{"id":52981,"date":"2025-12-05T12:33:32","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T12:33:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/52981\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T12:33:32","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T12:33:32","slug":"for-easton-hemp-cafe-business-as-usual-with-federal-thc-ban-looming-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/52981\/","title":{"rendered":"For Easton hemp cafe, \u2018business as usual\u2019 with federal THC ban looming in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walk into Homegrown Cannabis Store & Cafe<\/a> in Downtown Easton and you\u2019re greeted by a menu of coffee, tea and smoothies on the wall behind a cooler sporting a rainbow of canned beverages.<\/p>\n

Display cases bear cannabis flower and smoking accoutrements, live resin vapes, tinctures, gummies, salves and body oil, pet products like dog treats and more. <\/p>\n

They\u2019re infused with CBD, CBG, THC and other cannabinoids derived naturally from hemp flower grown mostly in Pennsylvania but also by farmers in New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, California and Oregon. <\/p>\n

Open since 2021 after being founded the year prior in the Pocono Mountains, Homegrown\u2019s Easton location a block off Centre Square is part of a national hemp industry that is worth an estimated $24-28 billion and has been suddenly thrown into limbo.<\/p>\n

Buried in the bill that ended the record-long federal government shutdown last month was a provision to ban any products with more than 0.4 milligrams of THC<\/a>, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana but which can also be derived from CBD in hemp.<\/p>\n

Now, hemp farmers, industry groups and small-business owners like Homegrown CEO and co-founder Nicholas Martens are scrambling to save their livelihoods before the provision takes effect in November 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo right now it\u2019s business as usual,\u201d Martens told lehighvalleylive.com<\/a> on a recent Wednesday morning, in between running his Easton and Stroudsburg locations and preparing to offer his products in one of the vendor huts at the Easton Winter Village<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"ForHomegrown Cannabis Store & Cafe CEO and co-founder Nicholas Martens is photographed in front of display cases offering hemp-derived cannabis products Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025, at his 436 Northampton St., Easton, location.Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com<\/p>\n

But if the ban stands, any package containing more than 0.4 milligrams of THC in hemp-derived consumer products would become illegal. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo that eliminates the plant itself being able to be grown (and) 95% of the products that are created from it,\u201d Martens said.<\/p>\n

How did we get here?<\/p>\n

Homegrown\u2019s Pennsylvania stores operate outside the state\u2019s medical marijuana program as well as the recreational adult-use marijuana legal frameworks in states like New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Marijuana and hemp are varieties of the same plant species, Cannabis sativa. Marijuana is cultivated for high levels of THC in its flowers. Low-THC hemp is grown for its sturdy fibers, food or wellness products. \u201cRope, not dope\u201d was long the motto of farmers who supported legalizing hemp.<\/p>\n

After states began legalizing marijuana for adult use over a decade ago, hemp advocates saw an opening at the federal level. As part of the 2018 farm bill, Congress legalized the cultivation of industrial hemp to give farmers, including in Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell\u2019s home state of Kentucky, a new cash crop.<\/p>\n

But the way that law defined hemp \u2014 as having less than 0.3% of a specific type of THC, called delta-9 \u2014 opened a huge loophole. Beverages or bags of snacks could meet that threshold while still containing more than enough THC to get people high. Businesses could further exploit the law by extracting a non-impairing compound, called CBD, and chemically changing it into other types of impairing THC, such as delta-8 or delta-10.<\/p>\n

The result? Vape oil, gummy candies, chips, cookies, sodas and other unregulated, untested products laden with hemp-derived THC spread around the country. In many places, they have been available at gas stations or convenience stores, even to teens. In legal marijuana states, they undercut heavily taxed and regulated products. In others, they evaded the prohibition on recreational use of weed. Some states have reported spikes in calls to poison-control centers for pediatric exposure to THC.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved any drug products containing CBD and prohibits retailers from making any unsubstantiated claims about unapproved products\u2019 therapeutic benefits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dozens of states have since taken steps to regulate or ban impairing hemp products. Jake Sitler, president of the PA Hemp & Cannabis Guild<\/a>, is among those calling for Pennsylvania to regulate the hemp-products industry.<\/p>\n

Sneaking a nationwide ban into a must-pass vote is not the way to go about it, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis didn\u2019t happen in a public forum where it\u2019s like you can openly debate it,\u201d Sitler told lehighvalleylive.com<\/a>. \u201cSo I think that\u2019s the biggest gripe here, right, is a lot of this industry has actually asked for regulation for a long period of time, especially in Pennsylvania.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitler\u2019s road to advocating for the nation\u2019s 330,000 jobs in the hemp industry and the tenfold more Americans who say they find relief from its products began with a 2018 bicycle crash. A professional rider, he raced all across North America and Europe before the crash left him nearly paralyzed. The Farm Bill passed that year opened the door to being able to work through his recovery without opioids, he said, and today he and wife Jamie run a cafe in Lancaster and a national cannabis beverage company both under the name Endo.<\/p>\n

Additional year extension sought<\/p>\n

This week, he began speaking with the teams of Pennsylvania\u2019s U.S. Sens. John Fetterman and David McCormick, respectively Democrat and Republican, on the possibilities of at least a one-year extension before the hemp-products ban would take effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s just say that does happen,\u201d he said. \u201cThat now gives us two years to hash out regulation within the federal government while also trying to create a systemic system within the state of Pennsylvania.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even the one-year window has given the industry hope that there is time to pass regulations that will improve the hemp THC industry \u2014 such as by banning synthetically derived THC, requiring age restrictions on sales and prohibiting marketing to children \u2014 rather than eradicate it.<\/p>\n

In Minnesota, hemp products have become so popular that Target is now offering THC drinks at some of its stores in the state. They\u2019ve also been a boon to liquor stores and to small Minneapolis brewers like Indeed, where THC drinks make up close to one-quarter of the business<\/a>. At Bauhaus Brew Labs, a few blocks away, THC drinks account for 26% of their revenues from distributed products and 11% of revenues at the brewery\u2019s taproom.<\/p>\n

None of that was what McConnell intended when he helped craft the 2018 farm bill. He finally closed the loophole by inserting a federal hemp THC ban in the measure to end the 43-day federal government shutdown, approved by the Senate on Nov. 10.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will keep these dangerous products out of the hands of children, while preserving the hemp industry for farmers,\u201d McConnell said. \u201cIndustrial hemp and CBD will remain legal for industrial applications.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some in the legal marijuana industry celebrated, as the ban would end what they consider unfair competition.<\/p>\n

They were joined by prohibitionists. \u201cThere\u2019s really no good argument for allowing these dangerous products to be sold in our country,\u201d said Kevin Sabet, president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana.<\/p>\n

The industry group U.S. Hemp Roundtable argues that the federal ban would not only jeopardize the hundreds of thousands of jobs but also cost states $1.5 billion in lost tax revenue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very hopeful that cooler heads will prevail,\u201d said Jonathan Miller, the group\u2019s general counsel. \u201cIf they really thought there was a health emergency, there would be no year-long period.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ForEaston is home to one of two locations of Homegrown Cannabis Store & Cafe, in addition to Stroudsburg.Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com<\/p>\n

Martens, speaking inside Homegrown\u2019s 436 Northampton St. location, said he\u2019s closely monitoring the avenues this fight could take \u2014 either through new regulation at the federal or state level, or the hemp industry gets a seat at the table as Pennsylvania lawmakers debate opening adult-use recreational sales of marijuana and its array of intoxicating products. <\/p>\n

Homegrown\u2019s hemp-derived products are laboratory-tested and include many with effects that don\u2019t include intoxication, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the people that want benefit of cannabis, not the intoxication aspect, they\u2019re going to be left hanging,\u201d Martens said. \u201cThose people that don\u2019t have access to even medical marijuana in their state or recreational, then they\u2019ll be pushed off to the black market.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Walk into Homegrown Cannabis Store & Cafe in Downtown Easton and you\u2019re greeted by a menu of coffee,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":{"0":"post-52981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}