The Federal Hemp Act: Saving an Industry or Just Slapping a Band-Aid on a Bullet Wound?

Congress decided to throw another curveball into the mix. On January 23, 2026, Representatives Morgan Griffith (R-VA) and Marc Veasey (D-TX) introduced the Hemp Enforcement, Modernization, and Protection (HEMP) Act—a bipartisan attempt to regulate, rather than ban, the consumable hemp market that Trump’s spending bill tried to annihilate just weeks earlier.