A coalition of Republican senators have reintroduced a bill that would increase criminal penalties for a wide range of offenses, including manufacturing or selling Schedule I drugs like marijuana in the form of candy or beverages if there is “reasonable cause to believe” they will be sold to minors.

Led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), alongside 10 other GOP members, the Combating Violent and Dangerous Crime Act contains provisions targeting substances that are in Schedule I or II of the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), including cannabis.

While certain legal marijuana states have proactively taken steps to prohibit cannabis marketing that might appeal to children, many state markets continue to allow THC-infused beverages and sell edible gummies and cookies, for example.

The Senate legislation itself doesn’t explicitly mention marijuana, but a section-by-section analysis says that “manufacturers and traffickers of marijuana edibles and fentanyl and other illicit drugs are marketing and distributing these highly dangerous drugs as packaged candy (Nerds, Skittles, etc.).”

“For years, there have been reports of children, even younger than 6 years old, overdosing on these drugs due to edible consumption,” it says. “This provision is the language of the 2017 Grassley-Feinstein Protecting Kids from Candy-Flavored Drugs Act, which has not been reintroduced as a bipartisan measure this Congress. The language amends the Controlled Substances Act to provide enhanced penalties for marketing candy-flavored controlled substances to minors.”

The language in the current legislation also mirrors a version of the bill that Grassley and other Republican lawmakers filed in 2022.

In a press release, Grassley blamed the Biden administration for what he described as a “massive spike in violent crime,” and he said it’s now the responsibility of Congress “to resolve any legal ambiguities that may weaken our ability to hold criminals fully accountable.”

With respect to the flavored drugs provisions, it should be noted that every state that has legalized marijuana for adult use in the U.S. has set an age limit that prevents people under 21 from legally accessing cannabis shops. Those dispensaries, and the brands they sell, therefore generally would not seem to meet the criteria for knowingly selling to underage people. (Studies have found consistent compliance at marijuana shops when it comes to enforcing ID requirements.)

If Grassley’s legislation is enacted, one possible effect would be that people who are federally prosecuted for such criminal activity could face up to 10 additional years in prison for a first offense if the cannabis product sold to a person under 18 was shaped or flavored like candy. Second and subsequent offenses would carry up to 20 additional years in prison.

Legalization advocates largely support measures to restrict access to underage people, but some bristle at the possibility of enacting significantly increased penalties that could be applied by overzealous prosecutors as part of the war on drugs.

“Soft-on-crime policies have failed to ensure our justice system and law enforcement at all levels have the necessary authorities and tools to maintain order and protect communities from dangerous criminals,” Sen. John Boozman (R-AR), the co-lead on the measure, said. “I am proud to join Senator Grassley and my colleagues to ensure violent offenders are held accountable under the law.”

Unlike Grassley’s press release, Boozman’s specifically states that provisions of the bill would “outlaw the marketing of candy-flavored drugs including marijuana and fentanyl to minors.”

Other cosponsors are Sens. Mike Crapo (R-ID), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), James Lankford (R-OK), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Susan Collins (R-ME), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Jim Risch (R-ID).

“Our legal system has a duty to punish the guilty and protect the innocent, and conflicting legal standards hamper the ability of federal authorities to do so,” Crapo said in a press release circulated by his office. “These necessary reforms clarify and strengthen federal drug and violent crime laws to ensure justice is applied fairly to all.”

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Photo courtesy of Pexels/Kindel Media.

The governor of Wisconsin says that, if Democrats take control of the legislature now that new “fair” district maps have been set, the state can “finally” legalize marijuana so that residents don’t have to go to neighboring Illinois to patronize its adult-use market.

During a speech at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s 2025 convention on Sunday, Gov. Tony Evers (D) said “Republicans better start getting used to Democrats being in power in the state,” as the new redistricting map he approved last year could deliver the party a “Democratic trifecta,” with control of the Assembly, Senate and governor’s office.

That would free up lawmakers to overcome roadblocks in the currently conservative legislature that have prevented the advancement of several key issues, including health care expansion, parental leave and, “yes, we could finally legalize marijuana so we can stop sending our revenue down to my good friend, [Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D)] down in Illinois,” he said.

“He’s got enough,” Evers joked.

“If we want to finally end the obstruction of Madison, we have to get to work—and we can’t wait. We have to start today,” he said. “If we want majorities that will finally get things done in the legislature, then our work starts right now.”

“We knock on doors, we make the calls, we organize from our kitchen tables to our communities—we fight back and we never stop fighting for what’s right,” the governor said. “Winning 2026 starts now. Let’s go fight to win every vote for every seat and in every election, and let’s get to work.”

Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D) also briefly touched on the issue at the convention, saying “we will also legalize cannabis” among other priorities in the Democratic agenda if the party wins a legislative majority in next year’s elections.

The governor and top Democratic senator’s comments come about a month after Republicans cut key provisions from a state budget proposal from Evers, including plans to legalize and regulate marijuana.

The actions are a repeat of two years ago, when GOP members of the same committee removed proposals to legalize cannabis for recreational and medical use from the governor’s biennial executive budget at that time.

Evers included the latest marijuana legalization plan in his biennial budget request to lawmakers in February, projecting at the time that the change would result in “$58.1 million in revenue in fiscal year 2026-27 and growing amounts in future years.”

Under current Wisconsin law, cannabis is illegal for both recreational and medical purposes.

The legalization proposal would have imposed a 15 percent wholesale excise tax and a 10 percent retail excise tax on recreational cannabis products. It would additionally “create a process for individuals serving sentences or previously convicted of marijuana-related crimes to have an opportunity to repeal or reduce their sentences for nonviolent minor offenses.”

The companion bills that were filed in tandem with the governor’s budget request stipulate that all revenue collected from the proposed cannabis taxes will be deposited into the state general fund.

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Despite Republicans’ move to cut legalization from the budget legislation, party leaders recently acknowledged that the debate over medical marijuana legalization is “not going to go away,” and there’s hope it can be resolved this session.

“I don’t think anyone is naive enough to think that marijuana and THC products aren’t present in the state of Wisconsin when they are readily available over state lines, so I think we need to come to an answer on this,” Assembly Majority Leader Rep. Tyler August (R) said in February. “I’m hopeful that we can.”

“If we’re going to call it medical marijuana, it needs to be treated like a pharmaceutical. But the marijuana debate is going to be something that is not going to go away,” Sen. Dan Feyen (R), the assistant majority leader, said at the time. “The margins are tighter.”

There have been repeated attempts to legalize medical marijuana in the legislature over recent years, including the introduction of legislation from Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) that called for a limited program facilitated through state-run dispensaries. That proved controversial among his Republican colleagues, however, and it ultimately stalled out last year.

Evers previewed his plan to include marijuana legalization in his budget in January, while also arguing that residents of the state should be allowed to propose new laws by putting binding questions on the ballot—citing the fact that issues such as cannabis reform enjoy sizable bipartisan support while the GOP-controlled legislature has repeatedly refused to act.

Previously, in 2022, the governor signed an executive order to convene a special legislative session with the specific goal of giving people the right to put citizen initiatives on the ballot, raising hopes among advocates that cannabis legalization could eventually be decided by voters. The GOP legislature did not adopt the proposal, however.

Evers said in December that marijuana reform is one of several key priorities the state should pursue in the 2025 session, as lawmakers work with a budget surplus.

Days after he made the remarks, a survey found the reform would be welcomed by voters in rural parts of the state. Nearly two thirds (65 percent) said they support legalizing cannabis.

Last May, the governor said he was “hopeful” that the November 2024 election would lead to Democratic control of the legislature, in part because he argued it would position the state to finally legalize cannabis.

“We’ve been working hard over the last five years, several budgets, to make that happen,” he said at the time. “I know we’re surrounded by states with recreational marijuana, and we’re going to continue to do it.”

A Wisconsin Democratic Assemblymember tried to force a vote on a medical cannabis compromise proposal last year, as an amendment to an unrelated kratom bill, but he told Marijuana Moment he suspects leadership intentionally pulled that legislation from the agenda at the last minute to avoid a showdown on the issue.

Meanwhile, the state Department of Revenue released a fiscal estimate of the economic impact of a legalization bill from then-Sen. Melissa Agard (D) in 2023, projecting that the reform would generate nearly $170 million annually in tax revenue.

A legislative analysis requested by lawmakers estimated that Wisconsin residents spent more than $121 million on cannabis in Illinois alone in 2022, contributing $36 million in tax revenue to the neighboring state.

Evers and other Democrats have since at least last January insisted that they would be willing to enact a modest medical marijuana program, even if they’d prefer more comprehensive reform.

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Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.

A hemp retailer in Washington, D.C. is suing the the federal government over a budget restriction that prevents local officials from establishing and regulating a retail marijuana market.

Capitol Hemp filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday, seeking a declaration from a federal judge that the congressional budget rider doesn’t stand in the way of D.C. adopting legislation to regulate hemp.

“Although hemp was removed from the federal Controlled Substances Act in 2018, the District of Columbia has continued to take enforcement actions against hemp without adopting any legislation specifically addressing it. As a direct result of such enforcement,” the company’s complaint says, Capitol Hemp “has been named as a defendant in a related federal case.”

At the center of the lawsuit is the so-called Harris rider, a longtime ban blocking Washington, D.C. from creating a system of regulated adult-use marijuana sales. It’s named after Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), who was behind the initial ban in 2014. It was renewed last year after earlier efforts to remove the longtime provision.

Capitol Hemp is asking the court to declare the language of the Harris amendment “unconstitutionally vague” because it employs the term “tetrahydrocannabinols derivative,” which the company asserts is “lacking any established statutory definition or limiting principle.”

It further says the federal restriction’s reference to “any Schedule I substance…or any tetrahydrocannabinols derivative” is “ambiguous and unworkable” when read in conjunction with D.C.’s Controlled Substances Act.

The situation, the complaint says, “creates an ambiguous and unworkable standard that prevents the District from determining which substances it may lawfully regulate.”

Specifically, Capitol Hemp’s challenge says, if the federal restriction is interpreted to include all THC, it “could be construed to bar the District from regulating or even clarifying the status of lawful hemp-derived cannabinoids such as delta-8 THC.”

The suit, reported earlier by Politico, comes as both federal and state lawmakers increasingly move to crack down on markets for intoxicating hemp products, which can sometimes contain as much psychoactive THC as state-regulated marijuana products. The situation—which many have called a loophole resulting from the 2018 Farm Bill’s legalization of hemp nationwide—has raised broad public health concerns, in large part because the products are often untested and easily available to minors.

At the state level, multiple states—from California to Florida—have moved to ban intoxicating cannabinoids in recent months. In Texas, the legislature recently delivered a bill to the governor that would outlaw all consumable hemp-derived cannabinoid products containing any detectable THC.

And in Congress, a powerful GOP-led House committee recently amended a report for a spending bill containing provisions that hemp stakeholders say would upend the industry. The report clarifies that the panel does not intend to prohibit non-intoxicating cannabinoid products with “trace or insignificant amounts of THC” that were federally legalized during the first Trump administration.

Harris, meanwhile—namesake of the Harris rider at issue in the current suit—complained at the hearing that the Farm Bill “has resulted in the proliferation of intoxicating cannabinoid products, including delta-8 and hemp flower, being sold online and in gas stations nationwide under the false guise of being ‘USDA approved.’”

“As many states have stepped in to curb these dangerous project products from reaching consumers, particularly children, it’s time for Congress to act to close this loophole while protecting industrial hemp industry,” Harris said. “Reports that the included language would destroy legitimate businesses are simply not true, and that’s clear to anyone closely reading the carefully drafted language that I believe threaded the needle.”

Language in the bill itself would still effectively eliminate the most commonly marketed hemp products within the industry, as even non-intoxicating CBD items that are sold across the country typically contain trace amounts of THC. Under current law, those products are allowed if they contain no more than 0.3 percent THC by dry weight.

Jonathan Miller, general counsel at the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, told Marijuana Moment that the new report language doesn’t fully address the industry’s concerns, pointing out that it “has no binding impact on the law, and this is especially important because, over the last several years, [the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA] has continually ignored the report language when it comes to hemp and CBD.”

The hemp language is largely consistent with appropriations and agriculture legislation that was introduced, but not ultimately enacted, under the last Congress.

Hemp industry stakeholders rallied against that proposal, an earlier version of which was also included in the base bill from the subcommittee last year. It’s virtually identical to a provision of the 2024 Farm Bill that was attached by a separate committee last May via an amendment from Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL), which was also not enacted into law.

There are some differences between the prior spending bill and this latest version for 2026, including a redefining of what constitutes a “quantifiable” amount of THC that’d be prohibited for hemp products.

It now says that a quantifiable amount is “based on substance, form, manufacture, or article (as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture),” whereas it was previously defined as an amount simply “determined by the Secretary in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services.”

The proposed legislation also now specifies that the term hemp does not include “a drug that is the subject of an application approved under subsection (c) or (j) of section 505 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 355),” which seems to carve out an exception for Food and Drug Administration- (FDA) approved drugs such Epidiolex, which is synthesized from CBD.

A leading alcohol industry association, meanwhile, has called on Congress to dial back language in the House spending bill that would ban most consumable hemp products, instead proposing to maintain the legalization of naturally derived cannabinoids from the crop and only prohibit synthetic items.

Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) President and CEO Francis Creighton said in a press release on Thursday that  “proponents and opponents alike have agreed that this language amounts to a ban.”

“By pushing a rapidly evolving industry back into the shadows, Congress is creating even more chaos in the marketplace, undermining state initiatives and punishing responsible actors,” he said. “We urge the full House to reconsider this approach. States can regulate intoxicating products safely and effectively through systems that preserve consumer trust and public safety. It’s time for Congress to follow their lead, not override their authority.”

Members of Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) also met with lawmakers and staffers in April to advocate for three key policy priorities that the group says is based on “sound principles of alcohol distribution.” They include banning synthetic THC, setting up a federal system for testing and labeling products and establishing state-level power to regulate retail sales.

Separately, key GOP congressional lawmakers—including one member who supports marijuana legalization—don’t seem especially concerned about provisions in a new spending bill that would put much of the hemp industry in jeopardy by banning most consumable products derived from the plant.

Miller at the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, told congressional lawmakers in April that the market is “begging” for federal regulations around cannabis products.

At the hearing, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) also inquired about FDA inaction around regulations, sarcastically asking if it’d require “a gazillion bureaucrats that work from home” to regulate cannabinoids such as CBD.

A report from Bloomberg Intelligence (BI) last year called cannabis a “significant threat” to the alcohol industry, citing survey data that suggests more people are using cannabis as a substitute for alcoholic beverages such a beer and wine.

Last November, meanwhile, a beer industry trade group put out a statement of guiding principles to address what it called “the proliferation of largely unregulated intoxicating hemp and cannabis products,” warning of risks to consumers and communities resulting from THC consumption.

Read the full complaint below:

Attorneys General Group Hosts Meeting On State-Level Regulation Of Intoxicating Hemp Products