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Floor Speech
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Mr. RICKETTS. Mr. President, we have a drug problem in this country today, and right now, there is an industry that is targeting our children with look-alike products with intoxicating levels of THC. THC is tetrahydrocannabinol. Now, this is the psychoactive ingredient that you find in marijuana.
How could we possibly let this happen? Well, let's take a step back. In 2018, we passed a farm bill, and at the time, there were those who wanted to separate hemp--a plant that has some THC in it--from cannabis, which is a marijuana plant. Hemp used to be grown in this country, made into rope back in the 1940s.
This is what we were told was going to happen. The bill was written, but in that farm bill, it said you had to keep the THC for delta-9, a certain type of THC, down to 0.3 percent by dry weight. Well, what happened was some clever chemist figured out that you could take this product, which makes CBD oil, right, which is commonly available, and take CBD oil, chemically alter it, and create delta-8 and delta-10, which also have those intoxicating effects.
The problem is, this is all unregulated, and so an industry exploded--an industry that in part targeted our kids with look-alike products that had THC at intoxicating levels, targeted kids with them.
For example, we have an example here of Sour Patch Kids look-alikes. You may say: Why are they doing that? Well, they are trying to grow their market share. Sadly, the outcome was that this past July, a 3- year-old and 4-year-old in Nebraska took these out of their mom's purse and got THC poisoning. Even worse news is that this is not an uncommon occurrence.
We have seen the potency of THC over the last few years, from 1995 to 2021, increase and increase four times. We have seen, since 2016 to 2023, the number of THC poisonings of children under 5 go up 10 times and the number of hospitalizations of children under 5 go up 3 times.
In 2024, that was 620 children under the age of 5 poisoned. Of those children being poisoned, 100 have been hospitalized and ended up on ventilators. This is a serious health risk problem.
And I mention the Sour Patch Kids here, but let's look at some of the other examples of how this industry is targeting and trying to confuse consumers.
Here we have Nerds, a candy many children are familiar with, and a Nerds knockoff that has THC in it. Here we have Fritos--the regular Fritos product that is a safe product--and Fritos with THC in it. Here we have a safe product, again, that looks like gummy worms, and here we have a product with THC in it.
This is an industry that, because we made a mistake in the farm bill in 2018, has taken advantage of a loophole of the law to manufacture delta-8 and delta-10 THC to be able to infuse it into these products.
Now, again, you cannot grow the hemp plant in concentrations to make this. You have to manufacture this. This was done on purpose. It was manufactured. And, by the way, this kind of knockoff doesn't happen by accident either. This was on purpose too. And this is what is poisoning our children. We have to shut this loophole down.
And so last year we did. We actually changed the definition to cover all THC that would be in these types of products; that all THC products would have to stay below that 0.3 percent case. So it is not going to impact CBD oil because that is below 0.3 percent. It wouldn't impact any of those products that are used for clothing or for jewelry because they are all below 0.3 percent.
In fact, the only place it is going to impact is for the intoxicating products that are out there in the marketplace, that are only out there because of this loophole that we created back in 2018.
So, last year in our Ag appropriations bill, we closed this loophole. Now, one of the Senators in our body offered an amendment to strip out that loop--closing the loophole. And we had Republicans and Democrats vote together to stop that amendment--75 Senators, 51 Republicans all came together to say: No, we want to close this loophole.
Well, now in our continuing resolution, somebody has decided to open that loophole back up again. We gave the industry until November 12 to adjust. We said: The loophole has been out there. We are going to give you a year to get your products in line with the new law. It has got to be below 0.3 percent, and you have got until November 12.
But in our current continuing resolution, somebody wants to keep that extended until December 11.
I have cosponsored an amendment with Ted Budd to take that amendment out of the continuing resolution. I am cosponsoring that because we don't need to extend this. This has been out there for a year. People know what is coming. One month more is not going to make a big difference in doing this.
For those of you who say this is going to impact agriculture, I will tell you right now, hemp production in the United States probably presents about 0.0056 percent of all the farmland--49,000 acres--and only 17,000 are using it to grow the kind of hemp that would go into these kinds of products.
There are pilot programs right now on how to use CBD oil in the treatments of things like cancer. They are all out there. They are not going to be impacted. We should let this expire November 12.
My colleague Ted Budd and I--the Senator from North Carolina--we want an amendment vote to be able to take this out of this continuing resolution and call upon my colleagues to help pass it.
This is literally--these high-THC products disguised as candies-- could get into the hands of young children and poison them. It has done so already.
Let's stop this right now because we know when THC gets into young people's minds, it can reduce their IQs, lead to mental health issues, such as suicidal ideation, anxiety, depression. This drug is bad for young people. So let's close this loophole and keep it closed.
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