Congress slipped a hemp ban into a shutdown bill and triggered a nationwide fight that threatens farmers, small operators, veterans, and a twenty eight billion dollar market. Hemp Industry Strikes Back exposes the misinformation behind the vote and the yearlong battle now forming in courts, statehouses, and rural communities across the country.
HEMP 2018-2025
Congress just buried hemp inside the 2025 spending bill, redefining the crop to outlaw hemp-derived THC products that built a $28 billion market. Farmers, brands, and workers face erasure without a vote or debate. Pot Culture Magazine exposes how lawmakers quietly re-criminalized hemp and why voices from Cheech & Chong to NORML say this fight is far from over.
Reefer Report Card: The Week in Weed, Rated October 25, 2025 – Vol. 20
Ohio rewrites its legalization law before it even starts, Wisconsin offers fake reform, and Massachusetts keeps spinning its regulatory wheels. The FDA pretends to act on CBD while the European Union adds new walls around its market. Reefer Report Card Vol. 20 grades another week of confusion, contradiction, and missed opportunities in global cannabis reform.
Tax First, Ask Later: Michigan’s Weed War
Michigan’s new 24 percent wholesale cannabis tax is being sold as a road repair plan but looks more like a cash grab. Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s law faces a constitutional challenge from the Michigan Cannabis Industry Association, while NORML’s Paul Armentano warns that greedy taxation drives consumers back underground and destroys legal markets that voters fought to build. The weed war is back this time in a budget.
Reefer Report Card: The Week in Weed, Rated-October 11 2025 – Vol. 18
Michigan’s new 24 percent wholesale tax lit up outrage across the cannabis industry, while New York regulators faced a courtroom map lesson and Massachusetts tried to reboot its commission. Pennsylvania found compassion in hospital reform, and Germany slowed progress with new rules. Reefer Report Card Vol. 18 grades a week of taxes, lawsuits, and bureaucratic burnout.
How Hemp Got Free but Shackled
Hemp may have been ripped from the Controlled Substances Act in 2018, but freedom was only on paper. Farmers are still shackled by THC math, the DEA’s shadow rules, and FDA’s silence on CBD. The loopholes gave rise to delta-8 and other lab-born cannabinoids, sparking a new prohibition panic. The truth is simple: hemp didn’t escape the drug war, it just exposed the absurdity of it all.