To end the shutdown, the Senate voted to destroy the hemp industry

Just when you thought you’d seen it all on Capitol Hill, reopening the federal government appears to have hit yet another roadblock: Hemp.

A day after Democratic Senators reached a deal with their Republican counterparts in the Senate to end the longest government shutdown in history, a vote on the agreement was held up by a provision in the bill that would ban the unregulated sale of hemp-based or derived products. The provision relates to funding for the Department of Agriculture, and was flagged by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, home to a burgeoning hemp industry.

Paul introduced an amendment to strip the language on Monday, but the amendment failed. Subsequently, the Senate passed the bill with the prohibitive language intact. However, the bill, which would impact everything from smo