Pritzker endorses hemp regulation bill

[December 14, 2024]  By Peter Hancock

SPRINGFIELD – More than five years after Illinois began issuing permits for legal production of industrial hemp, Gov. JB Pritzker said Friday he now favors legislation to bring the industry under tighter regulation.

At a news conference in Chicago, Pritzker said in the short time since both the state and federal governments legalized hemp production, a new industry has emerged in which chemicals are extracted from hemp plants to produce intoxicating and potentially dangerous products that are currently unregulated.

“Commonly known as intoxicating hemp, this industry is selling hemp-derived products such as delta-8, and they’re using deceptive advertising tactics to market them directly to minors,” Pritzker said. “These products have an intoxicating effect, often to dangerous levels. They’re untested and unregulated and are widely available and accessible to young people.”

Illinois lawmakers passed legislation in 2018 to allow the commercial production of hemp, the same year Congress legalized hemp nationwide through the 2018 Farm Bill. The crop was once commonly used in the United States to make rope, textiles and other products, but it was effectively banned decades ago because of its close botanical relationship with marijuana.

The legislation legalizing hemp anticipated it would again be used to make industrial products, but also for the production of CDB oils that can be extracted from the plant. Those oils, and products made with them, have become popular due to the belief that they have multiple health benefits.

But the recent boom of intoxicating hemp-derived products has raised new concerns about the need for additional regulation.

House Bill 4293, which originally dealt with regulation of massage therapists, passed out of the House last spring and was sent to the Senate where it was stripped of its original language and replaced with new language regulating intoxicating hemp-derived products.

The bill would not ban such products but would impose limits on the amount of the intoxicating substance THC they can contain, and it would regulate how those products can be marketed and advertised. It also limits the manufacture and sale of those products to licensed businesses.

The amended bill passed out the Senate 54-1 in May and was sent back to the House where no further action has been taken.

Products that contain delta-8 THC are pictured next to the original packaging they resemble. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Campbell)

“It is vital we move forward towards regulation of hemp and delta-8 products and do so in a way that is equitable and provides opportunities within the evolving industry,” Senate Majority Leader Kimberly Lightford, D-Westchester, said during the news conference. “We support the hemp industry. This is not an effort to bash the hemp industry. We want the hemp industry to survive and thrive and continue evolving.”

The push to impose new limits on the production and sale of intoxicating hemp comes at the same time the Illinois Department of Agriculture has been working to develop new state regulations to bring the Illinois industry into compliance with new federal regulations.

The legislative Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, which oversees the administrative rulemaking process, gave its approval to those rules Tuesday. That came after extensive negotiations with the Illinois Hemp Business Association, a lobby group that represents many small, minority-owned hemp businesses.

In a statement, the association said this week it was satisfied with the final negotiated version of the administrative rules, but still had significant concerns about the new hemp regulation bill. The association sayid it “threatens the industry by potentially banning beneficial components of the hemp plant.”

But the Cannabis Business Association of Illinois, which represents the cannabis industry, issued a statement Friday supporting the legislation.

“We applaud Gov. JB Pritzker’s call to protect consumers and rein in the gray market,” the group’s executive director Tiffany Chappell Ingram said in a statement. “We urge lawmakers to take swift action, as Illinois is already falling behind other states that have adopted meaningful regulations.”

Lawmakers are expected to consider the bill during an upcoming lame duck session, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Thursday, Jan. 2.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.