When Donald Trump lately re-tweeted a CBD hype video, the U.S. Hemp Roundtable (USHR) moved quick. Inside days, the group despatched a fawning letter assuming the voice of “the hemp {industry},” whispering via Pricey Chief’s fuzzy ear, into the void.
However what USHR represents right this moment isn’t hemp. It’s principally a gray-market enterprise in sketchy, artificial THC substances, constructed on a leaky regulatory system. It’s an unsightly child, born of greed and cynicism.
On the coronary heart of USHR are CBD producers, lots of whom feed the intoxicating hemp sector downstream. A number of of them are actually instantly promoting intoxicating hemp merchandise: delta-8 and hemp-derived delta-9 THC edibles, vapes, and drinks that ship leisure doses of artificial THC as they go via a loophole within the authentic 2018 “Hemp Farm Invoice.”
Intoxicating hemp has change into the financial engine of the CBD sector (and little question the USHR). We’ve written about it — and warned about it — for years.
‘Pricey Sir’
“By signing the 2018 Farm Invoice into regulation, you ushered in a brand new period for the American hemp {industry},” begins the Oct. 6 letter to Trump. “We’re grateful and stay hopeful that your affect can save the $28.4 billion hemp {industry} that you simply helped make doable.”
Whereas the letter is nauseating on its floor, the extra troubling side lies in its exaggeration and deliberate sleight of hand. It by no means as soon as mentions CBD, cannabinoids, or intoxicating merchandise, using “hemp” completely as if the phrase alone may sanitize the fact USHR is pimping for — a dodgy intoxicant market constructed on unregulated and probably harmful substances and merchandise.
This isn’t an accident. It’s deliberate branding. By cloaking intoxicating hemp within the mantle of “hemp,” USHR hijacks the moniker of a complete motion to provide cowl to a twisted dwarf sub-industry. This doesn’t simply confuse the general public — it distorts coverage debates, scares off traders, and arms opponents of hemp a simple speaking level. It leads to guilt-by-association and undermines the credibility that “true hemp” sectors have spent years making an attempt to construct.
False, damaging
“Congress is near passing a hemp ban” that may “wipe out 95% of the {industry},” the letter suggests. That’s false. Congress shouldn’t be near banning hemp. Lawmakers are struggling to handle the unregulated intoxicating hemp monster that USHR adopted and fostered. There isn’t any threat to fiber or grain, hemp’s most promising sectors.
Whereas the $28.4 billion determine is plucked from skinny air, it might be correct to say that “95%” of the “hemp” market might be in danger. That vast chunk of the market largely consists of intoxicating merchandise that may probably be curtailed or eradicated if the definition of hemp have been tightened. That’s not destroying hemp. That’s cleansing up an out-of-control intoxicant commerce.
By even speaking about “hemp” in the identical breath as “ban,” harm is finished to the true hemp sectors. Each time that framing is repeated, it crops the concept all the {industry} is illicit or in danger. It collapses the excellence between reputable agricultural and industrial producers and the gray-market intoxicant commerce, lumping farmers, builders, and meals producers in with gummy peddlers.
Origin story
None of this framing is unintended. It displays USHR’s evolution over the previous 5 years. From 2018 via 2023, USHR’s certification arm, the U.S. Hemp Authority (USHA), targeted on CBD wellness merchandise, grain, and private care objects. Intoxicating cannabinoid merchandise have been explicitly ineligible for certification. After the CBD increase that started in 2019 rapidly changed into a harsh bust, hemp cannabinoid firms shifted to the makers of illicit intoxicants, that are produced from CBD and bought exterior state hashish programs.
In October 2024, USHA launched an “Grownup Use Hemp Product Certification Program.” In a single day, the identical group that after excluded intoxicating merchandise accepted them below a distinct normal. It was purely about survival: intoxicating hemp represented the principle income supply.
Take away banks, commerce teams, service suppliers, and different non-hemp firms from USHR’s present roster, and about 60 members stay—almost all in CBD. This membership contains roughly 15 firms that market merchandise that ship 5–10 mg of THC per serving – sufficient to get you excessive.
In the meantime, fiber and grain industries—fundamentals of a real hemp {industry}—are barely seen inside the group. They’re talked about often in coverage paperwork however lack critical legislative campaigns or public advocacy.
Indefensible
USHR claims it has “performed the precise factor with self-regulation” within the letter to Trump. The irony is vivid. The group invokes accountability whereas overseeing a market marked by the absence of actual oversight. A voluntary certification shouldn’t be regulation; it’s a advertising and marketing device.
To this point, there isn’t any identified public document that USHR or USHA has ever suspended, sanctioned, or publicly criticized a member for non-conformance — both in the course of the early CBD period, or after the group embraced intoxicating hemp. At the same time as some members’ merchandise change into indistinguishable from these in regulated hashish retailers, their so-called “self-regulation” stays all on paper – a flimsy defend to push back scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators, permitting enterprise as ordinary.
USHR is now powered by a cannabinoid sector that owes its survival to intoxicating hemp. That’s who they’re combating for — not fiber, not grain, and never the long-term credibility of hemp as an agricultural commodity. By invoking “hemp” as if they communicate for the entire sector, they applicable the {industry}’s historical past and legitimacy to defend a slender, illegitimate business agenda. Which will serve their short-term enterprise pursuits. But it surely makes them the flawed folks to form federal hemp coverage.
