Rand Paul Slams Alcohol And Marijuana Interests Over Federal Hemp Ban, Announcing He’ll File A Bill To Reverse It Next Week

Federal hemp ban, meet a Kentucky street fight. Picture a late-night diner, coffee burnt, neon flickering, and Sen. Rand Paul rolling up his sleeves to brawl with Washington’s latest bright idea: wipe out a $25 billion hemp economy because nuance is hard. He says he’ll file a bill next week to let state hemp laws override the new federal prohibition on cannabinoid products—a move aimed straight at the heart of preemption. The ban isn’t subtle. Within a year, “legal hemp” would mean counting total THC, not just delta-9, scooping in delta-8 and cousins with “similar effects,” and slapping a 0.4 mg-per-container cap that would sideline even many CBD products people use for sleep, pain, or just to keep the wolves at bay. Also on the chopping block: so-called “intermediate” products marketed to consumers, and any cannabinoids synthesized outside the plant or not naturally produced by it. It’s the kind of aggressive rewrite that turns shelves to ghosts and payrolls to pink slips, while punting real questions—youth access, potency limits, testing, labels—back into the shadows where bad actors thrive.

Paul frames it as a civil liberties brawl, and the man has a point: adults make complicated choices every day. Some reach for Percocet; some reach for a 5 mg gummy that tucks them into sleep without the hangover or the hollow-eyed risk. He’s not pretending to be a hemp evangelist—he’s just saying it’s not Washington’s job to shove everyone into the same lane and call it safety. Kentucky already regulates cannabinoid products like adults live there—age-gates, serving caps, anti-fraud rules—while the federal ban plows through with a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer. Paul’s pitch is perversely simple: pass a federal law that explicitly lets state hemp rules supersede the new federal ban. If the votes don’t exist to repeal the prohibition outright, rewrite the script so states can run their own shows. Avoid a pointless national fight over milligrams and percentage points. Let Minnesota be Minnesota, Kentucky be Kentucky. Keep IDs checked at counters instead of wallets checked by street dealers who never learned how to card.

Of course, nothing in this town happens in a vacuum. Paul named names, accusing corners of the alcohol and marijuana industries of quietly joining the prohibitionist chorus—not because hemp is uniquely dangerous, but because it’s competition. You don’t need a PhD to see the turf war. Delta-8 THC and other hemp-derived cannabinoids found their way into gas stations, corner shelves, and suburban pantries while regulated cannabis markets fought through licensing delays and tax cliffs. The result? Cannabinoid migration and resentment. There’s genuine work to do—clear labels, potency ceilings, child-resistant packaging, bright-line bans on marketing to kids—but lighting the whole field on fire because compliance is hard is Washington at its most performative. The Capitol’s already bracing for a second front: House Republicans have floated a fix in New GOP-Led Bill In Congress Would Reverse Hemp THC Ban That Trump Signed Into Law, while litigation hawks circle federal prohibition itself, as chronicled in Top Conservative Group Urges Supreme Court To Take Marijuana Case Challenging Federal Prohibition. The ground is shifting. Slowly. Messily. Like a bar tab no one wants to own.

Meanwhile, the crosscurrents are a study in American cannabis policy contradictions. Blue-state prosecutors and red-state libertarians swap talking points on regulation over bans. Some attorneys general cheered the crackdown as a way to stop unregulated spillover, while governors with skin in the game called hemp a backbone industry that needs rules, not a guillotine. If you want a preview of how ugly “regulate it right” can get, look at Rhode Island’s equity fiasco, where technicalities and bureaucracy sidelined most applicants who were supposed to be prioritized—see Most Rhode Island Marijuana Social Equity License Applicants Have Been Disqualified. That’s the paradox: the cannabis industry begs for coherent rules, then trips over them when they’re drafted like a Rubik’s Cube. Hemp is now on that same collision course. The FDA’s been slow. Congress is sudden and blunt. And small operators—the people who built this space with sweat equity and borrowed vans—are caught between a black market that never sleeps and a compliance maze that never ends.

So here’s the wager: Paul’s “state override” bill buys time for a saner model—clear definitions, potency thresholds anchored in pharmacology, retail licensing that actually checks IDs, and swift enforcement against the snake-oil peddlers. If Congress insists on a ban that treats grandma’s 5 mg gummy like contraband, the black market will send flowers and thank-you notes. And don’t kid yourself about where the cultural winds blow; prohibitionist muscle still flexes in places you’d least expect, as activists in the Bay State remind us in Massachusetts Anti-Marijuana Campaign Is ‘Confident’ It Submitted Enough Signatures This Week For 2026 Ballot. The stakes aren’t abstract: jobs, farms, labs, distributors, corner retailers, and patients who found relief without a prescription pad. Kill the legal on-ramp, and you hand the wheel to chaos. Keep it smart, and you build a market that treats adults like adults and kids like kids. If you’re navigating this evolving map and want compliant, high-THCA choices without the guesswork, step into our world here: our shop.