Mitch McConnell Helped Usher in the Hemp Industry; Now He is Working to Effectively Kill It

As Congress moves toward passage of an appropriations bill that includes funding for the USDA and FDA, a fight over whether to regulate or ban products containing cannabinoids derived from hemp is putting Kentucky’s two Republican senators at loggerheads and leading hemp advocates to ask: What happened to Mitch McConnell?

Then-Senate Majority Leader, McConnell led the push to federally legalize hemp in the 2018 farm bill, but has since changed his tune. In 2025, the octogenarian solon allied himself with arch-prohibitionist Representative Andy Harris (R-MD), chair of the House Appropriations Agriculture-FDA subcommittee, to champion language that would essentially ban hemp-derived cannabinoids—delta-8 THC, delta-9 THCA, CBD, CBDA, CBC, CBG—whose growth has exploded since 2018, even as the overall hemp market first retrenched and then rebounded after a 2019 “hemp rush” glut.

The legalization of hemp in the 2018 farm bill had “an unintended consequence that has allowed for intoxicating hemp-derived synthetic products to be made and sold,” McConnell said during Senate markup of the appropriations bill. He supported the Harris language, he said, to reflect “the original intent of the 2018 farm bill.”

Largely as a result of that “unintended consequence,” hemp has since burgeoned into a $28 billion industry employing more than 300,000 people, according to the industry group the U.S. Hemp Roundtable. At the farmgate, the number is much smaller, though still significant. According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service’s 2025 “National Hemp Report,” the value of the national industrial hemp crop was $445 million in 2024. That suggests a lot of value—and jobs—were added between the farmgate and the store shelf.

While there are a number of varieties of industrial hemp production—for seed, for fiber, for oil, and for grain—the production of floral hemp (flowers or buds) is the real cash cow, accounting for $386 million, or more than 80 percent of the farmgate value of all industrial hemp production. And the vast majority of that product goes into hemp-derived cannabinoid products.

“A hemp ban will lead to the collapse of a growing U.S. industry, taking away consumer choices, killing jobs, and punishing farmers,” the Roundtable said in an alert urging members to contact Congress to kill the hemp provision.

Facing a threat from fellow Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul to block the entire appropriations bill if the provision was not killed, McConnell and Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee chair, North Dakota Senator John Hoeven, agreed earlier this fall to remove it from the Senate version of the bill. But the Harris language remains included in the House version of the bill, and McConnell has signaled that he remains determined to see the ban enacted through other legislative vehicles.

While such an action remains a threat to the industry, the main battle right now is over the agriculture appropriations bill, where the fate of hemp hangs in the balance ahead of negotiations between the House and Senate in conference committee.

McConnell has long positioned himself as a champion of Kentucky agriculture, but his switch to a prohibitionist stance on hemp products has the state’s hemp farmers worried that he is going to throw them and their businesses under the bus.

It has been boom and bust for Kentucky hemp farmers since the passage of the 2018 farm bill. In 2019, more than 26,000 acres were licensed for hemp production, but by 2021, the number had declined by more than half, to 11,500 acres. Since then, the number of acres licensed for hemp production has hovered around 5,000 acres a year.

The number of acres actually planted with hemp declined in a similar fashion. In 2020, 5,000 acres were planted, but in 2021, 2022, and 2023, fewer than 2,000 acres of hemp bloomed in the Bluegrass State. Only in 2024 did the decline begin to reverse, with the area under cultivation climbing slightly to 2,700 acres. Nearly half (46 percent) of that crop was floral hemp.

That bumpy ride is attributable to three main factors: overproduction and price collapse (the value of CBD-rich hemp biomass declined by 80 percent between 2019 and 2020), lack of processing capacity to turn raw hemp into CBD oil, and regulatory confusion (the FDA never provided a clear legal framework for the sales of hemp-derived CBD products). Now, the industry faces an even more dire future if Congress bans hemp-derived cannabinoids.

In a late September letter to McConnell written by the Kentucky Hemp Association, dozens of hemp farmers warned that recriminalizing hemp derivatives would crush them. These farmers represent a hefty percentage of the state’s 138 hemp farmers licensed this year.

“If Congress moves to eliminate the end markets that make our crop viable, we will suffer immediate and catastrophic consequences,” the farmers wrote. “We have taken out loans, hired the necessary help, planted the crop, and contracted with processors and/or brands. Any legislative change that pulls the rug out from under this market—especially mid-season—is a direct blow to our farms, families, and rural communities.”

The 58 farmers, who have contracted hemp crops this year, told McConnell that “hemp is the foundation of our diversified, sustainable farm operations that helps us weather tough commodity cycles, diversify away from tobacco and empower profit in an uncertain economy.” The 2018 farm bill legalizing hemp provided them with a new crop with “real economic opportunity” for the “first time in decades.”

And that opportunity comes precisely from hemp-derived consumer products—not the rope and fiber previously associated with industrial hemp production. The U.S. Hemp Roundtable general counsel, Jonathan Miller, told Marijuana Moment after the farmers’ letter was released that hemp cannabinoid farming accounted for 87 percent of the hemp grown in the state. “We are very hopeful that Senator McConnell will listen to these farmers—who are relying on the language he inserted in the 2018 Farm Bill for their livelihoods,” Miller added.

“There’s been a huge influx of hemp beverages that’s become a really exciting new market for hemp farmers to share their wares and so we’ve seen, all across the country,” he said in a separate interview. “You go to liquor stores, or sometimes convenience stores, and purchase these hemp beverages, and this legislation out there, the McConnell legislation, or over in the House side, which was championed by Andy Harris would put that all to bed.”

Instead of recriminalizing hemp cannabinoid products, which would “empower the illicit market and destroy American farm income in the process,” the farmers called for “responsible regulation” of the crop.

“We support age restrictions along with uniform testing, labeling and packaging requirements, all of which are reflected in Kentucky’s award-winning laws and regulations. But outright prohibition is not the answer, and it will not make anyone safer,” they wrote.

“We are proud of what we grow. We are proud to be building a domestic supply chain for an American crop, which is catalyzed by the cannabinoid market. At this time we are asking you, respectfully but firmly: Do not criminalize our harvest. Protect our farms. Keep Kentucky’s hemp market legal, safe, and effective. Let us prove once again that Kentucky leadership is the answer to bad actors and unsafe products by enforcing and enriching the robust regulations that have set Kentucky apart and ahead of all others.”

What to do about hemp and its derivatives is a complex and convoluted conundrum, but right now, the question before Congress is really pretty simple: whether to prohibit or regulate. Mitch McConnell remains a key voice in this debate. Will he heed his farm sector constituents or will he side with the prohibitionists? McConnell has a legacy of protecting state agricultural interests; it would tarnish that legacy if he ended his career in Washington by destroying hemp farmers back home.

This article is distributed by the Independent Media Institute. 

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