After going to the major leagues, Joe Salome was planning to go to Trader Joes. That was before President Donald Trump signed the death warrant for his hemp business.
Now, instead of marketing THC beverages to a major grocery chain, Salome, founder and a managing partner of The Georgia Hemp Co., plans to procure and sell as much product as he can before the whole enterprise is outlawed in less than a year.
Before last week, “We were ready to launch into beverages,” said Salome, who last year threw out the first pitch at an Atlanta Braves game – the kind of privilege you get when your company is also a Major League Baseball team’s official CBD partner.
With distribution channels available in Georgia, expansion out of The Georgia Hemp Co.’s five retail locations and into big retailers seemed possible. That’s all on hold after Salome and thousands of other operators in the estimated $28.3 billion national hemp industry are due to become federally illegal in November 2026, when a federal redefinition of hemp becomes law.
In a limited way, “We’ve been through this before,” Salome told MJBizDaily in a recent interview. When Georgia outlawed THCA flower last year as part of a hemp regulatory bill, “we lost half our business,” he said Friday. But there was a bright side. “It still gave us the workable framework we’d been screaming to have,” he said.
This time around, the situation is worse.
But for now, Salome will prepare for the end by continuing business as usual. And as of now, he’s not alone.
Hemp THC beverage makers hope for carveout
Federal regulators are expected to issue more guidance within the next three months. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is supposed to provide a list of cannabinoids that are allowed under the new rules.
And hemp advocates are working furiously to save the industry – and may have their first opportunity as soon as January, when another temporary spending bill will be needed as the one Trump signed into law expires.
But even then, major unanswered questions loom for the hemp sector.
Chief among them are:
- Who will enforce the federal ban on hemp THC products?
- Will states with regulated hemp industries (like Georgia) allow THC sales to continue?
- And will authorities make a distinction between some products as acceptable and others as verboten?
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