Hemp built a multibillion-dollar empire before it built political power to defend it

Chris Fontes

Submitted photo/InsideSources

A ban will not make THC disappear. It will not eliminate demand. It will not protect consumers from intoxicating products. It will simply decide which channels survive.”

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OPINION — There’s a very real chance that Congress is about to ban a massive portion of the hemp industry.

If that happens, it will be tempting for people to point fingers at everyone else: alcohol, tobacco, prohibitionists, regulators, bad actors, uninformed lawmakers, overzealous state agencies and the usual cast of people who have never understood cannabis but somehow keep writing the rules for it.

Some of that frustration would be justified, but if we are going to be honest about how the hemp industry got here, we have to start with a more uncomfortable truth: We did not get our act together fast enough.

That doesn’t mean the industry deserves prohibition. It doesn’t mean responsible companies should be punished because Congress failed to create a rational federal framework, and it certainly does not mean consumers are safer when legal products disappear from shelves and are replaced by unregulated alternatives.

It does mean this industry built a national consumer market before it built the political, regulatory and self-governing infrastructure necessary to defend that market. That failure is now coming to its inevitable conclusion.

The hemp-derived THC category didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Congress legalized hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill and removed the plant, including its derivatives and cannabinoids, from the Controlled Substances Act as long as products remained under the federal delta-9 THC threshold. Entrepreneurs, farmers, manufacturers and retailers built businesses around that law.

As a first-mover in the hemp delta-9 business, I saw this firsthand.

Consumers responded. Hemp beverages, gummies and other cannabinoid products moved into liquor stores, convenience stores, online marketplaces and mainstream consumer channels that state-regulated marijuana companies could not reach.

For many adults, especially those who were never going to walk into a dispensary, hemp became the first approachable cannabis product they were willing to try. It created unprecedented access to the plant, and in many ways was more impactful than state adult-use programs.

That should have been a turning point. Instead, the industry moved faster than its standards.

Some operators invested in testing, labeling, age-gating, child-resistant packaging, responsible marketing and compliance. Others chased potency, made irresponsible claims, ignored basic consumer protections or treated the Farm Bill like a loophole instead of a foundation.

The result was predictable. Consumers saw confusion. Regulators saw risk.

Opponents saw opportunity, and the responsible side of the industry did not organize quickly enough or with enough resources to define the conversation before someone else did.

That’s the part we need to own.

The people trying to restrict or eliminate hemp-derived THC are not amateurs. Alcohol knows how to protect its market, and tobacco knows how to protect its market. Prohibitionist organizations know how to turn fear into policy, while legacy industries understand that lobbying, standards, relationships and political infrastructure are not optional expenses. They are the cost of survival.

Federal lobbying disclosures show the imbalance clearly. The hemp industry’s most visible national advocates have spent only a few million dollars on federal lobbying in recent years, while alcohol, tobacco and other established industries routinely spend many times that amount protecting their interests in Washington.

Not every dollar from those industries is aimed at hemp, but that is exactly the point: They treat political infrastructure as a permanent business function, not a crisis response.

Hemp, by comparison, has too often treated policy like a cleanup project. We built brands, hired sales teams, opened retail accounts, launched new products, chased distribution and argued among ourselves while better-funded opponents made the case that the entire category was unsafe, unregulated and illegitimate.

That case is preposterous when applied to responsible operators, but it becomes much harder to rebut when the industry has not done enough to separate those responsible operators from the companies that have given lawmakers every excuse they needed.

Across the country, retailers are getting nervous. Some are being pressured about their liquor licenses. Some are confused about whether products are already illegal. Some are moving hemp beverages from prominent shelf space to the bottom shelf, pulling signage or abandoning the category altogether.

That matters and is devastating for operators, who rely on brick-and-mortar presence to greet the cannacurious.

The 50-milligram consumer may already know what they want as they are high-frequency, high-tolerance and highly intentional. They will find the product, but the 5- and 10-milligram consumer is different. That person is often new, occasional or cautious. They buy when the product is visible, understandable and presented in a trustworthy environment. When education disappears and retailers get scared, those consumers disappear, as well.

In other words, uncertainty does not just punish the so-called bad actors. It punishes the lower-dose, more approachable products that lawmakers should want to preserve. That’s the absurdity of where we are today.

The industry most in need of clear standards, responsible education and enforceable guardrails is now facing a federal response that could wipe out the companies most willing to follow them.

A ban will not make THC disappear. It will not eliminate demand. It will not protect consumers from intoxicating products. It will simply decide which channels survive. The largest companies with the deepest pockets will adapt, and the illicit market will adapt. Small businesses, farmers, processors, distributors and retailers who tried to operate in good faith may not.

That is market destruction disguised as consumer protection.

The path forward is not complicated, even if the politics are: Hemp-derived THC products should be age-gated. They should be tested. They should be accurately labeled. They should not be marketed to children. They should not make unsupported health claims. Potency should be clear. Serving sizes should be rational. Packaging should be responsible. Enforcement should be real.

The industry should have embraced a serious, national self-regulatory framework years ago, and it should have funded that effort like its future depended on it, because it did.

That’s the hard lesson here. Standards cannot be an afterthought. Political engagement cannot be an emergency expense. Credibility cannot be built in the final weeks before Congress acts. If this industry survives the current threat, it cannot go back to business as usual.

We need to stop pretending that entrepreneurship alone is enough. We need real standards, real enforcement, real trade discipline, real education and real investment in the political infrastructure required to protect responsible access. We also need to be honest with lawmakers.

The hemp industry deserves a regulated future, not a clumsy blanket ban.

We built a national market. Now we have to prove we are mature enough to govern it, defend it and clean up the parts of it that gave our opponents the opening they were waiting for. The alternative is watching an entire category get defined by the people who wanted it gone from the beginning.

Chris Fontes is a business owner and president of the nonprofit advocacy organization, U.S. Hemp Authority. He wrote this for InsideSources.com. Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.