Hemp and alcohol industry stakeholders are on full alert amid a pending ban on hemp THC products—including increasingly popular cannabinoid beverages—and a former Democratic congressman who owns a major alcohol company is looking for solutions.
At Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America’s (WSWA) recent Access LIVE 2026 event in Las Vegas, which brought together top players in the cannabis and alcohol markets, former Rep. David Trone (D-MD) and stakeholders discussed the policy landscape around hemp and how to avert an industry-wide upheaval under spending legislation President Donald Trump signed into law last year.
While the 2018 Farm Bill that Trump enacted during his first term federally legalized hemp and its derivatives, allowing states to set “their own myriad of laws” that lawmakers sifted through “to make sure we got it right,” that policy is set to be unravelled come November, when separate legislation will enter into force prohibiting most hemp THC products.
“This is now an adult beverage category, whether it’s a beer tonight or a glass of wine or an adult hemp beverage,” Trone, who owns Total Wine & More, said.
The former congressman said that if federal law moves away from regulation to recriminalization, “there’ll be an underground
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