Congress Can’t Agree on What Hemp Should Be

The problem isn’t that Congress lacks ideas for what to do about hemp. In fact, quite the opposite is true: Federal lawmakers are pursuing too many incompatible approaches.

With most of the federal restrictions enacted last year now scheduled to take effect December 11, lawmakers have introduced proposals that would repeal the new law, delay it for two years, replace it with comprehensive federal regulation, let states and tribes write much of their own policy, or carve hemp-derived beverages into a separate regulatory system resembling alcohol.

For hemp businesses trying to plan beyond December 11, the important question is not simply which bills are pending. It is what kind of market each proposal would create if Congress passed the legislation.

Those markets would look remarkably different.

How the major hemp proposals compare

One option: Undo the new restrictions

The simplest proposal also would require the least new regulatory machinery.

The American Hemp Protection Act (H.R. 6209), introduced in November 2025 by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) with bipartisan cosponsors, would repeal Section 781, the provision Congress enacted in 2025 to narrow the federal definition of hemp. The bill was referred to the House Agriculture Committee and has not advanced.

In practical terms, repeal would return federal hemp policy to something close to the framework established under the 2018 Farm Bill rather than replacing it with a new federal consumer-product regime.

For businesses, that would mean relatively little new federal compliance infrastructure. It also would leave many of the issues that helped produce the current fight — intoxicating products, age limits, testing standards, and sales channels among them — primarily to the existing patchwork of state regulation.

It is the cleanest legislative answer, but not the most comprehensive one.

Another option: Buy two more years

The Hemp Planting Predictability Act (H.R. 7024 and S. 3686) takes almost the opposite approach: It would not attempt to resolve the policy question yet. Instead, the proposed legislation would delay most of the new federal hemp definition for two years.

The House bill was introduced January 13 by Rep. James Baird (R-IN) with Reps. James Comer (R-KY), Angie Craig (D-MN), and others. The Senate companion followed January 15 from Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR). Both bills remain in committee.

An earlier House measure, H.R. 7010, introduced January 12 by the same initial group of House sponsors, proposed essentially the same two-year extension. H.R. 7024 followed the next day with the formal Hemp Planting Predictability Act title.

Congress already has adopted a much shorter version of that strategy. The continuing resolution signed September 2 preserves most of the current hemp framework through December 11, although Section 781’s exclusions for certain synthetic cannabinoids still begin November 12.

A two-year extension would provide considerably more runway, but it would not tell operators what federal law ultimately will permit. Instead, it would postpone the answer.

The Griffith bill: Put FDA in charge

The Hemp Enforcement, Modernization, and Protection Act (H.R. 7212), introduced by Reps. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) and Marc Veasey (D-TX), tries to build the federal regulatory system that never accompanied hemp legalization in 2018.

The bill would amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to create a dedicated framework for cannabinoid hemp products. Manufacturers, processors, packagers, importers, and other covered facilities would have to register with the federal government, while individual cannabinoid products would require listings containing information about their manufacturing and composition.

The proposal also would give federal regulators inspection, suspension, and mandatory recall authority.

One of the most consequential provisions concerns potency. Rather than permanently write one THC limit into federal law, H.R. 7212 directs the Department of Health and Human Services to begin rulemaking within 60 days and finalize cannabinoid-content thresholds within three years.

If regulators miss that deadline, statutory defaults would apply. For oral products, the bill sets one fallback limit for total cannabinoid content — 10 milligrams per serving and 50 milligrams per package — and a separate, lower limit for total intoxicating cannabinoid content: 5 milligrams per serving and 30 milligrams per package. It also establishes separate fallback limits for inhalable cartridges and topical products. In other words, Congress supplies temporary guardrails, but HHS ultimately would determine the cannabinoid thresholds through rulemaking.

For operators, H.R. 7212 represents a shift from a largely agriculture-based hemp regime toward something much closer to conventional federal consumer-product regulation.

The Lawful Hemp Protection Act goes further

The Lawful Hemp Protection Act (H.R. 9830), introduced July 22 by Reps. Andy Barr (R-KY) and Angie Craig (D-MN), occupies some of the same regulatory territory as the Griffith bill but would construct a substantially different system.

It also may be one of the most consequential proposals currently pending.

The bill would repeal Section 781 and replace it with a new definition of hemp that permits naturally occurring cannabinoids while raising the total-THC threshold for the plant from 0.3 percent to 1 percent on a dry-weight basis. At the same time, it expressly excludes a variety of artificially modified cannabinoids, including HHC, THC-O acetate, and THCP, along with other cannabinoids produced through specified chemical processes.

Finished hemp-derived cannabinoid products would be treated as food under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Sales to people younger than 21 would be prohibited, and products would face detailed labeling, testing, manufacturing, and packaging rules. Packaging designed to appeal to children — including certain cartoons, candy imagery, and brightly colored presentations — would be prohibited.

Potency limits again would not simply be frozen in statute. The bill directs regulators to establish maximum cannabinoid amounts within 12 months through notice-and-comment rulemaking and reconsider them at least every three years. If regulators fail to act on time, temporary statutory defaults would apply, including 5 milligrams of total THC per serving for oral products and 50 milligrams per serving for inhalable and topical products.

But LHPA goes well beyond FDA-style product regulation.

It creates federal taxes on hemp-derived cannabinoid products, including a tax of five cents per milligram of THC in hemp beverages and a 5-percent tax on other hemp-derived cannabinoid products. It also establishes permitting requirements for cannabinoid-product manufacturers and hemp-beverage wholesalers.

States and tribes could maintain regulations at least as protective as the federal system and impose stricter requirements within their borders, although they could not block lawful products merely passing through in interstate commerce.

For operators, that means LHPA is not merely a legalization bill. It sketches the architecture of a federally regulated, taxed adult cannabinoid market.

Wyden and Merkley offer another FDA model

The Senate’s Cannabinoid Safety and Regulation Act (S. 3474), introduced by Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Merkley of Oregon, also places cannabinoid products within an FDA-centered federal regime.

The bill would give federal regulators authority over product standards, recalls, manufacturing, and other consumer protections. Facilities conducting covered activities would have to register.

Unlike the Griffith framework, however, the Senate bill places more explicit potency limits into the legislation itself. For states without their own applicable THC limits, edibles, inhalables, and topicals would be limited to 5 milligrams of THC per serving and 50 milligrams per container. Drinks would be limited to 5 milligrams per serving and 10 milligrams per container. 

The proposal also would prohibit sales to people younger than 21 and direct federal agencies to develop recommendations for a separate alcohol-style regulatory framework for THC beverages.

That creates an important distinction for businesses. Under Griffith, regulators would have substantial responsibility for setting the eventual cannabinoid thresholds. Under Wyden-Merkley, Congress would establish significant default limits itself.

One bill gives regulators more room to write the numbers. The other gives operators more of those numbers upfront.

Paul’s bill gives states the wheel

The Hemp Safety Enforcement Act (S. 4315), introduced in April by Sens. Paul, Klobuchar, and Joni Ernst (R-IA), takes a fundamentally different approach. Rather than create a detailed federal consumer-product code, the bill would allow states and tribes to elect primary regulatory authority over hemp and hemp-derived cannabinoid products.

A participating state or tribe could notify the Department of Agriculture that it does not want to operate under the federal subtitle. The state or tribe then would apply its own definitions and laws, subject to certain federal restrictions and a requirement to establish a minimum purchasing age.

Interstate commerce makes the structure more complicated. Products traveling between two jurisdictions operating under the opt-out system would have to comply with the laws of both. States and tribes also generally could not prohibit interstate transportation to or from participating jurisdictions. For a multistate hemp company, that could preserve viable markets while also reinforcing the regulatory patchwork operators already navigate today.

In other words, the bill offers local flexibility at the price of less national uniformity.

Beverages want their own lane

Then there is H.R. 10079, the Beverage Regulatory Parity Act, introduced August 10 by Reps. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX) and Greg Landsman (D-OH). Rather than solve the entire hemp-product problem, the bipartisan bill would create a separate system specifically for hemp-derived beverages.

The proposal would place significant authority with the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau and establish a three-tier distribution system modeled on beverage alcohol: manufacturers sell to wholesalers, wholesalers sell to retailers, and retailers sell to consumers.

Qualifying beverages could contain a total of up to 5 milligrams of intoxicating THC per serving, could not contain synthetically derived cannabinoids, and would be subject to federal manufacturing, testing, permitting, labeling, and distribution requirements.

That model raises a policy question the broader hemp debate has not resolved: Should beverages be treated like other cannabinoid products at all?

For companies with significant investment in THC drinks, the answer could determine not only allowable potency but also who may manufacture, distribute, and sell the product.

The bills agree on some things

Despite their structural differences, the comprehensive proposals share several themes. Age restrictions, testing, clearer labeling, restrictions on child-oriented marketing, and some distinction between naturally occurring and chemically created cannabinoids recur across multiple bills.

The disagreements emerge once Congress moves beyond those principles.

• How much THC should a product contain?
• Should Congress decide, or should FDA?
• Should flower and inhalables survive alongside gummies and beverages?
• Should states be allowed to establish their own systems?
• Should cannabinoid products be taxed federally?
• Should drinks live inside the same framework as other hemp products or be regulated more like alcohol?

Those questions lead to very different business models.

December 11 is a deadline, not an answer

The one-month reprieve Congress enacted in September gave much of the hemp industry additional time. It did not settle any of these questions.

Unless Congress acts again, most of Section 781’s tighter hemp definition becomes operative after the temporary extension expires December 11. Certain synthetic-cannabinoid exclusions take effect earlier, on November 12.

Between now and then, lawmakers do not have to invent a solution from scratch. They already have proposals for repeal, delay, federal regulation, state-directed regulation, and product-specific treatment.

What they do not have is agreement about which hemp market they want to preserve.

For executives, that makes the pending legislation more than a collection of Washington bill numbers. Each proposal contains a different answer to basic questions about which products can be sold, who will regulate them, what compliance will cost, and whether a business model that works today will still work under the next federal framework.

Congress has provided no shortage of possible futures. The difficult part is determining which one, if any, becomes law.