide its licenses and sign a UPS agreement. Boxes cannot be marked in a way that identifies the contents as hemp, and every shipment must go by UPS Adult Signature Required service. The new line is dated. Effective December 11, 2026, raw hemp shipments must carry a certificate of analysis showing a total THC concentration, including THCA, of no more than 0.3 percent on a dry-weight basis. (S3)

Hemp derivatives, the oils, gummies and drinks, are accepted only as permitted by all applicable federal, state and local laws, and the policy names New York's cannabinoid hemp rules as an example of a state potency limit shippers must follow. That wording does more than it appears to. It does not need a December edit to change meaning, because on December 11 the federal law it points to changes underneath it. A finished product over 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container stops being hemp under federal law that day, and the UPS clause stops covering it. (S3, S6)

Three other lines in the same policy matter to operators now. Hemp derivatives intended to be inhaled through an aerosolized solution, meaning vapes, are prohibited in the U.S. network. Synthetic or lab-made cannabinoids are prohibited outright. And UPS "will not accept shipments of hemp or hemp derivatives from any location that sells marijuana or marijuana products." A state-licensed dispensary that also ships CBD tinctures is, on UPS's terms, the wrong kind of shipper. The carrier reserves the right to dispose of noncompliant packages and to cut off service to shippers who send them. (S3)

Bodian, who practices hemp beverage law, flagged the change on October 19. UPS's old language tracked the 2018 farm bill's delta-9 test, she noted, according to Cannabis Business Times. "UPS is the first carrier to update its terms and conditions to account for the potential change in the definition of 'hemp' set to take effect on [Dec. 11]," Bodian wrote on LinkedIn. "So far, USPS and FedEx have not followed suit." The Postal Service's own shipping-restrictions page, as of October 26, still described legal hemp as cannabis with THC content of 0.3 percent or less, and told mailers to follow Publication 52 and all applicable laws. (S4, S7)

Square went first on the payment side, and went further. In an email Marijuana Moment obtained, the company told a seller that "selling CBD and hemp-derived products, online or in person, will no longer be permitted on Square's platform," and directed businesses to remove CBD, hemp and hemp-derived items from their catalogs by October 15. Sellers with other products keep their accounts. A Square spokesperson said the company was notifying affected sellers and helping them update catalogs "so they can continue processing on Square." Cova Software, a point-of-sale vendor courting those sellers, reported, citing accounts from affected sellers, that hemp-focused accounts face closures beginning November 5. (S5, S8)

Beau Whitney, founder and chief economist of Whitney Economics, has put numbers on what is at stake. A survey his firm ran in June and July 2026, drawing on operators in 35 states, valued the hemp-derived cannabinoid market at $38.7 billion and estimated it supports about 350,000 jobs. The new state and federal rules, the firm said, threaten $28.3 billion in retail revenue and 225,000 jobs, and respondents reported that only 8.5 percent of cannabinoid products would remain available for sale. "Strict and unrealistic regulations passed this year threaten to effectively put three-quarters of its operators out of business," Whitney said. The figures come from self-reported survey data projected to the national market, and should be read that way. (S9)

The cut reaches past drinks and gummies. Laura Campanella, chief executive of Brothers Grimm Seeds, a Colorado seed bank with about 240 retailers, has lobbied against section 781's treatment of viable seeds, which are judged by total THC as well. Her objection is that the law looks past the object being shipped. A seed may contain essentially no measurable THC, she told Cannabis Business Times, yet its status turns on the plant it came from. "We are no longer regulating the product that is actually being possessed, shipped or sold," she said. "We are regulating its genetic potential." Brothers Grimm is starting a tissue culture company in Oklahoma, because the statute does not mention tissue culture or clones. (S10)

The other side of the argument has 35 signatures on it. In August, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin led a bipartisan letter with 34 other attorneys general, including those of Vermont and Rhode Island, urging Congress to keep the 2025 definition and reject efforts to reopen what they call the hemp loophole. "States, businesses, consumers, and regulators have spent months adapting to the impending new standard," Griffin said. "The bottom line is simple: Republicans and Democrats across the country agree that intoxicating hemp products shouldn't be accessible to our kids." From that vantage point, UPS and Square are not overreacting. They are doing what a law with a known effective date asks every regulated business to do. (S11)

There is a regulatory loose end both sides cite. Section 781 directed the Food and Drug Administration to publish, within 90 days of enactment, lists of cannabinoids naturally produced by the plant, THC-class cannabinoids, and compounds with similar effects. As of September 28, 2026, the Congressional Research Service reported, those lists had not been published. Carriers and processors are writing compliance terms against a definition whose federal reference lists do not yet exist. (S6)

“Pivoting is not a switch. It's the same supply chain, run again from the beginning.”

— Dylan Raap, Founder and CEO, Upstate Elevator Supply Co.

Raap is not asking for the ban to disappear. Intoxicating products, he wrote, should be regulated like intoxicating products: age limits, real per-serving and per-package potency caps, independent batch testing, labels a customer can read and packaging no one would mistake for a children's product. His company already does most of that voluntarily, he said, and it buys him nothing but a higher shelf price than competitors who skip it. His request is for rules and runway. "Tell us what they are and give us enough runway to live by them," he wrote. (S1)

1. Nov. 5, 2026: closures of hemp-focused Square accounts reportedly begin, per vendors working with affected sellers.
2. Nov. 12, 2026: hemp-derived products containing cannabinoids a cannabis plant cannot naturally produce lose federal hemp status.
3. Dec. 11, 2026: the total-THC definition and the 0.4 mg per-container cap take effect; UPS's certificate-of-analysis requirement for raw hemp starts the same day.
4. Any day: USPS or FedEx revising its own hemp terms, which Bodian noted neither had done as of Oct. 19.

Upstate Elevator has spent money since January on products that do not depend on the federal hemp definition at all, including formulations built on kava and kanna, Raap wrote. That is a hedge, not a plan, and he said so. A new product line needs the same raw-material lead times, co-packing slots and distributor cycles as the one it replaces. (S1)

He has 35 employees, four of them family: his wife, his brother, his sister and his mother-in-law. In September he could tell them that Congress had moved the deadline by 29 days. What he could not tell them, he wrote, was what their jobs look like in February. Since then the deadlines in front of them have multiplied rather than moved, one vendor terms page at a time, and the date in the statute has become the last of them.

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