WASHINGTON — The first piece of Congress’s rewrite of the federal hemp definition takes effect Thursday, removing hemp products made with cannabinoids the cannabis plant cannot produce on its own from the legal definition of hemp, while the broader limits that would take most intoxicating hemp products off store shelves wait until Dec. 11.
The change traces to a provision of the November 2025 funding law (P.L. 119-37) that ended the last government shutdown. It rewrote the 2018 farm bill’s definition of hemp to measure total THC, not just delta-9 THC, and to exclude finished products with more than 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container. The law originally set all of it to start Nov. 12, 2026.
In September, Congress passed a stopgap spending law, P.L. 119-103, that pushed most of those changes back to Dec. 11, the Congressional Research Service wrote in an Oct. 28 legal sidebar. It left one piece on the original timeline. Starting Thursday, products containing cannabinoids “not capable of being naturally produced” by the plant are no longer hemp and are treated as controlled substances to the extent they fall within the Controlled Substances Act, CRS said. Its example was THC-O, which is made from hemp-derived CBD and does not occur in cannabis.
Delta-8 THC, which does occur naturally, is governed instead by the December limits, according to CRS.
FDA lists still missing
The 2025 law gave the Food and Drug Administration 90 days to publish lists of the cannabinoids that occur naturally in cannabis, the THC-class cannabinoids and other compounds with similar effects, plus more detail on what counts as a “container.” That deadline passed Feb. 10. “As of the date of the publication of this Legal Sidebar, FDA has not published any of these items,” CRS wrote on Oct. 28, according to the report’s text as quoted by Cannabis News. A CRS In Focus report updated Aug. 17 had also noted that the lists had not been published.
Local rules are moving on the same date. A Philadelphia ordinance that bars the sale of anything federal law excludes from the definition of hemp takes effect Thursday, with fines of up to $2,000 a day, FOX 29 reported.
Who is lobbying
The fight in Washington is far from over, and lobbying disclosures show both sides staffed up. Lobbying reports for the third quarter of 2026 that mention hemp were filed for 82 clients, a Washington Inquisitor review of Lobbying Disclosure Act records found. The amounts on those reports cover every issue a client lobbied on, not hemp alone.
The beer industry is among the most active. Anheuser-Busch reported $1.38 million in in-house lobbying spending for the quarter, listing the “differentiation of beer from cannabis and hemp in tax and regulation” and P.L. 119-37 among its issues, according to its report. The Beer Institute reported $690,000 on issues including “intoxicating hemp-derived THC proposals,” the Beverage Regulatory Parity Act (H.R. 10079) and the Lawful Hemp Protection Act (H.R. 9830), its filing shows.
On Monday the Beer Institute added another firm. NVG LLC registered to lobby for the trade group on the “regulation of hemp and THC beverages,” dietary guidelines and aluminum pricing. Its listed lobbyists include Amy Rutkin, a former chief of staff to Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and former House Judiciary Committee staff director; Santiago Gonzalez, a former legislative director to Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.; and Joshua Hurvitz, a former legislative director to then-Rep. Anthony Weiner, according to the registration.
The hemp industry has its own teams. The U.S. Hemp Roundtable paid Williams and Jensen $80,000 in the quarter to lobby on hemp regulation and the Hemp Planting Predictability Act (H.R. 7024), which would delay the new definition, and paid Frost Brown Todd another $80,000, according to filings by Williams and Jensen and Frost Brown Todd. The American Healthy Alternatives Association reported paying three firms, including Avenue Solutions, whose report lists “proposals to delay, modify, or replace the November 12, 2026 effective date.”
Groups that back the ban are lobbying too. SAM Action reported $70,000 in spending that included “advocating for a prohibition on hemp-derived intoxicants,” its report shows, and a group called No Dangerous Intoxicating Products paid The Madison Group $60,000 on “the federal ban on intoxicating hemp,” according to that firm’s filing.
What comes next
CRS has listed the options in front of lawmakers. Bills would push the effective date back two more years (H.R. 7024, H.R. 7010 and S. 3686) or repeal the definition changes (H.R. 6209). Others would set up a regulatory framework through agencies such as FDA (H.R. 7212, H.R. 9830, H.R. 10079 and S. 3474), according to the August CRS report. Several state attorneys general have opposed any further delay, saying their states have already aligned their laws with the new definition, CRS wrote.
Current government funding also runs through Dec. 11, the day the rest of the new definition takes effect. Congress used the last stopgap spending law to grant the first delay.
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