Klobuchar gives low-dose THC industry some hope for a reprieve from prohibition

The low-dose THC industry that makes the popular beverages and edibles you see at liquor and convenience stores and breweries got a sliver of hope Sunday in the face of a looming federal prohibition of the key ingredient they need for their products.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is a candidate for governor of Minnesota, said her bill — known as the Hemp Planting Predictability Act — made it into a bipartisan Senate budget deal that would keep the government open until December. It still needs to pass the House and Senate and win the signature of President Donald Trump.

The Klobuchar provision would delay the ban on THC products derived from hemp plants, which is set to take effect Nov. 11, for one month.

“Brewers, farmers, small businesses, and customers in Minnesota have made clear that the federal ban on hemp products will be devastating,” Klobuchar said in a news release.

Low-dose THC retailers told the Reformer last fall that a hemp ban would effectively shut down Minnesota’s low-dose THC industry because they’d have to enter the more expensive conventional cannabis industry, with its higher taxes, severe banking regulations and more expensive product.

The low-dose industry arose out of 2018 federal Farm Bill, which took took hemp off the controlled-substance list in an effort to encourage industrial hemp for commercial use. The bill defined hemp to be any cannabis plant or product with 0.3% or less of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which is the psychoactive drug from the plant.

That’s enough for most people to get high, however.

The bill created ambiguity that Minnesota Democrats in the Legislature exploited with a 2022 law that allowed for the manufacture, distribution and sale of THC products from “legally certified hemp” — creating a booming THC beverage and edibles industry that, paired with sales of adult-use marijuana, brought in more than $27 million in tax revenue last year.

The Legislature went on to fully legalize cannabis in 2023.

But Sen. Mitch McConnell attached a provision banning intoxicating hemp to a budget bill last year, effective November 2026.

(That ban will have no effect on the legal status of cannabis in Minnesota, which allows adults 21 and older to enter a licensed dispensary and buy all manner of THC intoxicants or grow small amounts of their own cannabis.)

But the federal law caps THC derived from hemp plants at 0.4mg per container, effectively banning intoxicating THC drinks and edibles, which, even at the lowest doses, have at least 2mg of THC.

McConnell, who is said to be in poor health after being hospitalized in June, sought to close the loophole he helped pass in 2018 — which allowed for the hemp-derived THC industry to thrive — as part of his departing agricultural policy legacy, Politico reported last year.

Klobuchar introduced the reprieve provision with U.S. Sens. Rand Paul, R-KY, and Jeff Merkley, D-OR, in efforts to pursue a long-term solution.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.