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Hemp’s biggest hero in Congress is willing to keep the federal government closed to keep hemp-derived THC products legal.
That’s one of the pledges made by Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul – who’s already blocked efforts to recriminalize hemp this year – during a roundtable discussion with hemp industry operators on Tuesday.
Nearly all business in Congress remains paused amid the second-longest federal government shutdown in history, which entered its 30th day on Thursday after spending bills expired at the end of September.
The impasse means a shortage of air-traffic controllers, and a potential end to food stamp assistance looms, among other problems.
Lawmakers in the House, which remains out of session, voted in September to fund the government through Nov. 21. The Senate, meanwhile, remains deadlocked, with Democrats refusing to pass a bill that doesn’t extend healthcare coverage.
Hemp isn’t mentioned in the House-passed continuing resolution.
Republican efforts to ban hemp THC under federal law
However, Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell and Maryland Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Harris have both proposed separate long-term spending bills that would redefine hemp under federal law to exclude most every popular hemp-derived THC product.
“They’re going to make the (THC) numbers so low that there won’t be any hemp products that can be sold,” he said.
Such language is a nonstarter for Paul, he said Tuesday. And if a continuing resolution does include them, he’ll attempt to block them, he suggested.
“I’m amenable to trying to get the bills through to get the government back open,” Paul said Tuesday during an online meeting.
“But I’ve also told them, and I think they believe me, that we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
The hard way, Paul said, is refusing to consent to spending bills with hemp-banning language.
That would mean a redux of the parliamentary procedure Paul employed over the summer to foil McConnell’s effort to close the so-called “hemp loophole” the 2018 Farm Bill created.
Hemp has bipartisan support in the Senate, where eight Democratic senators urged in September to regulate the products rather than ban them.
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