Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) filed a bill on Thursday to repeal hemp-banning language that was passed as part of the deal to end the government shutdown, the congresswoman’s office told the Washington Examiner.
Mace’s bill, titled the American Hemp Protection Act of 2025, would strike a provision that is set to drastically cut down the legal threshold of THC, the psychoactive compound in the plant, allowed in hemp products. The provision was passed as part of the agriculture-related minibus of the shutdown deal and would ban about 95% of all available hemp products in the United States.
With her new bill, Mace hopes to stop the hemp-banning provision before it takes effect on Nov. 12, 2026.
The American Hemp Protection Act of 2025 would strike the language by repealing the entire section of the minibus that adds new parameters to the definition of hemp. If repealed, the language would go back to the previous, less restrictive definition of hemp. Mace’s bill comes as other congressional lawmakers, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), have raised the possibility of introducing legislation to take aim at the hemp-banning language.
The restrictive change, setting a limit of 0.4 milligrams of total hemp-derived THC per container, was spearheaded by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and crafted by drug safety groups like Smart Approaches to Marijuana, or SAM. The provision was added to the minibus to fix a loophole in the 2018 farm bill that skyrocketed the production of hemp-derived THC products and their accessible sale in places like convenience stores and gas stations.
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Advocates of the provision, like McConnell, say it protects children who can easily mistake the accessible hemp for candy, pointing to rising hemp hospitalizations among vulnerable populations. But hemp farmers, industry businesses, and those who use hemp for medicinal purposes have argued the bill will have a devastating impact on their means to make a living and their health.
Mace, who voted for the bill to reopen the government despite it including the hemp-banning provision, spoke out against the inclusion from the jump.
Mace said the provision “would deal a fatal blow to American farmers supplying the regulated hemp industry and small businesses, and jeopardize tens of billions of dollars in economic activity,” on the House floor on Nov. 12, before the House voted to pass the deal to end the shutdown.
Paul tried to push an amendment striking the hemp provision through the Senate before the chamber passed the government shutdown deal, but his effort was unsuccessful as he and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) were the only GOP senators to vote in favor of the amendment.
Kevin Sabet, CEO of SAM, told the Washington Examiner last week that the Senate vote of 76-24, which killed Paul’s amendment, was “a clear, loud signal that the wind is at the backs of people fighting for real public health.”
Mace’s bill essentially does the exact same thing as Paul’s provision would have.
Paul announced on Thursday that he is planning to introduce legislation next week that would “let state hemp laws override the new federal ban.” This would differ from his amendment, which would have simply struck the provision, and takes more of a federalist approach, allowing states to implement regulations that work for them.
“The Constitution already puts these powers with the states, but Washington ignored that. Kentucky regulates hemp responsibly—with age limits, serving sizes, and anti-fraud rules. Washington erased all of it with one blanket ban. Kentuckians believe adults should make their own choices. Federal law should too,” Paul wrote on X.
The hemp industry vowed to lobby lawmakers to ditch the hemp ban in advance of the November 2026 cliff. Jim Higdon, co-founder of the Kentucky-based hemp business Cornbread Hemp, posted from Capitol Hill on Tuesday on X.
“In just 359 days, all CBS products in America will become schedule one narcotics,” Higdon said, referring to the government funding bill provision. “I’m in DC all week talking to stakeholders, legislators, committee staff about what might be possible to save the entire hemp industry before the clock runs out.”
Sabet told the Washington Examiner that SAM “always expected the intoxicating hemp industry to fight back.”
“We will be doing anything and everything we can to remind Big Hemp that the American people have firmly rejected them and their dangerous products,” he said. “That includes both protecting this on the federal level as well as a targeted state-by-state advocacy campaign to make sure the ban is enshrined in every state’s law as well.”
Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Morgan Griffith (R-VA) have also been outspoken in their disapproval of the funding bill’s hemp provision. Griffith previously circulated a draft hemp regulatory bill in August and told the Washington Examiner last week, “I plan to work off our discussion draft for a bill that makes sense for America.”
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“I detest the tactics that were used to enact the hemp ban into law,” Massie told the Washington Examiner last week. “I offered an amendment that mirrored Sen. Paul’s effort to strip the ban out of the bill, and I am frustrated that the Rules Committee did not make it in order. I will continue to work with Sen. Paul to find opportunities to reverse the hemp ban.”
This is not Mace’s first rodeo when it comes to introducing cannabis-related legislation. She introduced a bill in 2021 aimed at removing marijuana and THC from the Controlled Substances Act. She also helped introduce a bipartisan bill in 2023 to prevent cannabis users from being barred from federal employment.
