The Hempire Strikes Back: A Fall 2024 Farm Bill Update

It is a dark time for the legal hemp rebellion. Although the 2018 Farm Bill has destroyed our legal opposition, State law enforcement has begun to drive legal hemp shops to the brink with ever shifting goal posts and are beginning to even conduct raids.

Evading the dreaded march of this legal opposition, our group of freedom fighting smoke shops are trying to establish the legal hemp market as mainstream, instead of being hidden away in the remote corners of our country.

The evil lord Darth Vaper, obsessed with finding the young Hempwalker… *record scratch* erm sorry it appears that our A.I. has run out of juice riiight at the end of our opening crawl, excuse us as we go get a fire extinguisher… in the meantime, vape if you got em?

*Number dialing* *demonic screeching* *static* *more static* *silence* annnd we just completed the AOL dial up on our A.I. to fix it! Where were we again?

Oh right - State and Federal forces couldn’t leave well enough alone and are now enacting the will of their greedy big business donors by starting to fight back against the thriving, essential, and legal market revolving around 2018 Farm Bill hemp products.

That’s why Got Vape Wholesale has poked our heads out from the warehouse to give you an all encompassing update on the hemp legal challenges popping up around the country and why some of these may be the canary in the coal mine for our beloved hemp products.

Table of Contents:

What Is The 2018 Farm Bill?
What Is The 2024 Farm Bill?
How Can I Stay Up To Date?
The Californication Of Hemp
Utah Challenges Arise
A New Hope? No, Just New Jersey
Texas Shops Raided
Georgia Hemp Developments
Is The Writing On The Wall For Hemp?
Return Of The Hemp
In Conclusion - Hemp Hemp, Hooray!

What Is The 2018 Farm Bill?

Just to set the stage for the issues at hand, let's take a moment to remember what exactly the 2018 Farm Bill was and how it allows for this legal market to thrive.

The text in the bill that matters to us, is our industries very own a long time ago, in a galaxy far far far away - “hemp with a THC level of 0.3% or less is not a controlled substance in the United States”.

From this the hemp rebellion was birthed and an immense amount of money was soon to be made by Smoke Shops who understood just how popular legal hemp products would be. Fast forward 6 years and the initial calm of this victory has finally begun to start to fray.

What Is The 2024 Farm Bill?

Like all good things, you know that there’s a sequel coming down the pipeline. That’s why we wanted you to be aware of the 2024 Farm Bill and how it is currently in flux.

You see discussions are currently ongoing and despite a looming deadline of September 30th it appears that the current bill is going to be extended (2018 Farm Bill) for another period of time.

This gives more time for debate and despite amounting to kicking the can down the lane, we will be watching it closely to see how it shapes up.

How Can I Stay Up To Date?

You may be wondering, is there any sort of site or forum that I could check out to see this type of news? Well you are in luck because we wanted to point out the budding community on reddit over at r/FarmBillSOS/.

This reddit group has been closely following the Farm Bill developments and is full of passionate individuals that are not only well informed but also solution orientated.

Now without further ado, let’s take a look at what’s going on with hemp across the USA.

The Californication Of Hemp

Unfortunately for us hemp sellers, the dream of Californication has instead turned into a nightmare, after earlier this month Governor Gavin Newson announced his plans for an emergency ban on hemp products.

This comes after a similar bill already failed in court earlier this year and is the state government's way of going over the heads of the voters, to circumvent democracy and institute some of the most restrictive hemp laws in the country.

The measures, which include instituting a ZERO tolerance for any and all THC in hemp products (down from 0.3%) and then bizarrely limits the amount of edibles per package to the completely random number of 5.

It seems customers getting relief for their medical needs and the act of buying in bulk is too much for the Californian government to handle, thus they are overreacting to rare negative stories and subsequently creating a whole new wake of emerging problems.

The measures have not yet been signed into law, but their approval is imminent. For all of us Californians we are more or less the population of Alderaan, looking up at the sky wondering what that bright green dot in the sky is before… KABOOM!

While the sky may not literally be falling, this is a development that Got Vape Wholesale will keep you updated on as the sale of hemp products in CA is essential to our own business.

Utah Challenges Arise

The powers at be in the great beehive state of Utah, seem determined to make their motto “It’s Utah, Not U-Toke” with their recent proposals to ban all artificial cannabinoids in hemp.

This would include cannabinoids such as HHC, THC-P, and THC-OAc. These extracts can be commonly found in products such as with the Galaxy Treats 300MG HHC Gummies for example and would be the exact type of products being outlawed in Utah.

Luckily for us, Utah has thankfully allowed for a month-long period of public input on the matter, beginning just days ago on 9/16/2024 and will continue on till the 15th of October.

This gives shops, customers, and patients the time to let legislatures know how important these cannabinoids are to their daily quality of life. In order to reach the Utah government they have set up a PO box to accept mail and have several #s to call in order to voice your opinion orally. Click here for contact info. 

A New Hope? No, Just New Jersey

Over in the land of Taylor Ham, going down the shore, and a bunch of people who’ve flipped me off on the interstate - New Jersey - affectionately known as the Dirty Jerz, has taken several steps backwards with their hemp policies with a recently signed law eliminating hemp flower, edibles, and drinks.

Critics of farm bill compliant hemp sales have coined the derogatory term “gas station weed” to make these products appeal less than and unfit for human consumption.

Despite being as far from the truth as possible - these fears have grown to the point that shops in New Jersey have been given one month to remove their hemp products from sale.

The only way to avoid the ban, is to get yourself a marijuana license the same way as actual dispensaries do. This is not only incredibly expensive, but a completely obtuse way to go about regulating the sale of these products.

With legal marijuana still being relatively new in NJ, it's not safe to assume the existing infrastructure can handle all of the hemp customers that they will now need to supply with their necessary edibles, tinctures, and drinks.

Legal challenges are sure to spring up, but this is another blow to the thriving industry that is farm bill compliant hemp. Especially when the business is simply being stolen from you and handed over to massive marijuana flower conglomerates to further unbalance the scales.

Texas Shops Raided

Much like stormtroopers blasting open a door and barging into the rebel alliances ship - the long arm of the law in Texas has been hard at work coming for the necks of smoke shops by conducting raids and issuing accusations of overly high THC levels aka being over 0.3%.

Just a few short weeks ago 9 shops in Allen Texas were raided by DEA agents, leading to the arrest of 5 individuals, and the levying of charges that related to selling products that were out of the 0.3% range of THC.

What’s so insane about this is that instead of having a regulatory board to help assist smoke shops in getting hemp extracts that are legal, they opt to just punish those that they happen to find may be breaking the rules.

As Smoke Shops it's not like we are running tests in a lab, instead we rely on the manufacturers to tell us the truth and for those who complete the tests to tell the truth.

While some of these shops may have known what they were doing, the brutal reality is that you have to be more careful than ever about which CBD and hemp products you stock unless you would like to have the five-O at your door.

To do this, we recommend buying from legit wholesalers such as Got Vape, as we have the receipts to prove all of our products are legit and legal. Avoiding unscrupulous distributors is a must and just further proves you have to protect yourself or else run the risks of disaster.

Georgia Hemp Developments

The Devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for some CBD to enjoy, but was in a bind because of recent legal changes that make getting hemp extracts more obtuse than ever!

That’s on account of recent Georgia laws that have further restricted citizens' ability to purchase hemp by making the laws even more strict. Biggest amongst the changes is that Georgia is now going to completely and utterly ban hemp flowers being sold as a smokeable option.

Instead customers will be limited to gummies with a cap of 10mg D9 per piece and limits packages to containing no more than a total of 150mg D9. Beverages are restricted to 5mg and food products such as chocolates have been completely ruled out from including D9.

These laws are a random patchwork of fears and stigmas adding up into a document that will have real life consequences for all those that rely on the larger doses of D9 or have had to smoke the flower to get their desired effect.

The law is currently set to go into effect on October 1st, although that could be delayed due to legal challenges but as of now looks like it is going to happen. That means if your shop is located in Georgia you are going to have a limited amount of time to adapt to the rules and avoid drawing the ire of law enforcement.

Is The Writing On The Wall For Hemp?

Well after reading through that five finger death punch to hemp, it may seem like the dark forces of our opposition are on the brink of succeeding in their desires to mitigate or completely invalidate the victories achieved since the 2018 Farm Bill was signed.

This is when we refer to the old adage “it's always darkest before the dawn” and then remember that after the Empire struck back, there was the return of the Jedi or Hemp-i if you will!

Return Of The Hemp

This is where we tell you that despite the pile of dead canaries in the coal mine that there is in fact a silver lining to all of this - federal marijuana legalization.

With an election fast approaching, the promise of federal legalization is starting to become much more of a reality as both of the major parties have indicated they want to reform our current laws in order to create a fairer, more equitable approach to the sale of these products.

If this occurs, the regulations around hemp products are going to be less restrictive and allow for the sale of products that can directly help people's ailments.

While there are still going to be laws on where you can sell it and such, the reality is with federal legalization we would finally have the legal guarantee that what we are selling won’t randomly disappear one day.

In Conclusion - Hemp Hemp, Hooray!

Now that we have our eyes on the various attempts to roll back the hemp market in the United States, we are better equipped to not only resist these changes but stay one step ahead of them.

For more Smoke Shop commentary, industry news, and product announcements - make sure to check out the rest of our blog postings right here at the official Got Vape Wholesale Blog.