John Grady in the Kansas City Star: Why the Hemp Crackdown Hurts Missouri Patients and Small Businesses
This week, John Grady’s opinion piece was published in The Kansas City Star, laying out what many Missouri families, veterans, and small business owners have been living through firsthand.
The article explains how rushed hemp crackdowns are not about public safety, but about eliminating competition, and how those decisions land hardest on people who were already struggling. Veterans managing chronic pain and mental health. Older adults trying to avoid another prescription spiral. Farmers and manufacturers who followed the rules, tested their products, and built businesses in the open.
John writes from experience, not theory. After years of injuries and layered prescriptions through the VA system, hemp-derived products gave him a different option. Not a miracle and not an escape, but a way to manage pain and mental health without being numbed or pushed closer to the edge. That experience is what led John and Kara to become hemp farmers and manufacturers in Missouri, growing, testing, and producing products with transparency and accountability.
The piece also calls out a reality that often goes unsaid. Since Missouri legalized marijuana, the marijuana industry has repeatedly pushed to eliminate hemp as a competing market. State governments have become the tool. Regulatory disagreements turn into enforcement pressure. Lawful agricultural businesses get treated like criminals while the rules stay vague and constantly shifting.
That same playbook is now being scaled nationally. A federal hemp ban was slipped into a funding bill at the last minute, creating regulatory whiplash that threatens farmers and small manufacturers while doing nothing to improve public health. History shows that prohibition-style crackdowns do not remove demand. They push people toward underground markets where nothing is tested and nobody is accountable.
John explains why Kara and he are traveling to Washington, D.C. with the Hemp Industry and Farmers of America fly-in. They are asking for a 24-month extension on enforcement so responsible rules can be written without wrecking livelihoods midstream. Agriculture does not operate on political deadlines. Neither does manufacturing done the right way.
They support real regulation. Clear labeling. Third-party testing. Child-resistant packaging. Strict age gating. What they oppose is lazy lawmaking that punishes the responsible while protecting entrenched interests and creating chaos for everyone else.
If you care about Missouri veterans, patients, farmers, and small businesses, this is worth reading and sharing.
You can read John’s full opinion piece here: Government crackdown on hemp hurts Missouri patients, small businesses | Opinion
If this article reflects your experience, your voice matters. Share it. Talk about it. And keep saying the obvious thing out loud. Hemp deserves real regulation, not a rushed crackdown that hurts the people trying to do it right.
