RI Hemp Farmer Presses AG Candidates on Federal Hemp Rules

September 6, 2026

Photo via Unsplash.

Mike Simpson has spent the better part of a year trying to get Rhode Island's political class to think harder about hemp before they weigh in on it. Simpson co-founded Lovewell Farms in 2018, the state's only USDA-certified organic hemp farm, and he's now published his third op-ed pressing candidates for state attorney general to answer a set of pointed questions about where they stand on federal hemp policy. The timing isn't an accident. It lands just ahead of the September 9 Democratic primary, where four candidates are competing to succeed term-limited Attorney General Peter Neronha.

The stakes here go beyond who gets the title. Rhode Island's attorney general has been signing multistate letters that shape how Congress defines hemp nationally, and those letters carry real weight in Washington. Simpson's question is simple but consequential: does the person signing those letters actually know what Rhode Island's regulated hemp market looks like, or are they rubber-stamping language written by attorneys general in states with very different industries and very different politics? As always, cannabis and hemp law varies significantly by state, and readers should confirm current Rhode Island rules before making business or purchasing decisions.

Who Is Mike Simpson and Why This Is His Third Op-Ed

Mike Simpson isn't a random farmer venting online. He co-founded Lovewell Farms in 2018, and it remains the only hemp operation in Rhode Island to hold USDA organic certification, which puts him in a small club of growers who've navigated federal organic standards on top of the already tangled hemp regulatory landscape. Before Lovewell, Simpson worked as deputy director for Regulate Rhode Island, the advocacy group that pushed for adult-use marijuana legalization in the state, and he served as an initiative coordinator for the Marijuana Policy Project in Maine. That background matters here because he's not approaching hemp policy as an outsider watching from the sidelines -- he's spent years inside both the advocacy and cultivation sides of this industry.

This is his third op-ed on the subject in roughly a year, following two earlier pieces that laid out how federal hemp policy shifts have hit Rhode Island farmers and small businesses. The throughline across all three is consistent: Simpson keeps pushing readers and policymakers to separate two things that keep getting conflated in federal debates -- regulated markets versus unregulated ones, and intoxicating products versus non-intoxicating ones. His argument is that sloppy federal definitions punish farmers operating in states like Rhode Island that already have testing, licensing, and labeling requirements in place, while doing little to stop the unregulated intoxicating hemp products sold online or in gas stations that actually prompted the federal crackdown in the first place. It's a distinction that sounds technical until you realize entire farm businesses live or die based on which side of that line federal rulemakers decide to draw.

What Neronha Signed, and What the New AG Will Inherit

Last October, Attorney General Peter Neronha joined 38 other state attorneys general in a letter urging Congress to change the federal definition of hemp. Then on August 4, he signed a second multistate letter, this one urging Congress to reject any effort to delay, repeal, suspend, or otherwise weaken the hemp restrictions that were enacted into law in November 2025. That August letter makes a specific claim: that the new federal definition preserves safe, nonintoxicating hemp products and won't inhibit hemp cultivation. Simpson disputes that characterization directly, arguing it doesn't match what he and other Rhode Island growers are actually seeing on the ground.

Neronha is term-limited, so he won't be the one dealing with the consequences of that letter or any that follow it. Whoever wins the attorney general's race in November inherits the authority to sign these national letters on Rhode Island's behalf going forward, effectively speaking for the state's farmers and regulators in a fast-moving federal fight. Reports suggest that Rhode Island's congressional delegation, Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, factored letters like Neronha's into their own opposition to stripping hemp provisions in Congress. That's the leverage Simpson is pointing to: these AG letters don't just sit in a file somewhere, they appear to move actual votes in Washington, which is exactly why he wants the next signer to get the underlying policy right.

The Questions Simpson Wants Candidates to Answer

Photo by Hemp Factory Outlet via Unsplash.

Simpson's op-ed isn't just a complaint -- it lays out specific questions he wants each candidate to answer on the record. First, do they support the federal standard capping THC at 0.4 milligrams per container, even though that threshold would ban non-intoxicating products that are currently legal to sell under Rhode Island law? That's not a hypothetical for growers like Simpson; it's a line that determines which of their existing products stay on shelves.

Second, will candidates commit to actually consulting state regulators, farmers, and hemp business owners before signing onto national letters that make factual claims about what Rhode Island's market looks like? The August letter's assertion that the new definition won't inhibit cultivation is precisely the kind of claim Simpson thinks needed a phone call to actual farmers before it went out under Rhode Island's name.

Third, do candidates intend to defend Rhode Island's existing approach, which regulates hemp rather than banning it outright, or would they be willing to abandon that framework under federal pressure? And fourth, Simpson wants candidates to draw a clear line between synthetic and naturally occurring cannabinoids rather than supporting blanket restrictions that treat lab-modified compounds the same as products derived straight from the plant. Together, these four questions function as a test of whether a future attorney general understands the hemp industry as it actually operates in Rhode Island, rather than treating it as a rounding error in a broader marijuana policy conversation.

The Primary Field and the Cannabis Baggage Some Candidates Carry

The Democratic primary is set for September 9, though Ballotpedia lists it as September 8, and it features four candidates: Kim Ahern, Keith Hoffmann, Rep. Jason Knight, and Rep. Joe Solomon Jr. Each brings a different relationship to cannabis policy, and Simpson's questions are partly designed to surface those differences.

Ahern is drawing particular scrutiny because she previously chaired the state's Cannabis Control Commission, the body overseeing Rhode Island's rollout of adult-use marijuana retail. That rollout has stalled in a way that's become a real political liability: the Commission has yet to license any of the 24 new retail stores envisioned under the 2022 legalization law, years after that law passed. Voters and opponents alike are likely to press Ahern on why that process has moved so slowly under her watch.

Hoffmann brings a different background, having served as an Assistant Attorney General, while Knight and Solomon are both sitting state representatives with legislative records to point to. What Simpson's questions do, effectively, is separate two issues that keep getting lumped together in Rhode Island political coverage: the marijuana retail licensing mess, which is a state-level administrative failure, and hemp regulatory policy, which is playing out mostly through federal definitions and multistate AG letters. A candidate can be well-versed in one and completely unprepared for the other, and Simpson wants voters to know which is which before they cast a ballot.

Why the Federal Clock Just Moved to December 11

The federal timeline just shifted, and it shifted in a way that makes this race even more time-sensitive. On September 1, 2026, the House approved H.R. 6500, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, after the Senate had already passed it 90-6 on August 8. The stopgap funds the federal government through December 11 and, as part of that, pushes back the effective date of the new federal hemp restrictions from November 12 to December 11.

That delay isn't total, though. Synthetic and converted cannabinoids still lose their hemp status on November 12 regardless of what the continuing resolution does, so that piece of the crackdown proceeds on the original schedule. What's been postponed specifically are the total-THC calculation method and the 0.4 milligram-per-container limit, the same standard Simpson wants AG candidates to take a position on. Postponed is the operative word here, not repealed -- the underlying fight over these rules hasn't been resolved, it's just been given another month to play out in Congress.

The bill still awaits the president's signature as of this writing, which leaves a narrow window before whoever wins Rhode Island's attorney general race is sworn in and immediately facing the fallout from whatever Congress decides, or fails to decide, by December 11.

Strip away the campaign-season noise and what's left is a fairly narrow but consequential fact: whoever wins Rhode Island's attorney general race picks up real authority over how the state's hemp industry gets represented in an ongoing federal policy fight, not just a ceremonial title. That authority comes with a signature line on multistate letters that, by all indications, actually influence how members of Congress vote.

Simpson's underlying point, repeated across three op-eds now, is that signing those letters without checking in with the farmers and regulators who actually run Rhode Island's hemp market risks locking in federal rules that don't reflect how that market actually functions. A letter that claims a new definition won't harm cultivation, signed on behalf of a state whose organic hemp farmer says otherwise, is exactly the kind of mismatch he's trying to prevent from happening again.

The December 11 deadline compresses all of this into an uncomfortably tight window. A new attorney general typically gets some runway to settle into the job before facing a defining policy decision. This time, that runway barely exists -- whoever takes office in January could be forced to weigh in on hemp restrictions within weeks, before they've had much chance to build relationships with the state's growers or fully understand what's at stake for an industry most voters have never thought much about. Simpson's op-ed is, in effect, an attempt to get that homework done before the votes are even cast.