Inside the THC drinks industry's fight for its life

In November 2025, as those clowns in Congress scrambled end the longest government shutdown on record, they passed legislation to effectively ban hemp-derived tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) at the federal level. Powerful trade groups like the Consumer Brands Association, the Beer Institute, and the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States lobbied for prohibitionary language; hemp’s strongest soldier in the Senate, Rand Paul, made a dramatic-ish last stand to try to strike it. But it remained in the bill President Donald Trump signed on November 12th, which started a 12-month countdown to the booming, multi-billion-dollar category’s de facto federal death sentence.

Now, Christopher Lackner is hoping to win a stay of execution. The past year has been a rollercoaster for the founder and president of the Hemp Beverage Alliance, riding highs like record attendance at the trade group’s annual conference in July and lows like the Congressional ratfucking in November. With the hemp-derived THC industry on the federal chopping block, he remains remarkably bullish on the nascent category’s prospects. He joins The Fingers Podcast today to talk about the HBA’s quest to clear its name on Capitol Hill, the complicated relationship between the hemp drinks sector and traditional beverage-alcohol industry, and of course, what’s to be done about what one independent newsletter about drinking in America referred to as the THC business’ shithead problem.

The transcript excerpts below have been edited for length and clarity. This interview was recorded January 29th, 2026.

💡 A few highlights from the episode

On the shifting attitude in Congress after the federal ban…

Christopher Lackner: After the dust settled in November, the government opens up, and people are able to take a deep breath, and they see exactly what's happening. They’re seeing that in cases, like in Minnesota in particular, huge, well-established, thriving industries employing hundreds and possibly thousands of people are at risk. And so almost immediately, there was a huge push from the Minnesota delegation, specifically Senator Klobuchar, Senator Tina Smith, and then Representative Angie Craig, coming out loud and vigorously saying, ‘We need to solve this.’ They want this to be resolved because they don't want this best-in-class category that's happening in Minnesota to go away. This has been a game-changer for the craft brewers of Minnesota.

So the ramifications are significant, and in particular in Minnesota, and we're going to see that delegation pushing. But we're also going to see Senator Ron Wyden and Senator Jeff Merkley out of Oregon, helping out. Everybody wants to be the second one in the pool, or the third one in the pool. I think you're going to see more and more representatives and senators coming on board.

On the dosage cap state legislators seem to be coalescing around…

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