Four days before the Senate voted, a bipartisan coalition of 35 state and territory attorneys general sent congressional leaders a letter telling them to leave the hemp ban alone. The attorneys general hemp ban letter asked Congress to reject “any effort to delay, repeal, suspend, or weaken” the November 12 recriminalization and to make sure it “takes effect as enacted and remains in place thereafter.” You can read the letter and press release here.
On August 8, the Senate tabled the amendment that would have done exactly what they asked, 61-32.
Why the attorneys general hemp ban letter is not a morality argument
Read the letter and you will notice something: it is barely about whether THC is good or bad. It is about logistics and federalism. Their argument is that after Congress acted in 2025, states rewrote their own hemp statutes to match the narrower federal definition — and moving the federal goalposts now detonates all of that work.
“If the loophole is reopened or the new definition is weakened or repealed, States will face renewed litigation, inconsistent enforcement, regulatory uncertainty, increased youth access to intoxicating products, and disruption of lawful businesses that have already adjusted their operations to comply with the new federal framework,” the letter says. It names Delaware, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio and North Carolina as states with legislative movement in the last seven months aligning to the federal definition.
The leadership group is genuinely four-corner bipartisan: Arkansas AG Tim Griffin (R), Indiana AG Todd Rokita (R), Connecticut AG William Tong (D) and New Mexico AG Raúl Torrez (D).
What each side said
Griffin: “Congress was absolutely right when it acted last year and adopted a clearer, more responsible framework for hemp regulation. States, businesses, consumers, and regulators have spent months adapting to the impending new standard, and many states have aligned their laws accordingly. Reopening this loophole would create confusion, invite litigation, and undermine the progress we’ve made to protect consumers.”
Rokita: “Congress should not bow to the special interests that exploited a loophole in federal law to profit from selling unregulated intoxicating THC products that have harmed communities, jeopardized public safety, and put young people at risk.”
Tong, from the other side of the aisle: “Congress made the right decision when it closed a dangerous loophole, and we should keep it closed. These reforms protect consumers, support businesses that follow the law, and keep intoxicating hemp-derived products out of our communities. We cannot afford to go backwards.”
Be fair to their position: they are not arguing to ban all hemp. Their framing preserves industrial and nonintoxicating hemp either way, on the theory that hemp plants naturally contain low levels of intoxicating cannabinoids.
The trap this creates for operators
Here is the practical consequence almost nobody is talking about, and it is the reason this story matters more than the vote count suggests.
The federal date may slide to December 11. State statutes that already conformed to the November definition do not slide with it. If your state legislature wrote its own hemp definition keyed to the federal redefinition — and per this letter, a lot of them did — your compliance date is set by your own state code, not by a continuing resolution in Washington. A delay in Congress does not automatically buy you a single day in a conformed state.
If you sell hemp THC products, the question to bring to your lawyer this week is not “what did the Senate do.” It is “what does my state’s statute say, what date does it key off, and does it move when the federal date moves.” Those are three different questions and the answers are not the same in every state.
On the other side of the ledger, CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz was writing the opposite letter to the same senators. Related reading: how local bans feed the illicit market.
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We break this down on Cannabis Legalization News with Thomas Howard and Miggy 420.
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