A GOP congresswoman is circulating a bill that would stop the implementation of a federal hemp THC product ban that’s part of spending legislation signed by President Donald Trump last week. And she’s pledging to spend the next year fighting to prevent the implementation of the ban.
The draft bill from Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC)—who has also separately championed legislation to legalize marijuana—seeks to strike a section of the recently enacted appropriations package that hemp stakeholders say would effective eradicate the market by imposing severe restrictions on the types of consumable cannabinoid products that could be legally sold.
Hemp businesses and industry groups have warned about the potential ramifications of the ban, but despite his support for states’ rights for cannabis and a recent social media post touting the benefits of CBD, Trump signed the underlying spending measure into law without acknowledging the hemp provisions.
Mace’s bill, titled “The American Hemp Protection Act of 2025,” would prevent that ban from taking effect, which would happen around this time next year, but it wouldn’t on its own accomplish what many advocates have pled for: Regulations.
Rather than outright prohibit consumable hemp products with small amounts of THC, the industry has generally pushed for a regulatory model that addresses issues with intoxicating cannabinoids that have become widely available since the crop and its derivatives were federally legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill that Trump signed during his first term.
Mace’s office did not reply to a request for comment from Marijuana Moment on Tuesday afternoon.
In comments inserted into the Congressional Record last week, Mace signaled that she’d be taking steps to address the hemp language in the spending bill, which she said 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.”
The Farm Bill legalizing hemp and its derivatives “established a successful framework,” she said, adding that stakeholders have “stepped forward to self-regulate in the absence of uniform federal regulations–uniting behind a framework which restricts the sale and possession of hemp products to adults 21 years and older, standardizes packaging to eliminate ‘look-a-like’ products that are appealing to children, standardizes labeling to empower adult consumers to make informed choices and requires independent third-party laboratory tests for consumable hemp products.”
“They have been asking Congress to pass legislation to responsibly regulate their industry,” the congresswoman said.
“Rather than adopt this common-sense regulatory framework to protect children and allow adults to make informed decisions, Section 781 of this bill essentially imposes a national ban of all ingestible hemp products with any ‘quantifiable’ level of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which represents between 90 and 95 percent of hemp products in the marketplace, including the vast majority of non-intoxicating cannabidiol (CBD) products offered in the marketplace. Section 781 of this bill would needlessly and arbitrarily change the definition of legal hemp rather than responsibly regulating the market.”
“This would effectively turn out the lights on America’s legal hemp farmers, preempt the work being done in states to create regulatory frameworks for hemp products and restrict consumer choice for the tens of millions of Americans who use hemp-derived products,” Mace said.
“Approximately 20 percent of American adults report using CBD or a hemp-derived product in the preceding 12 months. These products are here; they are widespread, and they are not going away. As the failed war on drugs has shown, provisions like this drive out responsible actors from the industry and embolden shady, black-market actors who care not for consumer safety or the protection of children. Rather than have a substantive, open debate on the future of hemp policy in America, prohibitionists slipped this provision into a must-pass government funding bill, forcing members of Congress to choose between voting their conscience on hemp and paying our military service members. This is wrong.”
Mace said that she opposed the hemp provisions when “prohibitionists” sought to include it in last year’s U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) appropriations bill, and “I continue to oppose this language.”
“In the year before this provision takes effect, I will work tirelessly to reverse this harmful language and create a common-sense regulatory framework which protects America’s children, ensures product quality and preserves access to products used by tens of millions of Americans,” she said.
As currently drafted, however, the bill Mace is circulating does not contain such a regulatory framework. And several hemp industry stakeholders told Marijuana Moment on Tuesday that there’s internal concern about the congresswoman’s standalone bill for that reason.
The sources stressed that it’s imperative any alternative policy solution doesn’t simply reverse the ban but also specifically addresses the regulatory concerns that have arisen since hemp was legalized. They also said that there are bipartisan lawmakers in both chambers working to craft such legislation that could be introduced by the year’s end.
Beyond hemp, Mace said last year that she believes her States Reform Act to federally legalize marijuana is the ideal vehicle for reform. She has not yet reintroduced that legislation in the 119th Congress.
At the time, the congresswoman also weighed in on another controversial issue: updated guidance from a GOP policy committee she sits on that specifically urged members to oppose a marijuana banking reform bill and the Cannabis Users’ Restoration of Eligibility (CURE) Act she sponsored on marijuana-related security clearance denials.
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