Bulwark Takes - Why Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul Are Fighting Over Weed Seltzers (w/ Natalie Fertig)

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Red states built up a massive hemp industry and the vote by Congress to reopen the government suddenly set up a deadline to shut it all down. Tim Miller is joined by Politico's Natalie Fertig as they take on the strange coalition forming to save THC seltzers and how Sens. Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul ended up on opposite sides of the issue. 

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from the bulwark. I'm excited to talk a little bit about this hemp bill that's been going through Congress that I think it's pretty crazy, actually, that Trump is going to sign this and they might stick with this. But before we get to an expert who actually knows something about this matter, I should say that we do have a couple of sponsors from the hemp industry that are obviously opposed to this bill that's going to make their products illegal. I think that my record as a former Republican who enjoys weed beverages and who also doesn't like dumb regulations should be unimpeachable here. But I did feel like I should at least give you that disclaimer at the beginning of the episode. Natalie Fertig is who's here. She's at Politico. She was the cannabis policy reporter for five years. Now she's the state's reporter.

And she has been writing about this bill. How's it going, Natalie? Hey, it's good. Welcome. So anyway, I guess let's just start from the start. But this got in here because Mitch McConnell, like, had a hard on for the industrial hemp industry. Like, why was this part of the shutdown debate at all? Like, there were very few kind of things that were that were appended to this.

Why was, how did this hemp bill end up getting in there? Yeah, well, there's been a growing chorus within the cannabis space about unregulated, at least federally unregulated. Some states have regulated it. but the intoxicating hemp, like you mentioned, THC seltzers and beverages, they're really popular, especially in states that do not have legal cannabis programs, which I think is actually a really important thing to remember. But, yeah, I mean, you put McConnell and Rand Paul, who are both from the same state, Kentucky,

which is one of the leading producers of hemp and intoxicating hemp beverages. And they landed on separate sides of this issue. And that, I mean, that's really what we saw come to a head with Rand Paul saying, you know, I'm going to hold up this whole proceeding because he's trying to protect the hemp industry in his state. While McConnell, who has never been a big fan of marijuana, cannabis, anything intoxicating, wanted to close it because, you know, when he backed industrial hemp legalization back in 2014, this was not part of what he envisioned, was not people being able to, like, get high off of a can of seltzer that they bought. at a gas station or at a liquor store depending on your state's regulations. So basically politically, you kind of have this weird coalition between like teetotling conservatives who are against this on principle and then some folks on the left who are maybe influenced

or at least sympathetic to the cannabis industry's complaints about the fact that like this sort of secondary market has sprouted up in states that is not as regulated as other other types of weed products are. That's basically what happened. Yeah. And that's like the most interesting part of this whole thing is that you've got people who really, really just hate drugs and hate weed and have like this moral opposition to marijuana siding with some of America's biggest proponents of legal cannabis and legal

marijuana because unregulated hemp products undermine their state, their state's legal industry. So they have business owners in places like California coming to them and saying, hey, the fact that the hemp industry can just add a ton of THC to itseltzer and then sell it at total wine is completely undermining us when we have to pay all of these extra regulations and fees and jump through all these hoops to be in California's state cannabis industry. So it's some of the oddest bedfellows I think I've ever seen. Yeah, rent seeking comes for the weed industry. You know, everybody's big lobbying. influence game comes for everybody. What is the, um, so I don't really, I guess, understand how this happened? Like, how did it, how did it happen that like the, because to

me as a consumer, has that been like following these debates that closely? You know, like all the sudden, Louis louis are just showing up on my shelf here in Louisiana and they're different branding in every state, right? And I don't know why, really. I mean, it's a simple matter of when it was legalized. People didn't know very much about marijuana. Most of the research that was done in America on cannabis, the cannabis plant, which includes legally both marijuana and hemp, most of that research had been done on the bad impacts of it. So, like, how does it hurt you? How does it make your life worse? How does it impact your driving? Et cetera, et cetera. There hadn't been a lot of people who were just looking at the plant and saying, hey,

what can we make out of this? There wasn't a lot of innovation type research. And once hemp was legalized, still not regulated, but legalized in the 2014 and the 2018, farm bills legalized it in succession. People started going, what can we do with this? Like, how can we make more money with this? And that sort of American ingenuity and creativity took hold. And you found out that there's a lot more than just the non-intoxicating CBD and intoxicating Delta 9 THC, which was the thing that was written in the law. There's all of these other ways that you could use it and adapt marijuana to make you high. And also the limits that they put in the law, people found ways around those because they were not to get two in the

weeds, pun honestly not intended. But like the limits were per by dry weight. So if you hold a flower, a dried flower in your hand, it doesn't weigh a lot. If you hold a can like a tall boy of beer, it weighs a lot. You can get a lot more THC into a heavy thing like a can of seltzer than you can into a dried flour. I understand how the CBD and hemp products, You know, people are like, okay, great, this is an alternative. But how did, how did THC end up getting? So they set the limit in the 2018 Farm Bill at 0.03% THC per dry weight. And that's where we get into that, the weight of the, the flour, the dry flour,

versus the weight of a little bottle of tincture or a big tall boy can of salsa. And, yeah, so that was, that was set then because people were only thinking, about that plant, the hemp flour. And they allowed a little bit of THC because a lot of folks in the medical community say, you know, hey, it's really, really, really hard to grow hemp with absolutely no THC. Like, we're going to have to burn everything.

It always tests hot. We just can't do it. But that amount, it would take, you would have to consume so much dry flour to get high at all from that amount. So it's sort of this like makes everyone not really happy, but it's enough. But yeah, but then they,

took that 0.3% and innovated and found a ton of ways to make people high with it. Anyway, the new language limits it. It like adds all the other cannabinoids in, says it doesn't matter if it's flour. It's also liquid products. It's also final products. So now like you just can't have like a can now have only 0.3 milligrams of THC total in that can, which is not going to make yeah. Right. And most of these cans are like five milligrams basically. I've seen cans of are 50 milligrams in North Carolina, which is a wide amount. Yeah, just as a PSA from me, I don't recommend the 50 milligram can, but yeah, but 5 is a standard.

So, but 0.3 versus 5, you can see a pretty, I mean, like, yeah, the difference there is pretty stark. So then in the intervening period, we have to 2018 to now, like this whole industry sprouts up. So this is the other thing that has changed, it's a deal. So, like, if this does, I mean, the law has been passed now, I guess before we get into the industry, it just, technically on the law. So the law has been passed, but it put a one year, I guess, time,

time limit on people coming to compliance with it. And so obviously, the industry will be lobbying in that time, et cetera, et cetera. But as of right now, next year, if nothing changes, you know, this will go into effect when at fall of 2026 and basically all of these products will be off the shelves. Yes, correct. You know, who knows? Can maybe lobby to get a different type of limit or for them to re-look at this bill again, even though it passed overwhelmingly. I mean, like, it's hard to see what, you know. Only 20 people voted against it. So, and they were, and that was, it was like Ted Cruz, who is not who you would imagine

to be advocating for the continuation of intoxicating hemp products and groceries. It's crazy how few Democrats voted for this. Like, less than half of the Democratic conference voted for this, which is, which I think, I mean, I'd have to imagine that. I haven't seen any polling of you have, like among Democratic voters, like legalizing these beverages has to be like a 70, 80 percent issue. And so to have like four, you know, only 40 percent of the conference vote for it shows yet another area where maybe the Democratic senators are not in touch with where the party basis. Well, it's two things. One, yeah, most people are,

would say, yeah, we, we think these types of things should be legal. But you're looking at cannabis is no longer just an emotional or philosophical vote. It's an economic vote. You've got small businesses. a ton of states. And they're really strapped by the amount of regulation and hoops that they have to jump through at the state level. And I've written extensively about cannabis businesses going out of business all over the country. And so, you know, these senators, that's what they're voting on. It's not like a philosophical do we or do we not support marijuana. I think a vast majority of those senators would vote yes on legalization of marijuana nationally, removing it from the Controlled Substances Act. But they're voting and saying unregulatory.

hemp is undermining Joe, who came to my office last week and talked to me about his cannabis business that, or his cannabis farm in the Emerald Triangle in California that can't stay afloat. Sure. But there's the other half of that economic argument now, which is what I was trying to get to, which is in 14 and 18, so this starts. Now it's been created. Now this industry has been created. So now you have the hemp farmers, which are, I presume you can tell me if I'm wrong with

that is different than the cannabis farmers. Maybe there's some overlap, but there's some overlap. Yeah. Yeah. And then, but then, but then you have the, you know, proprietors of these products, right? I mean, like I said, look, my local grocery store here in New Orleans, you know, you've got four different brands that are all Louisiana, right? And so they all employ people. And, you know, I think it was in that when the house was debating this, like it was Derek Van Orden, who's like a MAGA far right guy who is not, you know, who you would think would be ideologically against, you know, against, you know, against. you know, drug legalization. He's basically like, look, my district, there's so many jobs attached to this industry. I have to be against us because people are going to lose jobs. And so if they

don't change the thing between now in 2026, it seems like there'll be a real negative impact on the hemp industry and potentially maybe a modest benefit to the cannabis industry, but unclear what that would be. Yeah. So some of the states, like we saw both California senators vote, you know, against or for the measure. So for banning hemp. And California outlawed. Governor Newsom passed an executive order completely banning all THC hemp products a year or two ago. So some states, there is no economic, like there is no economy around intoxicating hemp. There's only an economy around unentoxicating hemp. But, you know, Texas, North Carolina, some of these states that don't have any medical or

recreational marijuana, that's where these products have really exploded because people, people don't have access to cannabis. They don't have cannabis dispensaries. And so those are the states also, many of them have actually passed regulations. So limiting, like, you can't go to Texas and buy a 50 milligram can of THC seltzers. North Carolina is working on that. But those are the states where because people put regulations around them, there is now, like, a vibrant industry that those states feel is regulated well. And many of those are red states.

So that's, that's why you get. the Ted Cruz is voting to not ban hemp. And he's kind of got the world has turned upside down. Fascinating. All right. Well, my advice to Democrats who have future political ambitions would be to not let Ted Cruz and Rand Paul be the face of not banning hemp products. I think that that's a winning issue for you, one man's opinion. And I think it's pretty interesting that it's been those guys that have been out there the most on this.

The industry is too small to be a vote in and of itself. So it's if consumers are getting really mad that they can't get something that they like at their local grocery store and they can't go to a, you know, dispensary to find an alternate, then if their voices get loud enough, what, you know, what you said could be true. We'll see. Fellow New Orleans feels like you should be the locus of this since they, that would fit the bill. We would fit the bill of that category of people that would not have access otherwise. All right. Natalie, Freddie, thank you so much. Appreciate you. And if anything moves on this, we'll be talking to you next year.

Yep.