Gas-station weed was never supposed to exist. And yet, convenience stores across the country—even in states where marijuana is illegal—sell a trove of fizzy drinks, vape pens, and confections all promising to get you high. My neighborhood liquor store has an entire cooler full of weed drinks, including a seltzer aptly named Bong Water, a can of which has 25 milligrams of THC. About five milligrams of that chemical, which is the main psychoactive component in marijuana, will make the occasional weed user feel a light buzz. If that’s not enough for you, you might be able to buy a vape pen with 5,000 milligrams at your corner store.
These products are available because Congress messed up. In 2018, it passed a bill that was meant to support farmers by allowing them to grow hemp—essentially, weed bred with minimal THC—for industrial uses such as paper, insulation, and even guitars. In the process, it also accidentally created a new industry of intoxicating hemp products that are virtually indistinguishable from those made using traditional marijuana, except for the fact that they’re federally legal.
If Congress has its way, however, such products could soon disappear. Tucked into the funding legislation that ended the government shutdown was a bill that would outlaw virtually any THC product not sold at a licensed dispensary—a mortal threat to the industry that’s brought Americans Trips Ahoy cookies and THC-infused Dorito knockoffs.
The particulars of the current loophole are wonky, but the law allows companies to sell any hemp product that doesn’t contain more than 0.3 percent THC by dry weight. A company selling a 40-gram cookie, for example, could add 100 milligrams of THC and still be under that limit. Crucially, this applies to products sold anywhere in the country. Kansas hasn’t legalized either recreational or medical cannabis, but as I’ve previously reported, when I went to Topeka in 2023, I was able to find intoxicating hemp products in 10 shops within an afternoon. In a state like Illinois, where legal marijuana abounds, the distinction between weed sold in licensed dispensaries and hemp sold at convenience stores might seem pedantic. But dispensaries have to follow rules meant to keep users safe, and they must keep the product cordoned off from people under 21. Sellers of THC-containing hemp products don’t have to follow the same rules. Technically, many states don’t even specify a minimum age to buy these products.
The downsides of this system were immediately apparent. In a recent nationwide survey, approximately 11 percent of high-school seniors reported trying hemp products that feature Delta 8, one of the mind-tweaking compounds found in marijuana. Mitch McConnell, who championed the amendment closing the loophole, said on the Senate floor during the debate over the bill that passing it would “keep these dangerous products out of the hands of children.” Plus, many of these technically legal hemp products are filled with potentially dangerous synthetic compounds. Delta 8, for example, naturally occurs in marijuana only in very small amounts, so the substance added to vapes and drinks is typically created by chemically manipulating CBD, a more prevalent compound in the plant. The FDA has warned that this process may include “potentially unsafe household chemicals” and may be done “in uncontrolled or unsanitary settings, which may lead to the presence of unsafe contaminants or other potentially harmful substances.”
Now, after seven years, Congress has decided that enough is enough. Under the new funding bill, any product with more than 0.4 milligrams total THC—virtually nothing—would be considered a Schedule I narcotic, just like heroin, LSD, and regular old marijuana. The law will for the most part not affect dispensaries in states that have legalized weed, but it will make more than 95 percent of the current hemp market illegal, Jonathan Miller, a lobbyist for the industry group U.S. Hemp Roundtable, told me. And that’s the point: I asked Kevin Sabet, who runs an anti-marijuana group that lobbied for the new legislation on Capitol Hill, what successful implementation would look like. “A lot of the major players out of business,” he told me.
The new legislation doesn’t go into effect for a year, and already, the hemp industry is trying to persuade lawmakers to call off the crackdown. When I spoke with Miller on Tuesday, he told me that he was set to discuss the issue with an influential member of Congress the next day. The Hemp Roundtable, which spent $320,000 lobbying Congress last year, is hoping to persuade lawmakers to abandon the 0.4-milligram THC limit for something more workable—perhaps five or 10 milligrams, Miller told me. Ed Marszewski, the president of Marz Community Brewing Co., which makes Bong Water, told me that his company also wants regulations on serving sizes for hemp products, as well as age restrictions and safety testing.
Hemp companies might also wait to see how the new law will be enforced before taking any dramatic action. Despite the 2018 hemp loophole, selling food to which THC or CBD has been added is unequivocally prohibited by the FDA. However, the agency has typically gone after only those companies making unsubstantiated health claims or marketing their products to kids, Jonathan Havens, a cannabis attorney at the law firm Saul Ewing, told me. Since 2018, roughly 100 companies have received warnings from the FDA for selling cannabis-containing products. The industry, clearly, has kept on making its forbidden treats.
[Read: Marijuana is too strong now]
The question is whether the status quo changes in 2027, given the higher stakes. Selling a Schedule I narcotic typically carries a stiffer penalty than violating FDA rules does. But the Drug Enforcement Administration doesn’t currently have the resources to surveil every gas station, smoke shop, and liquor store in the country, and closely policing those settings would mean taking agents off more serious cases, Jim Crotty, a former DEA official, told me. (The DEA did not respond to a request for comment.) The federal government hasn’t shown a willingness to police local cannabis sales in the past: Licensed marijuana dispensaries are technically illegal under federal law too, but the feds have typically not interfered with shops that abide by state law. A similar scenario could play out with hemp products, Douglas Berman, the executive director of the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at Ohio State University, told me.
Proponents of this new law may hope that the days of hemp gummies and seltzers are limited. But passing a policy like this is easy compared with the work required to enforce it. Americans may soon find out if the government is up to the job.