A hemp-ban delay divides Alaska's senators in the funding bill

The Senate passed a stopgap funding bill before dawn Saturday, and tucked inside it is a four-week reprieve for intoxicating hemp — the delta-8 gummies, drinks and vapes that Alaska has spent two years trying to run out of its gas stations.

A federal ban on those products is set to take effect Nov. 12, under a law President Trump signed last year that redefined hemp. The stopgap pushes most of the ban to Dec. 11, buying Congress time to write rules instead of banning outright. The delay has the White House's backing, but a bipartisan group tried to strip it out, warning about children reaching THC products packaged to look like Oreos and Skittles. That effort, led by Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina, failed on a 61-32 vote.

Alaska's two senators landed on opposite sides. Sen. Lisa Murkowski voted to keep the ban on schedule; Sen. Dan Sullivan voted to let it slide to December.

The split maps onto a fight Alaska has already had at home. The state moved in 2023 to confine intoxicating hemp products like delta-8 to its licensed, taxed marijuana dispensaries, and a federal court upheld those rules last year. Even so, the state's licensed sellers say the products keep arriving from out of state and turning up in gas stations and convenience stores, undercutting the regulated shops that pay for licenses and taxes. Alaska's cannabis industry has pushed for the kind of federal ban the stopgap now delays.

The bill matters to Alaska as the state draws about a third of its government revenue from Washington — $5.69 billion in fiscal 2023, or 34.8 percent, nine points above the national average — so keeping that money flowing through Dec. 11 carries weight here. The measure passed 90-6, with both senators voting yes, and now heads to the House, which has to pass it first. Murkowski, who called a continuing resolution "no one's preference, and certainly not mine," said Congress should use the months until December to pass its regular spending bills.