Amanda Montgomery and her husband started AM and PM Hemp Farm in downstate Kirkland in 2020. After her husband passed unexpectedly last year, the farm, which produces and sells a range of hemp-derived goods, has been her “sole livelihood,” Montgomery said.
But the farm could go up in smoke when President Donald Trump signs the Republican-led spending deal to reopen the federal government that passed Congress late Wednesday.
“This bill would pretty much destroy my entire farm operation,” Montgomery said hours before the U.S. House approved the funding bill that includes the hemp restrictions, calling the move “unnecessary and cruel.”
Trump is expected to sign the funding package that ends a historically long government shutdown, but also included a last-minute provision narrowing the definition of hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill, closing the loophole that has allowed for an array of intoxicating cannabinoids that lawmakers in Illinois and beyond have failed to regulate.
Hemp farmers and business owners in Illinois — who have long called for regulations on their billion-dollar industry — told the Sun-Times the federal ban would devastate their businesses.
Jeremy Dedic, a co-owner at Cubbington’s Cabinet in North Center, said the new rule would close his store and the businesses he sources products from, since it would practically make it impossible to produce safe consumable products, including those that include non-intoxicating cannabinoids.
“It would essentially decimate the entire industry, aside from the high-intoxication THC products that you have in your state-licensed dispensaries,” Dedic said. The cannabis industry has long argued that its hemp competitors should be held to the same lengthy, expensive licensing standards that weed dispensaries face.
At the Logan Square craft brewery Hopewell, the Choom line of THC-infused beverages, which the company began selling last year, now accounts for about 30% of its sales, said co-founder Samantha Lee.
A federal ban, without much political debate and opportunities for businesses to chime in, now threatens to take that all away, during an already challenging time for craft beverage makers like hers, Lee said.
“We would like to keep morale up, but it will mean that we will need to let people go … and reduce our business in some fashion that will be painful,” she said.
Failed efforts at Illinois regulations
The ban, which surfaced over the weekend, renders moot the hemp regulation debate that has sown division among state lawmakers and Gov. JB Pritzker. And it spells trouble for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s budget proposal.
Illinois lawmakers had made repeated attempts to regulate hemp-derived THC products at the state level, but with zero success at reining in products that can affect people like marijuana does, and have sometimes been marketed to kids.
Pritzker backed a bill limiting sales of most hemp-derived products to cannabis dispensaries. The measure passed the state Senate but died in the House earlier this year amid intense hemp industry opposition.
The Democratic governor, a fierce Trump opponent, has blasted the broader Republican federal spending bill, but he welcomed federal guidelines to clear up the legal gray area around hemp products.
”In the absence of action in Springfield, Governor Pritzker supports policies to protect people, including children, from being misinformed or harmed by these products,” a spokesperson said.
West Side state Rep. La Shawn Ford — who has pushed for less stringent regulations including age limits, testing standards and packaging requirements for hemp products — said a federal ban starts “a whole new war on drugs.”
“You can’t ban it. It’s still here. It’s just being driven underground,” he said.
Ford suggested that even with federal limitations, state lawmakers could legalize hemp-derived THC products just like they did recreational cannabis in 2020 — little solace to hemp business owners who have already invested heavily in their businesses, only to potentially face down a much steeper and more costly licensing process.
“I’m really sorry that the state even allowed for this type of business to exist, because we could’ve banned this before it got out of control. We actually allowed these businesses to open in all these neighborhoods and set up and invest in their businesses, and now they’re gonna be left bankrupt,” Ford said.
It also takes potential tax dollars off the table for Johnson, who was banking on $10 million in city revenue from regulating hemp products to help close a billion-dollar budget shortfall.
A mayoral spokesman said with the industry in limbo, Johnson was working with City Council members to fill the gap by other means.
“We will work closely with our partners on the Council, in the Statehouse, and in the federal government to better understand this new legislation and the impact it may have on Chicago,” spokesman Cassio Mendoza said in an email. “The mayor’s top priority is to ensure that hemp consumption is regulated and safe in the city of Chicago.”
Illinois was among a slew of states mulling hemp regulation in the absence of federal directives. In Texas, a protracted fight over a total ban on THC products, championed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, ended this year after state leaders failed to find common ground and pass legislation.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed an executive order in September restricting THC products to adults age 21 and older, a move that has drawn ire from Patrick and lawmakers who wished to see tougher restrictions.
For Matt Anderson, who owns a Sunmed franchise in Quincy, regulating the hemp industry should have meant standalone legislation, rather than several lines in a spending bill that suddenly upend an entire industry.
And it should’ve addressed “common-sense” issues that lawmakers, business owners and customers can all get behind, he said.
“We’re not trying to say we don’t want regulation,” Anderson said. “I definitely think that there are different regulatory structures that do need to be put in place, and I’ve been behind those, 100%, the entire time.“