TL;DR: Trump’s surprise hemp ban doesn’t just wipe out a massive part of the hemp-derived market; it may also create the legal framework for a broader federal crackdown on cannabis. With the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 arguing for centralized FDA authority and tougher interstate enforcement, the hemp ban could mark the first real test of a new, more aggressive national drug policy that threatens both hemp and state-legal cannabis operators.
In November 2025, Donald Trump, once celebrated as the president who legalized hemp, signed the most far-reaching hemp prohibition in modern U.S. history. The provision was buried deep inside the bill that reopened the federal government. With almost no debate and virtually no public awareness, Congress rewrote the legal definition of hemp, capping every hemp-derived product at 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container and banning all cannabinoids produced through chemical conversion. Beverages, gummies, vapes, tinctures, even intermediate extracts used in manufacturing will be pushed back into Schedule I on November 13, 2026.
Seven years after the 2018 Farm Bill created a national hemp economy, the federal government has now swung the pendulum in the opposite direction. Let me pose the uncomfortable question: Is this prohibition a justified correction to cannabis policy—forcing thousands of hemp operators to finally comply with the strict regulatory framework that cannabis companies have endured for years? Or is there a deeper, more dangerous trajectory emerging?
If you are a small cannabis operator celebrating the collapse of the hemp economy, beware: this may be only the first move in a broader conservative counteroffensive.
An Ideological Weather Front Moves In
Look closely at the Heritage Foundation’s cannabis philosophy. The Heritage Foundation is a major conservative think tank that has shaped Republican policy for decades, and it is, by far, one of the most articulate and influential …
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Author: Rolando García / High Times
