linkedin poet
While doing F'nAround, Michael started calling me the LinkedIn poet…
I’m restricted here, not as bad as X, but limited. So when I analyze these, I don’t cover everything. I focus on what I find that actually matters to businesses, activists, and anyone getting screwed over. If there’s something specific you want my take on, just ask.
SB0020 isn’t just a loophole it’s a direct hit on the Illinois Hemp Business Association, Illinois Hemp Growers Association, & consumers. This bill radically changes the law to allow licensed cannabis cultivators and processors to buy hemp, extract THC, & sell it as cannabis. That alone is a massive shift. But what’s worse? It doesn’t help Illinois growers at all. It completely cuts them out.
Before this bill, hemp farmers here had two options. They could sell their hemp to retail markets, gas stations, head shops, online stores or they could process it for fiber, food, or CBD. What they couldn’t do was sell hemp-derived THC to dispensaries because Illinois law required all cannabis products to come from licensed Illinois cannabis growers. That changes with SB0020, but not in the way it should have. Instead of opening dispensary sales to Illinois hemp farmers, the bill lets cannabis businesses buy their hemp from anywhere. That means Illinois-grown hemp isn’t protected, prioritized, or even part of the plan.
Why would an Illinois cannabis company buy from a local hemp farmer when they can source dirt-cheap, federally legal hemp from Oregon, Kentucky, or even international suppliers? The answer is, they won’t. The Illinois hemp industry just lost what could have been a revenue stream before it even got started.
And let’s be clear, this bill wasn’t written to protect small cannabis cultivators either. It benefits the biggest cannabis companies in the state. The MSOs that already dominate Illinois’ cannabis market now have a new trick: they don’t have to grow their own cannabis anymore. They can just buy cheap hemp, extract THC, and sell it as dispensary cannabis at full price. The processing infrastructure already exists, and they have the capital to buy hemp at scale.
For consumers, this bill is just another way to push all THC sales into dispensaries, where prices are higher, taxes are heavier, and competition barely exists. If you were buying legal hemp-derived THC at a smoke shop or online before, expect those products to disappear or become significantly more expensive. Same product, different supply chain, higher price tag.
This wasn’t about fairness. It wasn’t about improving Illinois’ cannabis laws. It was a calculated move to kill independent hemp sales, block Illinois hemp farmers from competing, and hand the entire market to dispensary operators. So the real question is, when they wrote this bill why didn’t they protect local Illinois businesses?
104TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
State of Illinois
2025 and 2026
SB0020