House Republican appropriators have revived a controversial attempt to ban the sale of intoxicating hemp products using an annual spending measure advanced Thursday.

The House fiscal 2026 food, drug, and agriculture funding bill includes a rider seeking to curb a growing multibillion-dollar industry for hemp-derived products.

The language introduced Wednesday morning redefines hemp to exclude hemp-derived cannabinoid products, which have become popular across states where marijuana remains illegal. The bill would allow production of non-intoxicating industrial hemp for uses including fibers and oils but could decimate a intoxicating hemp product market worth as much as $28 billion.

Lawmakers may debate the language alongside other policy issues during the bill’s markup by the full House Appropriations Committee scheduled for June 11, after it advanced out of a Thursday subcommittee markup by a party-line 9-7 vote.

The renewed push to restrict intoxicating hemp products follows similar provisions in versions of the 2024 farm bill and fiscal 2025 spending package, which attracted heavy industry lobbying and criticism from within the Republican conference before ultimately being dropped from final legislation. The full committee markup will indicate whether the changes to the provision floated last year are enough to satisfy lawmakers concerned about its impact to hemp farmers.

Read more about the draft spending measure here and in the next section.

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), a member of the House Appropriations agriculture subcommittee who opposed a similar measure last year, said his primary focus was ensuring “that the non-intoxicating side of the industry” wouldn’t fall under any potential ban.

House Agriculture Chair GT Thompson (R-Pa.) said in a Wednesday interview he sees the proposed intoxicating hemp ban as among the three liveliest debates lawmakers face as they put together a farm bill this summer, alongside repealing a California animal welfare law and pesticide labeling requirements.

“We’ll have that debate in committee with a markup of farm bill 2.0 and then we’ll see where the votes land,” Thompson said.

Hemp plants grow at a greenhouse in Dixon, Ky.

Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images

This debate over a burgeoning intoxicating hemp industry stems from the last farm bill reauthorized in 2018, which broadly legalized hemp production. Lawmakers have subsequently admitted the legislation inadvertently gave rise to a massive intoxicating hemp product market, when their focus was on promoting textile and other industrial uses of the plant.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), a member of the House Agriculture Committee, said Wednesday that he represents constituents running intoxicating hemp businesses and reiterated opposition to a ban matching the one proposed last year, adding that he’s still reviewing the new spending measure.

The US Hemp Roundtable, an industry group vocally opposed to the provision in 2024, again raised concern about the language in about a dozen meetings with lawmakers after the spending measure went live, General Counsel Jonathan Miller said in a Wednesday interview.

“This is a substantive legislative effort that should not be shoehorned onto a spending bill, and frankly, violates many of the rules that Chairman Harris has laid out when it comes to appropriations bills,” Miller said, referring to House Appropriations agriculture subcommittee Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.).

Smart Approaches to Marijuana president and CEO Kevin Sabet, on the other hand, called the move “a crucial victory in the long fight to ban hemp intoxicants” in a Wednesday statement.

As fights over spending reductions and policy riders take form over the coming weeks, House appropriators are considering a spending measure that would cut the Agriculture Department’s budget to $21.9 billion in discretionary dollars, $807 million lower than its enacted fiscal 2025 budget.

The spending measure met several of the Trump administration’s USDA budget requests, including increased spending on rural rental assistance contracts, according to a GOP summary.

Appropriators also fully funded the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program at $118.1 billion per Trump’s request, but noted in the summary that the program’s mandatory spending authorization “will be adjusted when Congress enacts new program changes.” Lawmakers aim to reduce spending on the nation’s largest low-income food aid program by around $295 billion to cover tax cut extensions and other Republican policy priorities.

To be sure, lawmakers didn’t back all of the administration’s proposals. The spending bill notably doesn’t eliminate spending on international food aid programs the president wanted gone, but it does reduce their budgets by millions of dollars.

Another provision would block USDA from erecting any flag over its facilities that isn’t the agency’s official flag or one representing the US, a state, locality, or a prisoner of war. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins last month hung huge banners of former President Abraham Lincoln and President Donald Trump outside USDA’s headquarters, which face the National Mall.

The department didn’t respond to a request for comment on the language.

Over in the Senate, Democratic lawmakers are making a stand on the closure of regional USDA offices.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and a host of House Democrats representing California convinced the administration not to shutter eight locations providing local guidance on farm loans and conservation work, according to a letter written by Rollins and released by Schiff’s office on Monday.

Rollins worked to rescind several lease terminations listed by the Department of Government Efficiency after the lawmakers expressed concern about how office closures would “severely hamper USDA’s ability to support farmers” in a May letter. The move represents the department’s latest reversal in its efforts to slim the federal bureaucracy—earlier this year, USDA scrambled to rehire mistakenly fired staff responsible for tracking bird flu infections.

“USDA supports optimizing building capacity and consolidating underutilized offices to reduce inefficiencies, while continuing to prioritize frontline services for farmers, ranchers, and rural communities,” Rollins wrote in response to Schiff’s outreach.

California Democratic Adam Schiff, shown during a Dec. 11, 2024 hearing in the Senate.

Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

Beyond lobbying the administration directly, Senate Democrats are also teeing up a campaign to keep open USDA offices using the annual appropriations process. Twenty lawmakers including Senate Agriculture Committee ranking member Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) wrote to the Senate Appropriations subcommittee covering agriculture requesting that the chamber’s fiscal 2026 spending measure bars the closure of USDA’s county-based field offices.

The Democrats asked subcommittee Chair John Hoeven (R-N.D.) to include specific language preventing the use of federal funds for closing “Natural Resources Conservation Service, Farm Service Agency, and Rural Development Mission area field offices,” according to a May 22 letter shared exclusively on Wednesday with Bloomberg Government.

“Indiscriminate office closures that would compound inefficiencies created by dramatic staff reductions; further impacting farmers, ranchers, and rural communities, drastically limiting their access to USDA,” the letter said.

Negotiations over agriculture programs are heating up as senators consider the House-passed reconciliation bill, while any programs not addressed this summer may have to get wrapped up in a “skinny” farm bill later this year.

Lawmakers are scrutinizing changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and potential boosts to farming and commodities program funding.

The reconciliation package would extend farm bill programs that start to expire Sept. 30 and cut SNAP by $295 billion over a decade, by Congressional Budget Office estimates.

Read more from analyst Olivia Gyapong in her latest BGOV OnPoint: Fate of Farm and Nutrition Aid Unclear in Senate