A Return To Criminalization Is Not The Solution To Unfair Rules Differences Between Hemp And Marijuana (Op-Ed)

“This division, at once under- and over-regulated, is not the cannabis and cannabinoid industry that any of us need.”

By Adam Smith, Marijuana Policy Project

This week, Chris Lindsey, a former Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) staffer and now vice president of the industry association American Trade Association for Cannabis and Hemp (ATACH), published an op-ed in Marijuana Moment criticizing MPP for an alert we sent to our followers in support of a federal extension for hemp-derived cannabinoids before a near-total ban takes effect.

The bifurcation of hemp and marijuana (they are the same plant, cannabis) is a difficult and problematic issue. And I should note that we agree with a number of the concerns that Chris raises.

While I have only been running MPP for a year, I, like the organization, have a 30+ year background in drug and cannabis policy reform. I understand the concerns about poorly regulated products, which the extension legislation does not address, and the potentially deleterious health impacts of synthetics, which the extension legislation does address, if inadequately.

I also understand and empathize with the consternation of those on the licensed marijuana business side who are locked into an absurdly restricted system built to accommodate a dying prohibitionist regime, while hemp operators (the good ones) are selling the same molecule with the advantages of far broader retail opportunities, access to banking and card transactions, advantageous tax treatment and interstate commerce.

This division, at once under- and over-regulated, is not the cannabis and cannabinoid industry that any of us need.

As a policy guy, I am also quite aware of—and share—the concern that the longer-term normalization of the hemp-derived market will tend to incentivize many hemp businesses to fight against the broader legalization of the cannabis plant, just as the current absurdly restrictive marijuana system incentivizes licensed businesses to fight against the normalization of hemp-derived products.

MPP remains, as we have been for 30 years, 100 percent committed to descheduling the plant and its naturally occurring extracts at the federal level, and to legalizing both personal possession and regulated markets in the states. We believe that THC and other naturally occurring cannabinoids should be regulated and made available to adults under a single, consistent set of rules, including meaningful testing, truthful labeling and strict age-gating.

We also believe that low-dose drinks and edibles should be legally available to adults anywhere beer or wine are sold or served.

We know that the current level of regulation on the hemp side is inadequate, just like the regulatory schemes on the marijuana side are absurdly overbearing. Given that, and the other issues I’ve outlined, supporting the hemp extension—even if only by sending out an email alert—was not a slam dunk for us. But several factors contributed to our decision.

MPP has over 300,000 people on our email list, tens of thousands of whom live in states where hemp-derived products are their only legal alternative. We hear from those people, and under-regulated or not, they overwhelmingly do not want to go back to their illicit dealers.

Further, we are committed to ending arrests for THC possession. Between 2017 and 2025, as hemp-derived cannabinoids became available in stores, annual cannabis arrests in Texas fell from 64,826 to 28,753. Florida arrests fell from 42,153 to 6,104. Annual arrests in Tennessee went from 19,899 down to 11,117 and in North Carolina from 18,390 to 11,434 per year.

Those are real people and real lives, and the answer cannot be a return to full prohibition and skyrocketing arrests and imprisonment in those states.

Further, as Chris mentions, the Marijuana Policy Project has led—and, I should add, raised and provided the funding for—well over two dozen successful state medical and adult-use legalization campaigns, both legislatively and through voter initiatives. Our work, and the work of other advocates, is the foundation upon which the legal industry was created, exists, and continues to expand.

Nevertheless, more than 95 percent of the funding for that work came not from the industry (even once a legal industry emerged), but from philanthropists and donors who cared deeply about freedom, human rights, medical access and the broad legal availability of the plant they loved, with zero financial interest in the outcome.

Many of those philanthropists—heroes, really—like Peter Lewis, John Sperling and Tom Forcade, who collectively took tens of millions of dollars out of their own pockets to launch and sustain one of the most successful social movements in our nation’s history, have passed away. Others, seeing the emergence of a multi-billion-dollar industry with a financial interest in finishing the job, have moved on to other causes.

And yet still today, less than 10 percent of MPP’s current budget comes from industry, and less than 5 percent from licensees themselves.

We understand that times are tough for the industry, and that it’s hard to justify any expenditure that doesn’t absolutely have to be made. But with MPP’s long record of success, as our entire mission overlaps with the industry’s main political objective, the fact remains that much of the industry that we’ve laid the foundation for has never supported MPP or other serious advocacy efforts, even minimally as a show of good faith.

This is not about owing anything to the movement for what has been accomplished historically. This is about understanding why the movement has been so successful, and the power inherent in advocacy that comes not from a business perspective, but from a desire for public policy that serves the public good.

But that advocacy requires resources, and unlike the business community, the resources to fuel our work must come from outside our organizations. Without that support, none of this would have happened, and will not happen going forward.

This all makes the public criticism of one MPP alert—from an organization that includes so many industry leaders we sincerely regard as friends and colleagues—frankly a little hard to swallow.

This month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released numbers showing dramatic (remarkable, really) declines in teen use in legal states, even as cannabis arrests in those states have fallen by an average of more than 85 percent. Separate National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) data shows a near 50 percent reduction in teen access to cannabis nationwide since legalization began. The government data shows what advocates have argued for 30+ years—that smart regulation is safer for consumers, and communities, and kids than prohibition. And that personal freedom for adults is good public policy for everyone, in addition to driving jobs and revenues.

MPP is planning a multi-year effort—specifically in the largest non-adult-use states—to bring together parents’ groups, child advocacy and public health organizations and others behind this data to demand that state legislators and governors do the responsible thing: legalize and regulate cannabis as cannabis, and put it behind the counter where adults, and only adults, can get it.

We believe that our history, our relationships, and our position as independent advocates without profit incentives puts us in the best position to leverage the good news on kids’ access and use to gather and lead coalitions in those states, and to pull those coalitions together to demand descheduling at the federal level going forward.

I hope the industry will be a key partner in this strategy. Investing in this effort could create far greater opportunities through market expansion and full legalization of the plant than either side stands to gain from the current fight over hemp.

We would welcome a conversation with ATACH’s leadership and any or all of its interested members to discuss how we can work together in 2027 and beyond to reinvigorate public engagement in this issue and movement, counter the fear-mongering of the neo-prohibitionists and end cannabis prohibition everywhere in this country, once and for all.

Adam Smith is executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project.