The White House is lobbying Congress for a reprieve from a ban it approved last year on potent intoxicating hemp products, seeking a delay whose beneficiaries would include the son-in-law of Susie Wiles, President Trump’s chief of staff.
Under pressure from the administration, senators tucked the delay into a stopgap spending measure they are working to pass this week in an effort to head off a government shutdown at the end of September.
The proposal has touched off an internal fight in Congress, with some senators balking at the idea of rolling back restrictions meant to address a public health risk, and could derail an agreement to quickly approve the spending bill. But its inclusion in the bill reflects the success of a hemp industry influence campaign to avoid new regulations.
That campaign was led in part by Bret Worley, who married Ms. Wiles’s younger daughter Caroline in June at the Trump Winery in Charlottesville, Va. He is the chief executive of companies that distribute and sell intoxicating-hemp-derived gummies and vapes with names like “Trainwreck” and “Blueberry Cookies.”
While Mr. Trump does not drink or smoke, his administration’s advocacy for intoxicating hemp is in line with permissive stances it has adopted toward other intoxicants and wellness trends. The approach has sparked concern among public health experts and is a departure from Republican orthodoxy.
But it caters to adherents of the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement, a political constituency that Mr. Trump’s team has courted. The administration has taken steps that could pave the way for products with documented health risks, including peptides, kratom and flavored vapes.
The billionaire financier Howard Kessler, a leukemia survivor who is friendly with Mr. Trump and has urged support for cannabis as a pain treatment, was also involved in the push to delay the hemp limits. His allies worked with the White House on the language sent to Congress, according to two people familiar with the situation who requested anonymity to describe private conversations.
Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, suggested in a statement that Mr. Worley and the influence campaign had nothing to do with Mr. Trump’s stance. The White House’s support for hemp is in “the best interest of the American people” and is intended to help veterans and patients, he said.
But Kevin Sabet, who worked on drug policy under Republican and Democratic presidents, said in a voice memo to The New York Times that the White House’s support for delaying the restrictions was an example of a “pay-to-play drug policy” in which decisions “are a result of lobbying, not of the evidence.”
Intoxicating hemp, which is less regulated than marijuana and alcohol, has gained popularity in recent years as a pain reliever and an alternative to other intoxicants. While hemp is sometimes referred to as “weed light,” the Food and Drug Administration has warned of potential adverse effects, including difficulty breathing and coma.
The restrictions in question, which are set to take effect on Nov. 12, would target intoxicating hemp products containing threshold amounts of T.H.C., the main psychoactive compound in cannabis. That would effectively outlaw a multibillion-dollar industry of beverages, gummies, cookies and vapes that are sold in gas stations, vape shops and convenience stores that are not regulated like cannabis dispensaries.
The spending bill moving through the Senate would delay the effective date of the ban on such products until Dec. 11. It would allow a ban to go into effect as scheduled on fully synthetic T.H.C. products that are not derived from any part of the hemp plant.
The White House included the delay among a raft of spending requests it sent to Capitol Hill in June on behalf of the president, calling it a way to “ensure the fair treatment of hemp products.”
Ms. Wiles visited Capitol Hill last week to push Congress to act on Mr. Trump’s agenda, including passage of a stopgap government spending bill.
Mr. Desai, the White House spokesman, said Ms. Wiles did not specifically mention intoxicating hemp or the ban and “has never lobbied in favor of this or any other position on hemp with Capitol Hill.”
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But when senators announced a bipartisan spending agreement on Sunday that would keep the government funded through Dec. 11, the delay in enacting restrictions on intoxicating hemp products was one of the few extraneous items included.
Mr. Worley, 30, whose companies operate from Texas and Colorado, did not respond to a request for comment. But the industry celebrated the provision as a step toward permanent legalization.
In an email on Sunday to prospective buyers, MC Nutraceuticals, one of Mr. Worley’s companies, boasted that the hemp industry now had “a seat at the table” and would push to achieve permanent approval for its products by seeking language in the farm bill or omnibus spending bills.
“Industries that get inside that machinery get renewed,” the email read.
Still, the fate of the hemp provision remains uncertain.
The cannabis industry, which has spent heavily to cultivate Mr. Trump, views intoxicating hemp products as a threat and opposes the delay. So do some alcohol producers and lawmakers in both parties.
Senator Ted Budd, Republican of North Carolina, announced on social media on Monday that he intended to introduce an amendment to strip the provision. He said in a statement that he had “made it clear to the White House and my colleagues in the Senate that any action to delay” the restrictions “will endanger both the wellness and safety of Americans.”
Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, has also expressed concern about the provision, as has Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota.
A spokeswoman for Senator Pete Ricketts, Republican of Nebraska, said Tuesday that the hemp products were “hurting our kids and communities,” and that he did not want to delay banning them.
But another influential proponent of an intoxicating hemp ban, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, has been hospitalized since June and is absent this week as the fight over the provision unfolds.
The current skirmish is the fallout from a measure included in the 2018 farm bill that was sold as a way to create jobs in rural areas by protecting the use of hemp in agriculture and industry. But it also created a regulatory vacuum that allowed the intoxicating hemp industry to flourish.
Mr. McConnell backed the 2018 measure. By last year he was pushing for the prohibition on intoxicating hemp products, which was included in a government spending bill to end the longest shutdown in history. He said at the time that “some companies looking to make a quick buck have been exploiting a loophole” to make intoxicating “snack and candy-like products.”
Senator Rand Paul, another Kentucky Republican who is a libertarian and a frequent opponent of spending measures, has fought against the ban.
“There are a lot of just regular, ordinary people who have trouble sleeping at night, and like to take a hemp product,” he told reporters at the Capitol this week, adding, “There are people that would rather drink a hemp beverage than drink alcohol.”
Several hemp industry groups have hired lobbyists, including some with ties to Mr. Trump, to defeat the ban and pursue other policies that would help the industry.
A nonprofit group called Team Hemp has paid $400,000 since November to the lobbying firm of Marty Obst, who worked on Mr. Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020. He did not respond to a request for comment.
And a group called Hemp Industry and Farmers of America, or HIFA, on whose board Mr. Worley sat, has paid $415,000 to lobbyists this year. Late last year, it boasted on its website of “substantive meetings with White House officials,” but warned of the “complete collapse” of the hemp industry if the pending restrictions were enacted.
HIFA and MC Nutraceuticals did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Worley has told associates that his relationship to the Wiles family gave him “significant political power,” according to a filing in a lawsuit last year that suggested Mr. Worley had exaggerated his clout.
According to a person familiar with his efforts, Mr. Worley met in recent months with officials in Mr. Trump’s health department to promote the therapeutic benefits of different types of hemp and to discuss broadening its market.
The health department did not respond to a request for comment.
Behind the scenes, people allied with the cannabis industry have called attention in Congress to Mr. Worley’s link to the White House to try to undercut the push to delay the restrictions, according to people familiar with the opposition.
Some members of Congress in both parties, however, suggested they could live with the reprieve. Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, said he would back the delay. And Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, said a short delay was acceptable if it was the price of averting a federal shutdown.
“I prefer that we don’t extend it, but I can live with a monthlong extension in exchange for keeping the government open,” Ms. Capito said.
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