House Agriculture Committee Approves Amendment to Eliminate Hemp Industry with No Recorded Vote
On Thursday, May 23, the House Agriculture Committee amended the base text of the 2024 Farm Bill to include Congresswoman Mary Miller’s amendment designed to eliminate to existing hemp marketplace. This comes a week after the introduced version of the 2024 Farm Bill, which provided critical certainty to American farmers around the country by maintaining the definition of hemp. Unfortunately, the overly broad amendment whipsaws American farmers back and forth from agricultural producers to Schedule I criminals.
Congresswoman Mary Miller was proud to offer this amendment “…to close the loophole that has allowed drug-infused THC products like Delta-8 to be sold to teenagers in packaging that looks like candy. We must stop teenagers and children from being exposed to addictive and harmful drugs.”
If protecting teenagers and children was the real goal, it begs the question why no committee member wanted to go on record supporting such a noble policy position. Instead, the amendment was packaged together with 19 others (a legislative procedure call en bloc) and a single voice vote was taken to add all the amendments to the 2024 Farm Bill—threatening the entire hemp industry farmers have built over the last 6 years.
It should be noted there are many members on both sides of the aisle that saw the amendment for what it is—the federal government picking winners and losers in a competitive marketplace under the guise of protecting children. Three cheers to Congressman Baird, Nunn and Van Orden for taking a few minutes to during committee to speak against the amendment and calling attention to the fact the hemp industry has been asking for appropriate regulations for years. As Dr. Kruger pointed out in a recent consumer survey, “It’s paradoxical that different states and municipalities are opening up to delta-9, it’s becoming more available and increasingly legalized, and yet they’re putting the brakes on delta-8, even though it seems to have a better profile in terms of its effects...It’s almost like the opposite of what you would do if you were informed of the evidence.”
Senator Stabenow, Chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, made it clear the House version of the Farm Bill was dead on arrival in the Senate, “Despite areas of common ground, it is now clear that key parts of the House bill split the Farm Bill coalition in a way that makes it impossible to achieve the votes to become law. And it is also clear that we do not have time to waste on proposals that cannot meet that goal.” Chairwoman Stabenow has yet to release a base text of the Senate Democrats version of the Farm Bill and has not committed to a date certain.
The silver lining for the hemp industry is that wide priority gaps exist between the Republican controlled House and the Democratic controlled Senate when it comes to Farm Bill’s $1.5T price tag. While last week was a setback for American farmers, small business owners and consumers, it should be a catalyst for the industry to come together to protect itself from those accustomed to securing market share through legislation rather than competition. If you would like to support our efforts to protect the entire hemp industry, please consider becoming a member here.
TLDR: While a terrible amendment was adopted in the House Agriculture Committee last week, there is a long legislative process that must still play out before the law is actually changed. It is looking less and less likely a Farm Bill gets done in 2024 and more and more likely we will have another extension of the 2018 Farm Bill. If a Farm Bill were to get done this year, it will likely be during the lame duck session after the November election and before the end of the year.