Indiana Won’t Ban Hemp THC Products This Year After Last-Minute Legislative Push Fails

The sponsor of the THC product ban complained that lawmakers would end the session “having done nothing” on hemp.

By Leslie Bonilla Muniz, Indiana Capital Chronicle

Indiana’s prohibition on intoxicating and synthetic hemp-derived drugs was dead for less than a week before it was resurrected and killed again—this time, until at least next year.

Indiana will go another year without a 21-plus age limit on intoxicating hemp products, bill author Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis, bemoaned Friday.

Lawmakers have repeatedly tried to regulate potent delta-8, TCHA and other cannabinoid products, which have existed in a legal gray area for eight years. THC is the active ingredient in marijuana, which remains banned at the federal level and in the Hoosier State.

Efforts in Indiana have consistently failed amid a House-Senate stalemate on how expansive or limiting the state’s approach should be.

Freeman’s Senate Bill 250 struck a stricter tone, mirroring Congress’s recent closure of a so-called loophole in the 2018 Farm Bill. That law defined legal hemp as any part of the plant containing less than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC by dry weight, sparking a booming industry for other intoxicating cannabinoids.

A stopgap federal funding law enacted in November specifies that all forms of THC count. It also caps THC products to just 0.4 milligrams per container, and outright bans lab-made ones. It goes into effect this coming November.

Freeman said lawmakers would end the legislative session “having done nothing” on hemp—leaving state statute out of line with federal. The Supremacy Clause in the U.S. Constitution declares that federal law wins out over conflicting state code, but Freeman was still concerned.

“Currently, right, marijuana is illegal, [but] tell that to however many states it’s legalized in. Don’t tell that to California; they don’t care,” he said. “So they’re saying we’re not following federal law. Now, I think that is a really dangerous precedent… And by the way, Indiana is going to be in that category come November, which is all all shades of scary to me.”

The Indiana bill additionally laid out a regulatory scheme for any low-potency, field-grown products on the market—notably, with the long-sought age requirement.

Industry representatives previously testified customers would not want THC products that don’t produce a high. The legislation wouldn’t have affected CBD, which is not intoxicating.

It cleared the committee stage and then passed the Senate in a 35-15 vote. The bill made it to the House floor but wasn’t called for second reading before a key Monday deadline.

“Another example of why we should be a unicameral Legislature,” he told the Capital Chronicle then.

Lawmakers from all four caucuses met in conference committee Thursday to unveil their plans for stripping Senate Bill 144 of its provisions and inserting the Senate-passed version of Freeman’s bill. But it wasn’t in the conference committee report released Friday afternoon.

Rep. Elizabeth Rowray, R-Yorktown, said it was the third iteration of the CCR and acknowledged the hemp drug ban was “added in” and “subsequently taken back out.”

Indiana is among just 10 states that don’t allow either medicinal and recreational sales. The state has stubbornly resisted efforts—even from Republicans—to legalize marijuana.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in December to speed up reclassification of marijuana as a less-dangerous drug, but that hasn’t yet been completed.

This story was first published by Indiana Capital Chronicle.