“Millions of Americans in red states are about to lose access to cannabis, and I intend to ensure that they know it.”

By Adam Terry, Cantrip

This is the moment—2026 is our last, best chance to actually legalize cannabis in America

Last week, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pulled off something that many of us in the hemp side of the cannabis industry thought infeasible but long feared: He passed a ban on virtually all hemp products containing THC.

After passing the very legislation that underpinned the enormous hemp boom over the last seven years, McConnell managed to force in language to the recent agriculture appropriations bill that limits THC in hemp to 0.4mg of THC, redefines “total THC” to include anything vaguely resembling d9-THC and criminalizes intermediates between plant and product—effectively banning the process that creates CBD isolate.

The most surprising result of this? We are going to use this to finally and truly legalize all cannabis nationwide.

Hear me out.

I have been in the cannabis industry for over a decade, and I was a cannabis legalization activist in the five years before that. I worked on phone banking for Colorado, Washington State and California during their ballot processes in the early 2010s. I campaigned hard for legalization in Massachusetts before we even had a ballot initiative by organizing events and letter campaigns. I believe in cannabis reform as a moral imperative.

Each year, cannabis reform has been important work by activists who care about personal freedom and the miscarriage of justice that each arrest for cannabis represented, as well as an important initiative to expand the growing state-legal marijuana industry in America. And each year, major media outlets and most Americans have treated cannabis legalization as a mildly interesting side show, perhaps funny but nowhere near as important as the myriad issues that face our nation today.

But one thing changed last week: There has never before been a situation where we have seen access to cannabis given to millions of Americans and then abruptly taken away.

The hemp industry has had problems with many bad and potentially dangerous products since its inception. I don’t think anyone can legitimately argue that is not true. We have seen hemp used as an excuse to pass off illegally grown cannabis as legitimate, a proliferation of synthetic cannabinoids that no one has any historical safety data on and an unfortunate market for cannabis infused trademark infringements so frequently touted by lawmakers and regulators when they push for bans.

In this way, I applaud Congress for taking action to address synthetic cannabinoids and the myriad terrible products launched into the hemp marketplace.

What we have also seen is many states choose to regulate hemp in one form or another. Indeed, 40 states in the U.S. regulate hemp in some capacity or another, and many have strict regulations and taxation—look at Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota and Tennessee as strong examples of states that have chosen to regulate instead of ban these products. Mandatory age gating, batch specific testing, certificate of analysis (COA) transparency, specifying venues of sale, dosing caps and banning synthetic cannabinoids to a very large extent are common themes of these programs.

Now, millions of Americans have come to rely on hemp as their access to cannabis both in states where marijuana dispensaries exist and where they don’t. Veterans, seniors, soccer moms and average Americans of all walks of life have gotten used to easy access to full spectrum CBD products to alleviate various wellness issues they have—from sleep benefits all the way up through PTSD. Many have switched from alcohol to THC drinks sold at legitimate outlets like Total Wine & More and even Target as regulations and good governance rolled out across multiple marketplaces.

Americans are not huge fans of losing personal freedoms, and seniors and veterans know how to activate politically. In my time in the cannabis industry, I have never seen a cannabis policy that instantly removed access to people across the entire country in the way this sweeping sledge-hammer of a ban has. Never before have so many people been affected in a negative way on this issue all at once.

Which brings me to my main thesis: For one year only, legalizing cannabis across the United States is now more possible than ever.

As someone who has operated businesses in both the hemp and marijuana industries, I have empathy for the operators who have long seen hemp as an unfair competitor to their industry. While I take issue with their logic in many cases, I do understand the emotional state that it comes from.

State-legal programs are overregulated, overtaxed, frequently punitive to operators and in many cases prevent meaningful scaling of a brand or business. One of many examples is in my home state: In Massachusetts it is nearly impossible to even grow cannabis outdoors with the way our regulatory scheme works, forcing most flower sold to be grown indoors and sucking up 10 percent of all commercial electricity in the state for something that was grown outdoors safely for millennia.

On the hemp side, thousands of legitimate businesses across the country have flourished by operating above board. People have opened up hemp retailers, many focused on wellness and sourcing quality products with quality ingredients. In states like Kentucky, Minnesota and Tennessee, which have very strict regulatory requirements, people have invested their money and time in building businesses compliant with their local regulatory schemes.

Many scrutinize the brands they carry heavily, checking for legitimate COAs (there are ways to spot faked ones), spot testing their own products and focusing on quality full spectrum CBD and THC products over synthetic cannabinoid soup. Farmers have come to grow thousands of acres of hemp to support the nearly $30 billion (by some estimates) hemp industry and invested heavily in that infrastructure.

Manufacturers and copackers like Scofflaw Brewing in Georgia, which now touts 80 percent of its business as THC manufacturing, have invested millions in equipment that they can’t suddenly get back. Businesses like mine (a beverage brand called Cantrip), born in dispensaries but finding their true success in liquor and grocery stores, pour over state packaging and testing regulations and spend tens of thousands on various attorneys to ensure we create a product compliant with the maximum number of states.

To date, I have not found a way to fit language on my can to sell in every state that permits hemp particularly since in some cases that language contradicts other states’ requirements, forcing me to still produce slightly different labels for different states for some products. Cantrip, like others, has forgone otherwise lucrative opportunities in California and New York in order to respect those states’ choices to ban hemp products even when I vehemently disagree with such mandates.

Then there’s the alcohol industry. It may be no surprise to find that liquor retailers and distributors love selling THC beverages—indeed in some cases they have seen sales lifts upwards of 25 percent carrying such products, as opposed to the typical 1 percent lift we see in state-legal dispensaries from beverage products.

The big suppliers—the macro brands of beer and spirits—have largely been unhappy with the state of the industry and its competition with alcohol. However, I think they could be convinced, given a way to participate. Alcohol consumption is declining independent of the rise of THC beverages, and a ban on THC isn’t going to stop that. I am certain these companies could be very successful in this space if they saw a pathway to participation without risking their other business.

I believe that we can bring these stakeholders together for an historic moment in an upcoming critical election year. I’ve met few folks in the hemp industry who don’t believe that cannabis should be de-scheduled nationwide—pending specifics, of course. Millions of Americans in red states are about to lose access to cannabis, and I intend to ensure that they know it.

This is an issue that is going to be palpable as Democrats in tough races like the one for a Georgia Senate seat seek an edge. Red state politicians are going to never want hear the word “cannabis,” again by the time this election is over. We have never had larger awareness or popular support for cannabis, as it is something that has often been reserved for blue states.

My proposal is simple, but not easy: we use this moment, where millions of people are about to lose all access to cannabis in states that have zero dispensaries and millions more will lose the easy access they’ve come to enjoy, to once and for all decriminalize, deschedule and regulate cannabis in the U.S.

We know that this president loves to do things people think simply can’t be done—why not do something that most Americans already support in poll after poll after poll? It would be a lasting legacy of freedom for Americans.

How would we do this? The specific policy proposal is as follows:

1. De-schedule cannabis federally;
2. Create a Code of Federal Regulation chapter with input from industry stakeholders, regulators, and the Department of Health and Human Services that creates baseline guidance for how cannabis and cannabis products need to be treated—this includes age-gating THC products and specifying definitions of intoxicating and non-intoxicating compounds, creating a federal excise tax and reporting system (in spirits, excise tax reporting is actually also your track and trace system) and other general points;
3. Leave questions about milligram limits, licensing, state and local taxes and venue of sale to the states such that Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota and Tennessee can keep their programs mostly as is. Generally, a low dose product in major venues like grocery and liquor stores and higher dose products like flower, concentrates, and stronger edibles in more specialized dispensaries seems like a good way to go, but each state can have the debate.

My proposal is not the only valid solution, but simply a way to start a conversation. It is a policy debate worth having, in the open, and quickly.

Should the federal ban go into effect, there can be no question of “state-legal” hemp. There would be no difference between hemp and marijuana at that point; no alcohol retailer or distributor could participate without losing their license and companies like Target would be de-listed from the NYSE and suffer billions in 280E penalties across goods.

We need federally legal cannabis; until now, that has been hemp. I propose we make the words marijuana and hemp obsolete and have one unified system for one plant, and I believe we can do this.

After 2026, we will lose our shot. On Veterans Day 2026, a deeply painful irony, millions of Americans including veterans will lose access to cannabis products they’ve come to rely on. We will have lost their faith in the professional cannabis community to protect their rights. The issue will fade; Congress will become more jammed than ever with investigations if Democrats win and all legislation will come screeching to a halt.

We must take this opportunity now, as one cannabis community, to activate voters in every corner of the U.S. to support descheduling cannabis and creating a viable path to access. To force politicians in tough races to talk about it and support changes. We don’t have much time in 2026 either, as most legislation in an election year tends to conclude before the summer recess given the intensity of the fall campaign.

Less than a year, multiple industries, and millions of Americans. We can do this. We will do this. Let’s legalize weed in America.

Adam Terry is the co-founder and CEO of the THC-infused beverage company Cantrip.

“Millions of Americans in red states are about to lose access to cannabis, and I intend to ensure that they know it.”

By Adam Terry, Cantrip

This is the moment—2026 is our last, best chance to actually legalize cannabis in America

Last week, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pulled off something that many of us in the hemp side of the cannabis industry thought infeasible but long feared: He passed a ban on virtually all hemp products containing THC.

After passing the very legislation that underpinned the enormous hemp boom over the last seven years, McConnell managed to force in language to the recent agriculture appropriations bill that limits THC in hemp to 0.4mg of THC, redefines “total THC” to include anything vaguely resembling d9-THC and criminalizes intermediates between plant and product—effectively banning the process that creates CBD isolate.

The most surprising result of this? We are going to use this to finally and truly legalize all cannabis nationwide.

Hear me out.

I have been in the cannabis industry for over a decade, and I was a cannabis legalization activist in the five years before that. I worked on phone banking for Colorado, Washington State and California during their ballot processes in the early 2010s. I campaigned hard for legalization in Massachusetts before we even had a ballot initiative by organizing events and letter campaigns. I believe in cannabis reform as a moral imperative.

Each year, cannabis reform has been important work by activists who care about personal freedom and the miscarriage of justice that each arrest for cannabis represented, as well as an important initiative to expand the growing state-legal marijuana industry in America. And each year, major media outlets and most Americans have treated cannabis legalization as a mildly interesting side show, perhaps funny but nowhere near as important as the myriad issues that face our nation today.

But one thing changed last week: There has never before been a situation where we have seen access to cannabis given to millions of Americans and then abruptly taken away.

The hemp industry has had problems with many bad and potentially dangerous products since its inception. I don’t think anyone can legitimately argue that is not true. We have seen hemp used as an excuse to pass off illegally grown cannabis as legitimate, a proliferation of synthetic cannabinoids that no one has any historical safety data on and an unfortunate market for cannabis infused trademark infringements so frequently touted by lawmakers and regulators when they push for bans.

In this way, I applaud Congress for taking action to address synthetic cannabinoids and the myriad terrible products launched into the hemp marketplace.

What we have also seen is many states choose to regulate hemp in one form or another. Indeed, 40 states in the U.S. regulate hemp in some capacity or another, and many have strict regulations and taxation—look at Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota and Tennessee as strong examples of states that have chosen to regulate instead of ban these products. Mandatory age gating, batch specific testing, certificate of analysis (COA) transparency, specifying venues of sale, dosing caps and banning synthetic cannabinoids to a very large extent are common themes of these programs.

Now, millions of Americans have come to rely on hemp as their access to cannabis both in states where marijuana dispensaries exist and where they don’t. Veterans, seniors, soccer moms and average Americans of all walks of life have gotten used to easy access to full spectrum CBD products to alleviate various wellness issues they have—from sleep benefits all the way up through PTSD. Many have switched from alcohol to THC drinks sold at legitimate outlets like Total Wine & More and even Target as regulations and good governance rolled out across multiple marketplaces.

Americans are not huge fans of losing personal freedoms, and seniors and veterans know how to activate politically. In my time in the cannabis industry, I have never seen a cannabis policy that instantly removed access to people across the entire country in the way this sweeping sledge-hammer of a ban has. Never before have so many people been affected in a negative way on this issue all at once.

Which brings me to my main thesis: For one year only, legalizing cannabis across the United States is now more possible than ever.

As someone who has operated businesses in both the hemp and marijuana industries, I have empathy for the operators who have long seen hemp as an unfair competitor to their industry. While I take issue with their logic in many cases, I do understand the emotional state that it comes from.

State-legal programs are overregulated, overtaxed, frequently punitive to operators and in many cases prevent meaningful scaling of a brand or business. One of many examples is in my home state: In Massachusetts it is nearly impossible to even grow cannabis outdoors with the way our regulatory scheme works, forcing most flower sold to be grown indoors and sucking up 10 percent of all commercial electricity in the state for something that was grown outdoors safely for millennia.

On the hemp side, thousands of legitimate businesses across the country have flourished by operating above board. People have opened up hemp retailers, many focused on wellness and sourcing quality products with quality ingredients. In states like Kentucky, Minnesota and Tennessee, which have very strict regulatory requirements, people have invested their money and time in building businesses compliant with their local regulatory schemes.

Many scrutinize the brands they carry heavily, checking for legitimate COAs (there are ways to spot faked ones), spot testing their own products and focusing on quality full spectrum CBD and THC products over synthetic cannabinoid soup. Farmers have come to grow thousands of acres of hemp to support the nearly $30 billion (by some estimates) hemp industry and invested heavily in that infrastructure.

Manufacturers and copackers like Scofflaw Brewing in Georgia, which now touts 80 percent of its business as THC manufacturing, have invested millions in equipment that they can’t suddenly get back. Businesses like mine (a beverage brand called Cantrip), born in dispensaries but finding their true success in liquor and grocery stores, pour over state packaging and testing regulations and spend tens of thousands on various attorneys to ensure we create a product compliant with the maximum number of states.

To date, I have not found a way to fit language on my can to sell in every state that permits hemp particularly since in some cases that language contradicts other states’ requirements, forcing me to still produce slightly different labels for different states for some products. Cantrip, like others, has forgone otherwise lucrative opportunities in California and New York in order to respect those states’ choices to ban hemp products even when I vehemently disagree with such mandates.

Then there’s the alcohol industry. It may be no surprise to find that liquor retailers and distributors love selling THC beverages—indeed in some cases they have seen sales lifts upwards of 25 percent carrying such products, as opposed to the typical 1 percent lift we see in state-legal dispensaries from beverage products.

The big suppliers—the macro brands of beer and spirits—have largely been unhappy with the state of the industry and its competition with alcohol. However, I think they could be convinced, given a way to participate. Alcohol consumption is declining independent of the rise of THC beverages, and a ban on THC isn’t going to stop that. I am certain these companies could be very successful in this space if they saw a pathway to participation without risking their other business.

I believe that we can bring these stakeholders together for an historic moment in an upcoming critical election year. I’ve met few folks in the hemp industry who don’t believe that cannabis should be de-scheduled nationwide—pending specifics, of course. Millions of Americans in red states are about to lose access to cannabis, and I intend to ensure that they know it.

This is an issue that is going to be palpable as Democrats in tough races like the one for a Georgia Senate seat seek an edge. Red state politicians are going to never want hear the word “cannabis,” again by the time this election is over. We have never had larger awareness or popular support for cannabis, as it is something that has often been reserved for blue states.

My proposal is simple, but not easy: we use this moment, where millions of people are about to lose all access to cannabis in states that have zero dispensaries and millions more will lose the easy access they’ve come to enjoy, to once and for all decriminalize, deschedule and regulate cannabis in the U.S.

We know that this president loves to do things people think simply can’t be done—why not do something that most Americans already support in poll after poll after poll? It would be a lasting legacy of freedom for Americans.

How would we do this? The specific policy proposal is as follows:

1. De-schedule cannabis federally;
2. Create a Code of Federal Regulation chapter with input from industry stakeholders, regulators, and the Department of Health and Human Services that creates baseline guidance for how cannabis and cannabis products need to be treated—this includes age-gating THC products and specifying definitions of intoxicating and non-intoxicating compounds, creating a federal excise tax and reporting system (in spirits, excise tax reporting is actually also your track and trace system) and other general points;
3. Leave questions about milligram limits, licensing, state and local taxes and venue of sale to the states such that Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota and Tennessee can keep their programs mostly as is. Generally, a low dose product in major venues like grocery and liquor stores and higher dose products like flower, concentrates, and stronger edibles in more specialized dispensaries seems like a good way to go, but each state can have the debate.

My proposal is not the only valid solution, but simply a way to start a conversation. It is a policy debate worth having, in the open, and quickly.

Should the federal ban go into effect, there can be no question of “state-legal” hemp. There would be no difference between hemp and marijuana at that point; no alcohol retailer or distributor could participate without losing their license and companies like Target would be de-listed from the NYSE and suffer billions in 280E penalties across goods.

We need federally legal cannabis; until now, that has been hemp. I propose we make the words marijuana and hemp obsolete and have one unified system for one plant, and I believe we can do this.

After 2026, we will lose our shot. On Veterans Day 2026, a deeply painful irony, millions of Americans including veterans will lose access to cannabis products they’ve come to rely on. We will have lost their faith in the professional cannabis community to protect their rights. The issue will fade; Congress will become more jammed than ever with investigations if Democrats win and all legislation will come screeching to a halt.

We must take this opportunity now, as one cannabis community, to activate voters in every corner of the U.S. to support descheduling cannabis and creating a viable path to access. To force politicians in tough races to talk about it and support changes. We don’t have much time in 2026 either, as most legislation in an election year tends to conclude before the summer recess given the intensity of the fall campaign.

Less than a year, multiple industries, and millions of Americans. We can do this. We will do this. Let’s legalize weed in America.

Adam Terry is the co-founder and CEO of the THC-infused beverage company Cantrip.