ALBANY — Pet tinctures and topicals are the most popular products sold at Oregon CBD Company, a small business located at the junction of the Willamette Valley town’s busiest roads. Pet owners use them to treat their pets’ anxiety or pain — and in some cases they use similar products to treat their own.
Those products used to line most of the store’s shelves. Now, those shelves are empty as the store plans to close by the end of this month in response to a new federal law that will ban most of the products it sells by the end of the year.
Muscle rubs, aromatherapy soaps and body washes make up the majority of what’s left in the store. A “for rent” sign sits outside of the building while buy-one, get-one-free flyers sit on top of the store’s mostly empty tables.
The other half of the building, Oregon Cannabis Company, is a dispensary under the same owner that will remain open. The difference between the two stores’ products is that one sells items made from hemp, and the other, from marijuana.
Hemp and marijuana are from the same plant species, but hemp has much lower levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC — the psychoactive component of the plant that provides a “high” feeling among marijuana users. Hemp is most commonly used for its nonimpairing chemical compound cannabidiol, known as CBD.
“The easiest way to explain CBD is that it is like a healthier version of ibuprofen,” store manager Leslie Frost told the Capital Chronicle from behind a cash register and an empty display case.
Before becoming manager, Frost was taking 1,200 milligrams of ibuprofen a day to manage chronic migraines and pain from a knee surgery before turning to CBD products. For the past few years, she’s helped a growing number of Oregonians, particularly the elderly, with similar experiences find products that work for them.
Frost and her coworkers aren’t out of a job or losing hours because there’s still enough business coming in through the company’s dispensary side. The biggest hit to the business will be the loss of its customers who bought CBD products for their pets, Frost said.
Federal changes target unintended hemp loophole
Amid the country’s longest government shutdown in late 2025, Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, added an amendment to a government funding bill dramatically narrowing the definition of hemp.
The law repeals the very law McConnell championed in 2018 when he introduced a farm bill that legalized the cultivation of hemp plants with a THC concentration of 0.3% or lower by dry weight. The law was meant to allow an agricultural market for hemp-based textiles, animal feeds and human wellness products centered on CBD products.
The new hemp law closes an unintended legal loophole of the 2018 law that opened the door for hemp manufacturers to convert legal hemp plants into potent forms of synthetic marijuana, Stateline reported.
The law bans the sale of any “hemp-derived cannabinoid product” with more than 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container, which is most hemp-derived products such as edibles, tinctures and beverages. It was set to take effect in November, but Congress pushed its effective date to Dec. 11.
‘They’re not going to have access anymore’: Hemp seed farmer talks federal changes
“The law essentially ends the hemp industry,” said Seth Crawford, the co-owner of Oregon CBD Seeds, an Independence-based company that supplies 75% of the hemp seed grown in the country.
Crawford and other farmers can continue to grow hemp under the new federal law, but he said he doesn’t anticipate he’ll have as many people buying seeds since there won’t be as many processors that can make hemp-derived products that meet the new guidelines.
Crawford and his brother started their hemp seed business in 2014, shortly after Oregon legalized recreational marijuana. Noticing the potential market for hemp-based products, Crawford, who has a public policy background, and his brother, who has a horticulture background, teamed up to create a hemp seed farm as well as an internationally leading cannabis research lab.
Their 50-acre farm off Oregon Highway 99W is home to several greenhouses, dozens of grow tents, solar panels and millions of dollars worth of research equipment used to understand the genetic structure of hemp varieties.
Their business was recovering from a years-long decline in sales following the pandemic when Congress passed the law. Unless Congress finds a fix, which several Democratic members have tried, Crawford said his plan is to focus on selling hemp seeds to home growers.
“I can kind of understand why it has been swept under the rug while we’re worrying about whether or not we’re going to have free and open elections in November,” Crawford said.
Part of Crawford’s interest in medical cannabis grew out of taking care of his dog, a yellow lab named Berkley, who had arthritis in his hips. Crawford would make him a CBD oil that he would put into a cookie and feed it to him. It gave him nearly four extra years of mobility towards the end of his life and it helped him during seizures, he said.
“The CBD products that people are expecting to be available to give to their dogs for arthritis or to give to their parents because they’re aging and have aches and pains that are helped by some of these cannabinoids, they’re not going to have access to them anymore,” he said.
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