A single mature industrial hemp plant in sharp focus at the edge of a field in late afternoon light, with the rest of the crop softly blurred behind it

The FDA Still Hasn't Published the Hemp Lists Congress Ordered

On Thursday, November 12, some products sitting on hemp shelves stop counting as hemp under federal law. On Friday, December 11, many more follow. The agency Congress told to explain where those lines fall still hasn't published a word of it.

When Congress rewrote the federal definition of hemp last fall, it gave the Food and Drug Administration 90 days to publish three lists of cannabinoids and more detail on what counts as a "container." That deadline was Tuesday, February 10, 2026. In its October 28 legal analysis, the Congressional Research Service put it in one line: "FDA has not published any of these items."

We checked the Federal Register again on November 3. Still nothing. Here's what's missing, and why it lands on your shelf.

What Congress told the FDA to publish

The order sits in section 781 of Public Law 119-37, which was signed on November 12, 2025. The text is reproduced in the statutory notes to 7 U.S.C. 1639o on Cornell's Legal Information Institute. Within 90 days, working with other federal agencies, FDA was supposed to publish:

a list of every cannabinoid it knows the cannabis plant can naturally produce, "as reflected in peer reviewed literature"
a list of the THC-class cannabinoids known to occur naturally in the plant
a list of other known cannabinoids with effects similar to THC-class cannabinoids, or marketed that way
more information and specificity on the term "container"

CRS flagged the gap in its September 28 update, noting that "such a list has not been published." A month later, it said the same about all four items.

Why the first list matters on November 12

On November 12, according to CRS, products containing cannabinoids "not capable of being naturally produced by the cannabis plant will not be classified as hemp, and will be treated as controlled substances to the extent they fall within the CSA's definition of marijuana or THC." CRS gives THC-O as an example of a compound that "does not occur naturally in cannabis."

We back this part of the law. Lab-made intoxicants don't belong on a hemp shelf, and compounds the plant can't make shouldn't be sold as hemp. A rule like that works best when everyone can see exactly where the line is. The first list was meant to be the government's own answer, built from peer-reviewed science, to the question of what the plant actually makes. With Thursday, November 12, nine days away, shop owners and testing labs are drawing that line without it.

Why "similar effects" and "container" matter on December 11

On December 11, the rest of the new definition takes effect, including the federal cap: 0.4 milligrams of total THC and other cannabinoids with similar effects, combined, per container. Two pieces of that sentence depend on homework the FDA hasn't turned in.

The first is "similar effects." The statute says which compounds count is "as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services." The third list was supposed to show the public which cannabinoids the agency has in mind. Shoppers, shops and labs have no such list.

The second is "container." The law defines it as "the innermost wrapping, packaging, or vessel in direct contact with" the product, "such as a jar, bottle, bag, box, packet, can, carton, or cartridge," and it excludes bulk shipping containers. Congress still asked the FDA for "additional information and specificity" about that term, CRS notes. Lawmakers wrote the definition themselves and still wanted the agency to spell it out. That tells you how much rides on it. A cap measured per container lands very differently depending on where one container ends and the next begins, and the people who make, test and sell these products are being asked to guess.

What the silence costs

The deadline came and went in February. Congress's own researchers kept checking. On September 28 and again on October 28, they still found nothing published. Each month without the lists is a month where a rule written to clean up the market gets read in different ways: by suppliers, by labs, by state regulators and by the shop down the street.

We aren't asking the FDA to rush out a sloppy list. We're asking for the basic information Congress ordered, before the dates that depend on it. A shop owner placing a holiday order deserves to know which products the government thinks are covered. So does the person buying from that shop.

What you can do before the lists arrive

If you run a shop, keep the certificate of analysis for every product you carry, make sure it reports each cannabinoid by name, and ask suppliers in writing how their cannabinoids are made. If a product depends on a compound the plant doesn't make, pull it. That's the line we support.

Shoppers can do their part too: ask the store for the lab report. Good shops hand it over without a fuss.

And everyone can push Congress on the cap. In September, lawmakers passed an extension, Public Law 119-103, that moved most of the new definition to December 11 while letting the exclusion for cannabinoids the plant cannot naturally produce take effect on November 12, CRS reports. That part was the right call. The cap still needs a real fix: regulate the real plant, ban the fake stuff, 21 and up, tested and honestly labeled. Regulate it. Don't eliminate it.

Your senators and representative are the ones who can fix this before December 11. Tell them to regulate hemp, not eliminate it.

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