Attorney General Rhea signs a 35-jurisdiction letter telling Congress not to delay the federal hemp ban

As of August 9, 2026. Virgin Islands Attorney General Gordon C. Rhea has signed a letter asking congressional leaders to leave the federal hemp ban alone. The August 4 letter went to House and Senate leadership and to the chairs of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, and it asks Congress to reject any effort to delay, repeal, suspend, or weaken the redefinition of hemp enacted in November 2025. Thirty-five jurisdictions signed. The Virgin Islands is the only one that is not a state.

The territory already prohibits the products at issue. The letter puts the Virgin Islands on record about the federal rule that sits beneath its own law.

What the letter asks for

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, and New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez led the effort. Griffin’s office published the letter and the full list of signers on August 4.

The redefinition the letter defends comes from the federal spending law signed November 12, 2025, which takes effect one year later. It replaces the 2018 Farm Bill standard of 0.3 percent delta-9 THC by dry weight with a total-THC measurement and caps finished hemp products at 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container. Per Marijuana Moment, the letter credits that change with having “protected consumers, provided much-needed regulatory clarity, and preserved legitimate industrial, agricultural, and nonintoxicating hemp markets,” and warns that “if the loophole is reopened or the new definition is weakened or repealed, States will face renewed litigation.”

Rhea’s own statement, published by the V.I. Department of Justice, reads:

The U.S. Virgin Islands supports a regulatory framework that protects the public while providing clarity for responsible businesses. Preserving Congress’s updated definition of hemp helps close a dangerous loophole that allowed intoxicating hemp-derived products to enter the marketplace with limited oversight. Maintaining this framework promotes consistency, strengthens consumer protections, and gives states the certainty they need to effectively enforce the law.

The timing

The letter went out two days after Senate Appropriations Committee leaders released the text of a continuing resolution that would push most of the federal hemp restrictions from November 12 to December 11, 2026. In the first week of August, Senate appropriators moved to delay the ban, and two days later the Virgin Islands and 34 states asked Congress not to.

What it changes here

Nothing on a Virgin Islands shelf turns on the federal date. Act 9072, signed by Governor Albert Bryan Jr. on January 23, 2026 and effective on signing, already prohibits the sale, possession, or manufacture of THCA, delta-6 THC, delta-8 THC, delta-10 THC, and other intoxicating hemp and artificially derived cannabinoid products in the territory without a license. It had been in force 193 days on the date of the letter, and no license has been issued.

Territorial law is broader than federal law on this category, and it will stay that way whether the federal definition takes effect in November or December. The practical stake for the territory is durability rather than timing. A federal standard that holds keeps supply of these products limited at the source. A federal standard that is delayed and then narrowed would leave the Virgin Islands enforcing a ban on goods that stay lawful to make and ship almost everywhere else.

This is the second time in nine months Rhea has joined a multistate letter on the subject. On October 27, 2025, before the federal law was enacted, Rhea was one of 39 attorneys general who urged Congress to stop the sale of intoxicating hemp-derived THC products. The August letter asks Congress to keep the rule it then passed.

The local rules are unfinished

The Cannabis Advisory Board took up the first draft of the Act 9072 regulations at its July 30 meeting, past the April deadline that Office of Cannabis Regulation Executive Director Joanne Moorehead had described as the end of the agency’s rulemaking window. The licensed hemp retail track the law created has not opened.

The inventory provision that drew a federal temporary restraining order in February is no longer in the law. Act 9079 replaced it in March with deadlines for retailers to report and sell off existing stock.

What to watch

The federal fiscal year ends September 30, and House votes on a continuing resolution are expected after Labor Day. Whether the hemp delay survives will show whether the 35-signature letter moved anything. Locally, the next markers are the public comment period on the draft Act 9072 rules and their adoption. Retailers waiting on the licensed track have no date to work toward until OCR sets one.