Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

Riders and Omnibus Bills

• Many commenters focus less on hemp and more on process: must‑pass shutdown/funding bills are being used to smuggle in unrelated, barely debated provisions.
• Riders linked to hemp, Jan. 6–related damages, and other items are cited as examples of why people want a federal single‑subject rule; several states’ constitutions already have this.
• Some argue omnibus bills are a “transaction commit” that enable compromise; others see them as pure vote‑buying and obscuring accountability (“we don’t have time to read” shenanigans).

Who Benefits from the Hemp Ban

• Multiple comments point to alcohol lobbies explicitly urging passage, noting declining alcohol sales post‑cannabis legalization.
• Others argue large, heavily regulated cannabis companies and investors also want hemp competition killed, since hemp products let small operators sell intoxicants with far lower barriers.
• Corporate capture and Citizens United are repeatedly blamed for policy that favors incumbents over small businesses and consumers.

What the Hemp / THC Change Does

• The 2018 Farm Bill legalized “hemp” by capping delta‑9 THC but ignored THCa and other derivatives, enabling a booming national market in hemp‑derived psychoactive products (THCa flower, delta‑8, etc.).
• New language (e.g., 0.4 mg THC per container and “can produce” tests for seeds) is said to effectively recriminalize that industry and even interstate seed trade, with a one‑year runway.
• Supporters say this simply closes an unintended loophole and forces intoxicants into the same safety‑testing regimes as state‑legal cannabis.
• Critics say it indiscriminately wipes out a $30B market and 300k jobs, pushing people back to unregulated black markets.

Health, Safety, and Regulation

• One camp stresses that cannabis is a bioremediator; extraction can concentrate pesticides, heavy metals, and bacteria, and hemp products often evade the stringent testing imposed on state‑legal marijuana.
• Others respond that hemp growers already test extensively, that black‑market risks are worse, and that prohibitionist framing (“gas‑station weed”) is being weaponized against a comparatively safer, known drug.

Broader Structural Anger

• Large parts of the thread spiral into systemic critique: an unrepresentative Senate, a capped and skewed House, judicial overreach, and a federal government seen as both too powerful and captured by moneyed interests.
• Suggested fixes range from enlarging the House and reforming or abolishing the Senate to single‑subject rules, more direct democracy, and stronger, independent technical rule‑making bodies.