34 Attorneys General Urge Congress to Keep Hemp Ban Intact

Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday and 33 other state and territorial attorneys general have told congressional leaders to leave the federal government’s coming ban on intoxicating hemp products alone, warning in an August 4, 2026 letter that any delay, repeal, or weakening of the law would throw state regulation “into chaos” just over three months before it takes effect on November 12, 2026.

The bipartisan coalition of 34 attorneys general addressed the letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, and the chairs of the House and Senate appropriations committees. Its ask is narrow: preserve the rewritten federal definition of hemp that Congress enacted on November 12, 2025, inside the full-year agriculture appropriations act, and let it take effect as written.

Sunday framed the issue as consumer protection in his office’s August 6, 2026 announcement:

“Pennsylvanians have a right to know what they’re buying and confidence that products with intoxicating effects are being sold responsibly and not marketed to children,” Sunday said. “Closing these loopholes, and ensuring they stay closed, protects consumers, supports businesses that follow the law, and makes it harder for intoxicating products to end up in the hands of children. This is not a partisan issue; it’s a public safety issue.”

The letter lands in the middle of an active fight over the ban’s survival. The White House has been pressing senators to delay the hemp provisions as part of negotiations over the next round of federal spending bills, and Senate negotiators have already floated pushing the effective date back to December, as MyCannabis reported earlier this week. The attorneys general are effectively lobbying against their own potential reprieve: their letter asks Congress to reject any effort to “delay, repeal, suspend, or weaken” the November 2025 redefinition.

What the November 2025 law actually does to hemp products

The 2018 farm bill defined hemp by a single measurement: no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight. Manufacturers read that definition to legalize downstream products built on other intoxicating cannabinoids (delta-8 and delta-10 THC, most prominently) synthesized from hemp-derived CBD, and a national market in gummies, drinks, and sprayed flower followed, sold largely outside state-licensed cannabis channels.

The 2025 appropriations law rewrote the definition around total THC rather than delta-9 alone. According to a Congressional Research Service analysis of the law, the new definition excludes seeds and intermediate products above 0.3% total THC, caps final hemp-derived cannabinoid products at 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container, a threshold the attorneys general’s letter notes effectively excludes intoxicating edibles, and bars products containing cannabinoids that are not naturally produced by the cannabis plant or were synthesized outside it. Industrial hemp grown for fiber and other non-cannabinoid uses is explicitly preserved.

The law also gave FDA homework: within 90 days of enactment, the agency was directed to publish lists of naturally occurring cannabinoids and cannabinoids with THC-like effects, and to define the term “container” that the per-container cap turns on.

States have spent seven months moving toward the new definition

The coalition’s core argument is reliance. Since November 2025, the letter says, many states have aligned their hemp laws and enforcement postures with the incoming federal standard: some because their statutes automatically incorporate the federal definition, others through new legislation. The letter names Delaware, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, and North Carolina as states with legislative movement in that period, and lists 20 states, Pennsylvania among them, that have shifted enforcement to match.

That state-level activity has continued through the summer. Texas moved delta-8 THC onto its own controlled-substances list in July 2026, while Delaware created a retail lane for hemp-derived THC beverages through liquor and cannabis stores ahead of the federal change.

The letter also acknowledges a complication: an Ohio court recently blocked enforcement of a state law that would have conformed Ohio’s hemp definition to the federal one. The attorneys general note the injunction rested on an unrelated provision of the law violating the dormant Commerce Clause (the constitutional doctrine limiting states’ power to burden interstate commerce) and say Ohio is appealing. “If the loophole is reopened or the new definition is weakened or repealed,” the letter warns, “States will face renewed litigation, inconsistent enforcement, regulatory uncertainty, increased youth access to intoxicating products, and disruption of lawful businesses that have already adjusted their operations to comply with the new federal framework.”

The letter itself flags the limits of what the coalition defends. Redefining hemp “will not inhibit” cultivation for industrial or agricultural uses, it says, because hemp plants naturally contain low levels of intoxicating cannabinoids — a concession aimed at farm-state objections, not at the intoxicating-products market.

The enforcement question the letter does not answer

What neither the letter nor the law resolves is who polices the ban once it is live. The Congressional Research Service notes it “remains unclear if and how federal law enforcement will enforce the new prohibitions” after November 12, 2026, and that FDA and DEA may lack the resources to broadly enforce them, leaving open the possibility that intoxicating hemp products persist on the market under the same federal-state patchwork that governs marijuana, where state-licensed activity violates federal law but is rarely prosecuted.

The attorneys general’s letter argues that uncertainty cuts the other way: the states have already reorganized around the new definition, and reopening it now would be the disruptive act. The next observable marker is November 12, 2026, when the redefinition takes effect — unless Congress moves it first, something the coalition of 34 attorneys general, from Arkansas to the U.S. Virgin Islands, is now on record opposing.