Massie Exposes Secret Hemp Ban in CR

How the new spending bill targets CBD, funds domestic spying, and ignores the budget crisis.

Yesterday, I was shopping at the new Whole Foods near me, and I was looking for some Thanksgiving dinner ingredients in addition to some quality CBD products. The shelves were full, and everyone seemed to be in great spirits. But if the folks in Washington, D.C., have their way, this scene could be illegal by next year.

While we were busy living our lives and focusing on the Epstein Files, Congress passed another Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government lights on. They avoided a shutdown, sure, for a couple of months (it all starts again in January). But at what cost?

Only one man in the U.S. House, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), stood up to expose the rot inside this 141-page disaster. And what he found should scare anyone who cares about free markets, privacy, or just plain common sense. While Massie takes a lot of flak, everyone joined him on the Epstein transparency vote, well, all but one. The interesting thing I find about Massie is that he stays strong on principle, rather than playing politics. Eventually, everyone comes to their senses, puts on their critical thinking caps, and votes along with him. It is amazing how many weak politicians we have in D.C. What is the saying, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Well, Thomas Massie is winning.

You’ll remember that a CR (Continuing Resolution) is a method used by Congress to continue their out-of-control spending when they do not know how to balance a checkbook. Instead of doing 12 spending bills a year in an orderly fashion, as they are supposed to do, they administer our taxpayer money in an obscene, frantic emergency, continually. It maintains prior fiscal year spending levels—bloated, inefficient, and inflation-causing, without any reforms, without a standardized, responsible budget. We aren’t seeing a “budget.” We are seeing an autopilot system designed to protect bureaucrats, not taxpayers.

Massie voted “No” on the CR because he believes in Single-Subject Bills. If you want to fund the Navy, vote on the Navy. If you want to fund the Department of Education, vote on that. Don’t roll them into one “take it or leave it” grenade and threaten a shutdown if we don’t pull the pin.

In mid-November, I wrote about a certain provision of the bill that is the height of cronyism, redefining hemp, which will be devastating to the $28 billion hemp industry, if it doesn’t outright phase it out of existence. The language hidden in the CR included incredibly broad language that will likely end the legal Delta-8 THC and CBD products that are used by millions of Americans for pain and anxiety.

This move will move legal consumers seeking pain relief and anxiety relief into the hands of Big Pharma, Big Alcohol, and buying opioids on the streets of America. This is complete insanity while we are in a move to legalize marijuana across the country, potentially descheduling it on the federal level, while going backward to re-criminalize the farm-bill-legal hemp industry.

This is your government at work, folks! Both from Kentucky, Rep Thomas Massie and Senator Rand Paul called out this hypocrisy, showing it was a clear attack on small farmers and lessening consumer freedom of choice.

Meanwhile, the funding continues to flow uninterrupted to the intelligence agencies that improperly surveilled several U.S. Senators. Those U.S. Senators pretended outrage at this improper surveillance of their phones and activities, but they continue not just the funding, but also the bills that enable this surveillance, think Patriot Act.

It comes back to Public Choice Theory. Politicians are motivated by self-preservation. Voting “No” on a funding bill opens them up to attack ads saying, “Representative X shut down the government!” So, they hold their nose and vote “Yes,” sacrificing our privacy and our markets to save their own careers.

So, while Thomas Massie held his ground in the U.S. House and Rand Paul in the U.S. Senate, the cycle of “must-pass” bills will continue with provisions hidden inside that conflict with what is best for the American people.