Op-Ed: Paige Figi: The CBD ban Congress never debated

Tucked deep inside the spending bill to reopen the government last November is a provision by Senator Mitch McConnell that threatens to hurt the lives of millions of vulnerable Americans. Abackroom deal with no committee hearing, no markup, or public comment, that effectively bans full-spectrum, hemp-derived, low-THC cannabidiol (CBD) products. The same products that wereauthorized overwhelmingly by Congress in 2018 for all 50 states, and relied on by families with epileptic children who don’t respond to pharmaceuticals, veterans, athletes, and millions of Americans suffering from chronic pain.

November 12 is marked as ‘Federal CBD Ban Day’ as a result of a justifiably – yet poorly crafted –  effort to sweep synthetically altered “gas station” drugs. This ban caps THC content at 0.4 milligrams per container, which is a catastrophic overreach and will effectively eliminate non-intoxicating hemp products, even when used for life-saving and wellness purposes. The McConnell amendment inartfully threw the baby out with the bathwater and puts American lives at risk.

Over a decade ago, my daughter Charlotte was experiencing up to 1,200 seizures a month, caused by her Dravet Syndrome. After exhausting every solution offered by doctors and clinicians, I discovered the anti-convulsant benefits of low-THC CBD. I worked with scientists, policymakers, and farmers to develop the precise specifications needed to produce high-quality CBD oil. I administered that oil through her feeding tube and watched a miracle unfold before my eyes. My daughter – once riddled with seizures every day – transformed back into the joyful little girl she once was, almost entirely seizure-free.

Although Charlotte passed away in 2020 from other complications, her story sparked a nationwide movement. Mothers from across the country came together to fight for the one thing that actually works for their children’s conditions: non-intoxicating, non-psychoactive, full-spectrum CBD oil.

Today, 45 million children, veterans, seniors, and athletes rely on CBD every day to help manage conditions such as epilepsy, PTSD, insomnia, depression, and chronic pain. Full-spectrum CBD does not get these Americans high – it improves their health, restores their quality of life, and provides relief when other treatments have fallen short.

The science is clear: full-spectrum CBD is a non-intoxicating wellness product and should not be categorized alongside intoxicating cannabis products. These products have been studied, tested, and used safely by millions of Americans. Lumping them in with synthetic, intoxicating Delta-8 and gas station THC products is not just scientifically inaccurate – it is a failure to read the evidence that Congress itself has had access to for years.

Yet hidden in the spending bill is language that would strip these Americans of their access overnight. No transition period. No alternative offered. Just an abrupt cutoff that would force families to watch their children regress, undoing years of hard-won progress, while others frantically stockpile CBD products in the weeks before the ban takes effect – rationing medicine like it’s a scarce resource rather than a lifeline.

These parents didn’t arrive at CBD oil casually – they arrived there after years of failed medications and desperate searches for anything that would work. To have that solution legislated away, not because it is harmful, but because it got caught in the crossfire of a broader policy fight, is a profound failure of the people these lawmakers were elected to protect.

Charlotte’s life – and the movement it sparked – lives on in every child who has found relief through the CBD oil she helped make possible. November 12 is fast approaching, and with it, the very real threat that these products will disappear from families who have no alternatives.

I am asking Congress and the Administration to honor that legacy by looking at what this ban will actually do – not in theory, but in practice – to the children who depend on these products every single day. Strike the provision. Protect full-spectrum CBD. And make clear, once and for all, that families like ours will not be made to pay the price for a policy that was never aimed at them.

Paige Figi is the pioneer mother who saved her daughter from 1200 grand mal seizures a month and launched the CBD movement; and the Executive Director of the Coalition for Access Now.