"They just drove a nail into an entire industry"

November 11, 2025 – WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Senate voted for a bipartisan appropriations bill to fund the government and end the 40 day government shutdown. Part of that package was a provision heavily supported by the alcohol industry essentially outlawing all psychoactive hemp sales.

The sweeping federal budget deal that passed the Senate includes a controversial provision that to ban the sale of most psychoactive hemp-derived products even in states where recreational marijuana is legal.

Alabama's hemp stores were rocked this summer by House 445 (passed by the Alabama Legislature this spring) and were bracing for making their business compliant with the new regulations being promulgated by the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. Now that highly regulated environment has been made obsolete by Congress. Alabama banned smokable product. Congress banned all product – drinks, gummies, ointments, tinctures, as well as cannabis infused beverages.

The Alabama Gazette spoke with Chey Garrigan who heads the Alabama Hemp Trade Industry Association.

"This is a sad day for all the hemp farmers and hemp store operators," said Garrigan. "This is a devastating blow to our farmers who will be forced out of the business. They have had four or five largely unprofitable years building this industry to have our Senators just burn down the entire industry overnight.

Chad "Chig" Martin is running in the Democratic primary as a candidate for governor of Alabama. He and his daughter are also the operators of a hemp store in Dothan. Over half of the products they sell were banned by the Legislature when the state banned smokable hemp and plant materials like hemp flowers. The Senate just banned most of the rest of their products. CBD (cannabidiol oil) will still be legal but little else.

"They just drove a nail into an entire industry," Martin said of the bill.

The beverages which were being sold in bars, restaurants, convenience stores, and grocers across the country, quickly found favor with consumers. They also made a powerful enemy when alcohol companies found that their products were losing market share – especially with younger drinkers.

Alcohol's powerful lobbying forces were unleashed on the hemp derived products this year.

Similarly, in states that have legalized recreational marijuana, those heavily regulated and taxed marijuana growers and dispensaries found that convenience stores and grocers selling less regulated psychoactive cannabinoids derived from hemp were cutting into their market share. The legal marijuana industry pushed back in states starting with California.

Around the country, more conservative elements from moms to law enforcement to pastors to principals also campaigned against the nationwide proliferation of cannabinoids. Here in Alabama groups like the Alabama Policy Institute, Alabama Eagle Forum, and Alabama Citizens Action Program pushed for a ban on psychoactive cannabinoids.

Legislation to ban cannabis had been entered in this Congress, but ran into opposition. Leadership had passed a moratorium on advancing those bills until more study could be done. The 40-day long government shutdown provided a crisis moment for the Senate and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) seized the moment to strike.

A provision was tucked into the agriculture section of the broader appropriations package, targeting products made from hemp that produce intoxicating effects similar to marijuana. These include Delta-8 THC, Delta-10, HHC, THCO, and other synthetic cannabinoids that have proliferated in gas stations, vape shops, and online retailers since the 2018 Farm Bill legalized industrial hemp.

Under the new language, hemp products containing more than 0.4 milligrams of total THC per package would be banned from interstate commerce. That threshold is so low that it would effectively outlaw most hemp-derived edibles, beverages, tinctures, and vape cartridges currently on the market.

The ban would take effect one year after the bill is signed into law, giving businesses until late 2026 to comply or shut down operations.

The 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp; but Senators thought that meant that we would see hemp paper, hemp clothes, hemp clothing, hemp rope, hemp hardwood flooring, car panels, and more made from hemp fibers. They were wrong. Instead the new hemp farmers began growing female hemp plants (hemp is a plant with two genders rather than having both on the same plant) for the flowers. They then harvested the flowers for the oil that is contained there. That oil was then processed into CBD.

Eventually chemists got involved in this and they began distilling the CBD to produce the constituent cannabinoids. The best known of these was Delta 8 THC which has about a quarter of the potency of Delta 9 THC, the psychoactive component found in marijuana. Delta 10, Delta 12, and even Delta 9 were similarly synthesized from CBD. These products began appearing in stores in all sorts of products. Even more unscrupulous chemists began producing "synthetic" marijuana that mimics the physiological affects of marijuana. Unscrupulous convenience stores began selling those products claiming they were legal under the hemp exception. None of these products are FDA approved and some of the synthetics have proven to be dangerous. More than 80 percent of the hemp products solid in Alabama are psychoactive.

McConnell said that none of this was intended by Congress when it passed the 2018 Farm Bill.

"These products are being marketed to children, sold in gas stations, and causing real harm," McConnell said in a floor speech. "This is not what Congress intended when we legalized industrial hemp."

For Alabamians who self medicate a myriad of health conditions with cannabis, their only legal option is CBD. If CBD is not effective there aren't a lot of options. Alabama passed a medical cannabis law back in 2021; but implementation of that highly regulated program has been stalled in the courts. At this point no one knows when legal medical marijuana will be sold in Alabama. The hemp derived alternatives become illegal in one year.

(A.I. contributed to this report.)

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