What is happening in the United States with cannabis and hemp is a clear example of how political decisions can destabilize an entire industry in a matter of days. While some celebrated the growth of legal markets, several states have begun applying regulatory and fiscal brakes that threaten to reverse years of progress.
In Ohio, the governor decided to suspend the sale of hemp-derived products containing THC for sixty days. The measure, presented as a matter of public health, has an immediate effect: it paralyzes the distribution chain, generates million-dollar losses and leaves thousands of small business owners in uncertainty. The most serious thing is not the suspension itself, but the message it sends: the industry may be legal, but it remains politically vulnerable.
In Michigan, the situation is going differently but with the same outcome. The state government approved a 24% wholesale tax on cannabis, a burden that, added to the existing taxes, could bankrupt a good part of the formal operators. Instead of strengthening the regulated market, they push it back towards informality. In the end, who wins is not the State or the consumer, but the black market.
And at the federal level, the outlook is no better. Despite the messages that Donald Trump has launched, such as his recent publication about CBD, consumers and businessmen are no longer fooled by symbolic gestures. Patience is over. Promising regulation without specifying it generates more frustration than hope. The cannabis electorate is more informed and more demanding today; knows how to distinguish between real politics and electoral opportunism.
What we are seeing is a phenomenon of distrust: consumers distrust the government, business owners distrust legal stability, and states distrust federal regulation. That mix is explosive, and if it shows anything, it is that poorly designed legalization can be as harmful as prohibition.
Mexico should take note. We have an advantage that the United States is losing: we can build a cannabis industry from the ground up, learning from its mistakes. But for that we need clear rules, reasonable taxes and a public policy that sees cannabis not as a threat or as an electoral symbol, but as an economic and social opportunity.
The combination of severe state reactions, aggressive taxes and frustrated presidential expectations paints a risky picture. The cannabis industry (hemp included) is not just a technical or agricultural issue: it is deeply political. It is not enough that the law allows it; We must ensure that the practice does not fracture at the first crisis.
The brakes that the United States is putting on hemp is, in reality, a mirror. It shows us what happens when politics prevails over reason. And that is a mistake that we cannot afford to repeat.
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Twitter: @anicannmx
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