Truth in the Barrel
Weeding Out Stagnation In The Hemp Industry | Devil's Cut w Kerry Hinkle
10 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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First planted in Danville in 1775, Kentucky led the country in hemp production during the 1800s and early 1900s. Even our most famous senator here, Henry Clay, grew hemp on his farm in Lexington. So after decades, though, of decline and criminalization of hemp at the state and federal level, slowly but surely, the hemp industry is now making a comeback.
Hemp has provided economic opportunity for people and farmers in Kentucky, but it's facing some real challenges at the federal level right now. Today on this Devil's Cut edition of Truth in the Barrel, we're talking with Kerry Hinkle, Director of National Policy at Bayou City Hemp, to talk about what's going on in the industry. Kerry, welcome. Hey, Amy, thanks for having me.
It's a pleasure to be here. And I'll tell you, it's never a slow day in this crazy world of hemp. So I'm excited to see where we go with this. Well, actually, I think it's really important for people to just get the sense of what is hemp anyway and why should we care? I know it's really important for Kentucky and we'll talk about that. But like, what is it anyway? Does it help people? Yeah.
That it does. And, you know, I've been in this industry now since before the 2018 Farm Bill was signed. And I've seen it mature from when I used to work in a CBD shop and I would sell gross oil to my customers and say, you know, if it tastes bad, it works good kind of thing to where now we've evolved into...
all kinds of form factors and supplement categories in that I can get hemp drinks, hemp topicals, capsules, you name it, hemp's got it. And the idea is that hemp is a supplement that helps people usually with sleep, anxiety, pain, all kinds of ailments. And it's just a natural alternative for a lot of folks. And When you talk about beverages, it might be an alternative to other substances.
It might be like alcohol. When you talk about a tablet, it might be, you know, instead of taking a Xanax to sleep, I might take a CBD capsule or maybe I use a cream on my back after I get done playing basketball. Does it relax you? What does it do for you? Yeah, it depends on the format you take, right? So if I rub a cream on my elbow, I'm not going to feel less relaxed, right?
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Chapter 2: What is the historical significance of hemp in Kentucky?
And Kentucky is important with tobacco farmers too. We had a lot of tobacco farmers switch over to grow hemp. And that's primarily why Mitch McConnell was one of the biggest champions of this. And he's flipped that switch now. Kerry, what does de-scheduling mean for those of us that don't follow this? Yeah. Yeah. And I've been doing it so long. Forgive me.
Sometimes I say these words like they're common knowledge. And so I'm glad you're giving me the breaks here. So right now, you know, marijuana is a schedule one drug. So it is looked at in the same vein as heroin or other harmful narcotics and that it would have no deemed medical benefit.
Well, hemp, again, in the field at under 0.3%, was still a Schedule I drug in 2018 until the Farm Bill was signed. And so by descheduling it, you open up interstate commerce so that you can ship products across the country. You open up research opportunities. And really, you've created what's now a $28 billion industry, thanks to the definition of hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill.
And it's been an interesting year. free market experience experiment in that the way that that bill was written, you can manipulate products to have different amounts of THC in them. And so we've seen some products have way too high of limits and states have come in to regulate those milligram limits, to regulate the packaging, the testing, the manufacturing standard.
States like Kentucky have really stepped up Absent federal regulation. And, you know, again, you'll have different things like a beverage or a topical or a tincture that are going to do different things. And so we've all seen over seven, eight years now, like what a market maturity looks like to have descheduled THC.
And we're coming around to this idea that really five milligram beverages are really freaking popular. Actually, today, on January 27th, United Center in Chicago just announced that they're going to carry five milligram hemp THC beverages. So the largest arena in the country today announced they're going to start carrying these products.
And we're going to see that develop more and more across the country, I think. So, Kerry, so what happened is... We have this new market. You get rid of the scheduling. You have this new market for Kentucky, for farmers, growing, promising market, promising industry. But at the federal level, not fully regulated. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Yeah, it's really tricky, especially the company I work for. We're a manufacturer, so we create our own products, labels, et cetera. And so right now, ever since the 2018 Farm Bill passed, like the day after, the FDA commissioner at the time said, we do not have the ability to regulate hemp products.
You know, under the current Deshaies law, which is responsible for regulating dietary supplements. they have a narrow view of certain form factors that can be considered a dietary supplement.
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Chapter 3: What challenges does the hemp industry currently face?
But as we've touched on, HIP products have so many different form factors that Congress hasn't been able to properly regulate this product. And so absent that federal regulation, a few politicians like Senator McConnell have decided to use a few bad actors and try to throw the entire baby out with the bathwater and So right now we are facing a November 13th ban date.
And so this year on November 13th, if absent an extension or regulatory bills that are being proposed that I'm happy to get into, this industry is going to go away, but it's not going to. it's not like consumers are going to stop getting their hands on these products.
It's really just going to funnel black market and drug people that are never going to check IDs and make sure they're making the products the right way. This is truly only going to hurt good operators in the space. And it's in part due to FDA not regulating and in part because Congress never told FDA how to regulate it. It's like this idea of when you go and you buy something, I believe...
in America, we should know what we're buying. We should know. And we have some laws on this for things that you buy. You go and you buy a can of Coke. And you know, okay, there's this much sugar in here. There's this much of other things. And that's government regulation. But What I hear from you is there's not that happening right now.
And so when you talk about there are a few bad actors out there, what does that mean? There has been some self-regulatory from the industry, right? Like I have my can here. We have all the ingredients listed. We have third-party testing. There's a QR code on the product. So you use your phone, use a QR code. It'll take you to a testing site.
landing page that shows you it's been tested for heavy metals and microbials and all the things you don't want in your product. So we do those third party independent testing and labeling standards because we want to be good actors. The bad actors are a lot of them are actually coming in from China, too.
It's very unfortunate because hemp has been a very unique American success story, especially on the manufacturing side. You know, we have 100 employees and we're creating manufacturing jobs. And to see that go away is really disheartening.
And absent that, you're just going to get more products that look like Oreos or Skittles that have thousands of milligrams of THC that are clearly appealing to children. And again, I've heard them called like Stonios, right? That kind of thing, this industry does not want because we want to be in the United Center where the Blackhawks and the Bulls play.
We want to be in those big mainstream retail markets. And if they continue to shine light on the bad actors rather than the 90% of us doing it the right way, like... It's really tricky to navigate. So if we could just get a few baselines at the federal level that don't wipe out this industry and instead have a clear level headed approach to this.
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Chapter 4: How did the 2018 Farm Bill impact hemp regulation?
But it's about the federal government just propping up some basic guidelines that we can all agree on and then letting the states kind of handle some of this. I got you. And in the cases of alcohol, there are some rules states seem to be able to have out there in terms of purchasing, when they can purchase, what stores, all that.
Even when you go and you buy a bottle of bourbon, in Indiana, it might be restricted in certain counties, or even in Kentucky, you might not be able to get it in certain areas. But Yeah. You know, it's it's relevant to 100 years where prohibition with alcohol was broken. Right. And we needed to have some standards that caught up to people making the stuff in their basement.
And, you know, absent the federal government doing anything here, like federal manufacturing, labeling and testing guidelines, companies have stepped up and states have stepped up. But again, like all of this goes away. If we don't change what McConnell put in that continuing resolution. And right now it's even it's a little in the weeds, the lack of a pun for you.
But, you know, in the in the bill, it says that you cannot have point four milligrams of THC in your product. You cannot exceed that. But you also cannot manufacture outside of the plant. Well, in order for me as a manufacturer to extract my CBD and then strip away the THC, Amy, I have to manufacture outside of the plant.
So even if I got to this made up product that Mitch McConnell wants me to get to, I have to break the law by manufacturing outside of the plant. So it doesn't make any sense to real life business and farming implications. And it's really short sighted and especially our farming partners.
They are buying seeds right now, and they don't know if what they plant in the ground is going to be legal in six months. And so our farmers are going to be the ones that get hurt the worst on this if we can't get this extension and then some kind of regulatory solution down the road. Are you hopeful right now for this extension? Are you hopeful for the industry?
You think we're going to get through this? I mean, we have to. Right. I like to joke Congress has ADHD and they only look at the shiny thing that's right in front of them. And so, you know, thanks to McConnell and Andy Harris from Maryland, who was his House counterpart on this. We are that shiny thing.
So each day we're getting new co-sponsors on the on the Baird and Craig extension on the House side. But right now, our biggest challenge is finding a Senate Republican other than Rand Paul that's going to really stick their neck out for us. And so that's our challenge as an industry is finding some more allies on that side of the aisle.
But again, it just doesn't feel like it makes a lot of sense to throw away a $28 billion American made industry. It feels like there's a better way here. I wish you were in office now. It'd be great to work with you now. Well, awesome to talk with you. I really learned a lot about this.
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