Federal Hemp Ban 2026: Trump Backed CBD, Congress Banned It ft. Paige Figi

Paige Figi: The Cannabis Industry Is Cheering A Ban On Medicine

Paige Figi: If they're going to be disaligned, they should be comfortable coming out with a public statement saying no one should have therapeutic hemp and CBD — that Charlotte should die over me selling this in my store in Vermont. I would like to hear someone say that out loud, because that's what they're saying with their actions. Their silence is deafening. Bryan Fields: Paige, former Attorney General William Barr and Kevin Sabet wrote yesterday that there is no credible evidence marijuana effectively treats any medical condition. Charlotte's story gave America evidence that cannabis is medicine. When people with that level of influence make this argument in 2026, what does that tell you about how fragile this entire process remains? Paige Figi: The process is fragile. I can attest, feet on the ground, to sixteen years of how difficult this journey is. But I'll clarify that I don't work on cannabis — I simply work on hemp and non-intoxicating therapeutic hemp. That's my lane. My nonprofit in DC represents the consumers who use therapeutic, non-intoxicating hemp, and I haven't heard a single person come out against this lane — no one saying it should be outlawed or that it's dangerous. I'd press that team to say how they feel about CBD specifically. They'd probably defend Epidiolex, the pharmaceutical drug that came to market for Dravet syndrome — the pediatric epilepsy my daughter Charlotte had, which I helped bring to market. So I know they're pro-pharma, but I haven't heard a statement from SAM against CBD for kids with epilepsy. Bryan Fields: When they make that overwhelming statement — 'no credible evidence' — do you think they're intentionally lumping it all together, or do you think in their minds hemp and cannabis are genuinely just one bucket, and they're not making the distinction you're describing? Paige Figi: Well, they brought this fight on themselves, so they had to come up with a message and a statement. To say that when we know what we know — we're walking around in the age of information, we have all this data. I had enough data sixteen years ago to help Charlotte at four years old. We know there is medical evidence. We also have pharmaceutical drugs derived from the cannabis space, so we know there's pharmaceutical medical use for this plant. Bryan Fields: This is where I wonder if it's part of the overall confusion, and part of the challenge for you specifically but maybe the industry as a whole — that trying to demonstrate the medical properties while separating the two plants gets convoluted, and Congress ends up confusing them. Do you think the challenge is the distinction between hemp and cannabis, or is it more of a general Congress issue? Paige Figi: I think it's both. Congress needs things simple. They need to get things done in a very divided Congress this year, and it's difficult to pass bills, so it has to be as simple as possible. Congressional leadership wants the least controversial lane done fastest. My lane, therapeutic hemp, is taking so long because we're the first sliver — a plant with big, complicated hurdles and big controversy, big opponents like SAM and pharma. It deserves attention; it's the hardest, longest, slowest, most difficult process because it's first. Everything else lands on that same runway. People don't love that I say I don't work on marijuana, but that's my lane. My long, boring, sixteen-year consistent message is: we're just working on this. I don't have an opinion for or against anything else — I'm not working on the war in Iran, I'm not working on abortion. I have my own opinions, but this is what we're working on, and it takes that much time, effort, energy and consistency just to get one thing done. That's why I stay separate, and why I usually don't do industry-type podcasts — I'm not invited. I just work quietly in DC with Congress and the administration on CBD, or full-spectrum non-intoxicating therapeutic hemp, which was initially the CBD movement. Bryan Fields: Those distinctions matter — the words are so important. I think some operators see it as all one plant, that CBD just comes from the plant and it should all be looked at as one. Do you feel differently? Paige Figi: If I were working on marijuana, and I saw how fast CBD moved — from a Schedule I substance to fully descheduled and removed from the Controlled Substances Act in 2018 — I would try to smush them back together. The reason we got this descheduled was that we convinced Congress to separate the two; CBD is not a Schedule I substance, it was mistakenly lumped into that category. So yes, if I were working on cannabis reform, which I'm not, I'd want to put it back together in one pot and take that ride. Bryan Fields: Let's get to November 12th. Licensed operators see that day as when Congress finally closes the 'hemp loophole.' You call it Federal CBD Ban Day. What are they missing? Paige Figi: I'd argue with the word 'loophole.' What they're trying to regulate out is what I call 'Frankenhemp' — manipulated hemp. People wanted to get high affordably, outside state models and taxation and shipping restrictions, so they found a workaround. These products didn't exist in 2018. Frankenhemp — delta-8, manipulated in a lab — is impairing, intoxicating, essentially an adult recreational product, and it's legal in a gas station, at 7-Eleven, because of our work to deschedule. That wasn't our intent. No one was trying to sneak one past Congress; people innovated a product sold outside the dispensary model. Congress wants to outlaw those products because a child died in Virginia after taking their mother's Frankenhemp — and it wasn't the THC or the high that killed them, it was residual solvents and other contaminants. So Congress wants to ban that, and instead of taking a scalpel to write sophisticated healthcare policy, they went too far and wiped out the whole category. What I've asked Congress for over sixteen years is to deschedule and simultaneously have the FDA regulate the final CBD products. They couldn't get that done in '18 — they only got the descheduling part — so it's been the Wild West for eight years, and now intoxicating hemp is sold at 7-Eleven. No one should be buying their health products at a gas station. Bryan Fields: So do you see this as throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Paige Figi: Yes, exactly, absolutely. I've spoken to people who wrote that ban — one is a doctor who told me, 'I would like to live in a world where THC doesn't exist.' For him it was just personal frustration with the marijuana argument, so he wants to ban it all. A medical doctor said that. Meanwhile we have information, studies, and data — we're the consumer face of this nationally through my coalition, Coalition for Access Now, backed by leading scientists doing the hard, expensive work in this lane. We have the scientific, moral, and ethical case; this should be a no-brainer to regulate. It's just hard to get bills through Congress with such a slim margin either way. I think what they did was a mistake — throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There's a more sophisticated way to do this. We don't complain; we bring policy solutions on how to regulate this properly so there isn't another loophole or workaround. We feel we're there — we're working more with the administration now than Congress. I work with HHS, and with the president, and there's an appetite to get this done. Bryan Fields: When they're reviewing all the medical properties, are they making the distinction between full-spectrum hemp and medical marijuana, the way you're communicating it — or do they also struggle to separate the two? Paige Figi: They understand the distinction. They're deep into the solution, but they have to work through all the legal details to make it bulletproof, so they don't harm anyone when they regulate and legalize it. It's legal now, but the regulation — what we've been asking the FDA to finish — has to be done soundly, because most states will attach their own laws to whatever language the federal government lands on. Bryan Fields: Let's talk about November 12th specifically. What happens if the ban goes into effect? Paige Figi: Some people say ninety-five, more like ninety-eight percent of the therapeutic hemp market gets wiped out. It's not preemptive — states can still decide what they want to do — but states have already started attaching to that ban language, four milligrams of THC per container. States don't have their own sophisticated HHS or FDA bodies, so they just attach to whatever the federal government does, and some are just banning it all. If the ban goes into effect, I'd say it effectively affects one hundred percent of the roughly forty-five million Americans I represent who take a daily dose of a therapeutic hemp product — CBD, CBN, CBG. That's a high-need, high-use population, people like my daughter Charlotte, who needed this to stay alive; it was the only thing she took for almost ten years. She was medically resolved using it, though she ultimately didn't survive her condition. This is a public health emergency on November 12th. I'm not exaggerating. There are people who still don't understand or believe the federal government is actually going to ban hemp, and I'm racing to fix that. Many serious people are working on this, and many in the industry feel it's outrageous, immoral, unethical — we guinea-pigged our own kids to find a solution that worked as an anticonvulsant, and to have it wiped out by a sledgehammer policy is unconscionable. The people harmed will be the consumers — constant collateral damage. Bryan Fields: Explain to them why access is being stripped away on November 12th. Charlotte was a child, and adult-use dispensaries are typically twenty-one and over — does that mean parents would have to bring their children into dispensaries? How would that even work? Paige Figi: First, does it even exist in a dispensary? Take California — the cannabis state. We got a CBD-banning bill killed in the legislature in Sacramento a couple of years ago; there was no appetite to pass it. The next day, Governor Newsom held an emergency press conference and banned it anyway through executive action. There are dispensary deserts in California — counties with no dispensaries at all, and none of these therapeutic hemp products parents need are sold in the dispensaries that do exist. A mother in our coalition drove hours to a dispensary that promised a similar product for her very sick child in a wheelchair, and an armed guard pulled a gun on her because you can't bring a child into an adult dispensary — and the product wasn't even in the store. Saying 'just go get it somewhere else' is false and will harm someone. There are states without dispensaries at all, children aren't allowed in adult dispensaries, and these products aren't sold in the adult recreational market. Most of these families just have it shipped discreetly to their homes, and this was often their last resort after trying everything else. No one has publicly explained why this sliver of the population should lose access. Bryan Fields: When you describe a situation like that, I don't know of another medical product where a doctor would say, 'You've been on this for six years and it's been helping, but you can't have it anymore — figure something else out.' Hopefully policy can find a bipartisan way to keep providing something that's making a real medical difference. Paige Figi: But they're not, and it's because of money. It doesn't grow in every state, and even where there is a law, there's often no crop grown locally, so there will be a lag as families are forced to pivot, drive across state lines, and shoulder the burden themselves — even though raising a child with an untreatable condition is already incredibly difficult, even when you've cut seizures by half. Taking that away is immoral. Bryan Fields: Help me understand the state-by-state differences here. California, for example, says CBD isolate can still be sold and THC-containing products can enter the licensed cannabis system. Are they saying isolate is close enough, or that it's simply the closest available option? Paige Figi: Both — they're saying isolate is 'good enough,' when we know a full-spectrum plant grown at a specific ratio, high in CBD and low in THC, non-intoxicating, is what's actually working. An isolate is more like Epidiolex — the efficacy numbers aren't even comparable. I'm glad pharmaceutical isolate products exist, but they just don't work as well as ratioed, full-spectrum therapeutics. California is also saying they'll work on allowing full-spectrum products in dispensaries starting in 2029 — so families wait three years while the state figures it out. Their quote was, 'We have no intention of harming the therapeutic hemp children who are using this for epilepsy' — and yet that's exactly what they did. If you run for office and don't know how to write sound law, hire someone who does, or take the solutions we've offered. A lot of this comes down to ugly financial politics. Bryan Fields: I imagine it's almost worse to have brought a solution to the public forefront and built a movement, only to have it stripped away, than if people had never known the solution existed. Paige Figi: Exactly. It took me about a year and a half to even share Charlotte's story publicly — she was a super-responder to CBD. These people are outraged. Bryan Fields: Does actual visible harm need to occur before lawmakers realize what they've unintentionally done with this ban? Paige Figi: I've been told by California media that we're working heavily to get an emergency provision from the governor, but we've been ignored — the governor's office even blocked our call-to-action tool. So we encourage people in California to write, call, or read a script saying, 'Surely this was a mistake — you meant to ban Frankenhemp, not therapeutic CBD,' and we bring multiple solutions to the table. This is bipartisan, apolitical — Newsom and President Trump are sworn political enemies, and they've each found their own way to work toward a fix. I encourage people to talk to each other and get their own information rather than rely on lobbyists. I didn't expect this fight to be easy — very few natural, plant-based solutions ever win against pharmaceutical, patentable interests, and that's exactly the battle we're in. It's rare for a plant-derived supplement to beat a drug, because drug companies spend enormous money to bring a drug to market and can't compete against something sold at Whole Foods or Walgreens. I think both can coexist — like vitamin D3, sold both as a supplement and as a prescription — but it's rare for the plant to win. Bryan Fields: Can we talk about how regulation could actually work — full-spectrum CBD shipped nationwide, but not allowing Frankenhemp to populate gas stations and airlines? How would you envision that playing out? Paige Figi: The early bills — named after Charlotte — combined descheduling and FDA regulation in one package, moving through a Senate HELP Committee and House Energy and Commerce subcommittee. It was moving fast until it hit the political process and was seen as too small an issue. What we're asking for now is FDA regulation as a dietary supplement, with some added parameters: age-gating at eighteen or twenty-one, pregnancy warning labels on the bottle — fine, we're okay with all of that. The sticking point now is impairment milligrams — what dose or container size prevents intoxication. Some in Congress want zero milligrams of THC, which isn't medically efficacious, so we're negotiating down to a workable milligram threshold, and how to prevent stacking multiple servings to get high. We have sixteen years of what's essentially the largest Phase 3 clinical trial in human history happening in real time, and no one has been abusing therapeutic hemp to get impaired — that's what Frankenhemp delta products, which emerged around 2020–2021, are for. It's tedious, but I want FDA dietary supplement regulation plus those few extra safeguards, so people can still get it shipped to their homes, dosed at school, in a hospital setting — without having to leave campus, like I had to do to give Charlotte her midday dose. When it was descheduled, it became the Wild West, with about four thousand companies at the peak, most of which weren't lobbying for regulation — why would they, if it was legal and unregulated? Now we're paying for the consequences of forgetting to finish the job Congress started. Bryan Fields: Is it primarily THC levels they're uncomfortable with, or also concern about synthetic and modified cannabinoids? It seems like the industry found a loophole because certain synthetically modified cannabinoids weren't explicitly listed as banned. Paige Figi: They want to ban synthetics — any manipulated product that creates intoxication that isn't naturally found in the plant, and also stacking or isolating naturally occurring THC and adding it back in unnaturally. We work with scientists who've studied what level is non-impairing for an average person or child. I work with Ryan Vandrey out of Johns Hopkins, whose research put that figure around 2.7 to 3 milligrams as non-impairing for the average person, and people seem to be settling around 3 milligrams as a serving cap — though then the stacking argument comes up. My argument is that smarter people than me can defend and refine this; I'm not trying to push something through at any cost. I just want a landscape where people can access what they've relied on for over a decade. Now we also have a heavy beverage lobby wanting to sell THC beverages at ballgames, arguing for twenty milligrams per can, and everyone is landing somewhere around the Johns Hopkins data as the most rational, science-backed approach. Bryan Fields: This is where I think the industry is hurting itself — everyone's pointing fingers: beverages doing this, Frankenhemp doing that, medical marijuana doing this, someone got a product from their dealer at eighteen. It gets too confusing. I think it needs to be simplified, going back to why state medical markets were set up in the first place — to serve real medical need, like full-spectrum CBD. If Congress recognizes the medical benefit like they did in 2018, this should be a no-brainer, and it's disappointing we can't get out of our own way. Paige Figi: Historically, when a state legalizes medical marijuana and then legalizes recreational, medical markets typically shrink or disappear. Bryan Fields: That's fair, and it looks like a slippery slope to lawmakers who backed something they now feel lied to them about — 'this wasn't really medical after all.' But as an adult, I should be able to make my own decisions about a joint the same way I can about a drink at a bar. Originally I only had a medical option, and once recreational existed it was easier not to renew a medical card. But that's on Congress — I shouldn't be told I can't have this plant because it was arbitrarily classified as a controlled substance long ago. Paige Figi: Imagine a senator championing your issue standing up and saying exactly that on the floor — 'he should be able to get it from his dealer or the store.' These are people running for office, and the fastest, cleanest path is saying, 'Kids will die without their therapy, and it's harmless and non-intoxicating — let's get that done first.' That's the appetite that exists, and that's what the president is doing — tweeting about CBD and the endocannabinoid system, pushing to get this passed this year for patients and consumers. He's not wading into the broader ethical argument about adult recreational rights, because it's already this hard to get the 'easy' part done. Bryan Fields: Fair — and I can see how raising that adult-use point actually muddies your message by conflating two different issues. Let's go back to something you mentioned earlier — you stood at the White House when President Trump directed his administration to preserve access, particularly for seniors. Is that the Medicare pilot program you're referencing, and how does it relate to this fight? Paige Figi: Yes — the Medicare pilot with Dr. Oz was intended, from everyone I've spoken with, to cover full-spectrum CBD products. If the ban takes effect November 12th, only isolate products would remain legal, which we know is far less effective — and President Trump knows that too; he chose his words carefully when announcing it. So either the ban gets extended a year or two while we finalize a permanent regulatory solution — which I'd be fine with — or we get a lasting fix. I'm pushing for permanent FDA dietary-supplement regulation, not just an extension. Bryan Fields: I'd assumed the same thing, and I think that Oval Office moment — announcing coverage up to roughly six hundred dollars — surprised a lot of people and got them thinking this issue is much further along medically than they'd given it credit for. Paige Figi: Absolutely, and that's why I was invited into the room with veterans and doctors for that Medicare pilot announcement — I wasn't there for the cannabis rescheduling executive order, but for this. It's more symbolic than a massive financial win for the industry, but roughly five hundred dollars to cover a senior's annual CBD costs is real. I believe they'll study the results and likely expand it well beyond seniors. It's not just symbolic — it's a real-time solution, say, for your grandmother using it as an anti-inflammatory, and it's historic that the President of the United States is talking about CBD at all. I think the industry sometimes fights with me over this before the arena for that fight even exists — we're not at the 'go kill each other' stage yet. These are serious people doing serious, difficult work, and infighting is exactly what gets people kicked off policy conversations. That's exactly why we could lose this. Bryan Fields: That's why I was surprised — they announce this program and then, seemingly next, move to ban it. Maybe I have the order confused, but it feels like it undercuts the very framework they just built. Maybe that's just politics I don't fully understand. Paige Figi: It was two members of Congress out of five hundred thirty-five — one in the House, one in the Senate — who wrote that ban during the longest government shutdown in history, when they had to reopen the government. The fact that the president ultimately signed a bill containing that one provision, buried in thousands of pages, wasn't a signal that the whole Congress wants to ban CBD — they were trying not to look like they'd shut down the government over politics. It was snuck into a spending bill without regular order by Senator McConnell and Representative Andy Harris, who have their own reasons. It wasn't a mistake in intent — they meant to target Frankenhemp — but they sledgehammered the whole category, and now we're in the political process of fixing it. The same thing happened in Virginia, where one person banned the whole category in a spending bill to protect state tax revenue. Balance your budget without taking it from a sick medical patient — we're always the collateral damage. Bryan Fields: Do you see a future where the cannabis industry and the full-spectrum CBD side could align on sensible regulation — adult-use access where appropriate, and medical access where and how it's needed? Paige Figi: I don't care whether they align or not. If they're going to stay disaligned, they should be comfortable saying publicly, 'No one should have therapeutic hemp and CBD — Charlotte should die over me selling this in my Vermont store.' I'd like to hear someone say that out loud, because that's what their actions are saying. Their silence is deafening. I've heard that ten to fifteen percent of the cannabis industry believes their revenue will return once hemp is banned, and people have said this publicly. I'd like to have that debate out loud with them. Delta-8, Frankenhemp — fine, ban that. But people who found a real solution and use it daily deserve better than quiet celebration of a ten-percent margin recovery. We should be celebrating that we found this discovery in nature and saved lives, arm in arm — but I don't need their help, and I don't want to speak for them. Bryan Fields: I wasn't necessarily referring to that segment — I'd guess you're referring to the intoxicating Frankenhemp side specifically. In my view, there's real alignment potential between you and licensed cannabis operators, since you share some of the same challenges with Congress, and collaborating could reduce confusion and strengthen both sides. Paige Figi: They should say that out loud. Their silence effectively signals they're fine with this ban and the ten to fifteen percent it might hand back to them, without saying it directly. And not helping this part of the plant get through will come back on them, because marijuana is going to go through all the same fights, and more. Not linking up and saying 'we care about consumers, we care about sick people' is effectively saying they're okay with someone dying. I've mostly heard people talk about their stock price or complain that hemp isn't taxed the same way marijuana is. They have the opportunity to say something different — I'm not asking them to, I just think it's foolish, and it says a lot about what industry you're actually in, when this all started as a medical industry. Bryan Fields: Paige, last question — what question do you wish more people asked you? Paige Figi: I wish people asked how to actually help. It's astounding how few letters and phone calls it takes for an issue to reach the top of a senator's or House member's priority list — I've heard the number sixty for sixteen years. If a hundred people email about an issue, that becomes the top of the pile for that whole state. I wish fewer people were keyboard-warrior complainers and more people picked a policy and sent a thirty-second email. Your senators should know your name and have an email from you on their desk — that's how policy actually gets done. I'm living proof; I've worked in fifty states and multiple countries on CBD legislation, and consumer advocacy works. It's not public speaking — it's a private letter to a staffer. Anyone can do this, whether or not you're in the industry — maybe you don't even use CBD, but your mother does, or your favorite baseball pitcher does. There are forty-five million daily CBD users in this country; there should be forty-five million emails to Congress. Every state has two senators and a House member representing your zip code in DC — three phone calls with a short personal story would be even better than an email. Bryan Fields: Paige, for those who want to get in touch, learn more, and help, where can they find Coalition for Access Now? Paige Figi: They can find us at Coalition for Access Now — coalitionforaccessnow.org. Bryan Fields: Thanks for taking the time, Paige. This was a lot of fun. Paige Figi: Thanks, Bryan.