CITY HALL — Chicago business owners who sell intoxicating hemp products will live to fight another day as Mayor Brandon Johnson vetoed a ban on their products Friday in a rare use of mayoral power.
Johnson waited until his deadline day to veto the ban, passed 32-16 by the City Council last month. The nixed ban made significant exemptions for hemp-derived THC drinks, championed by the hospitality industry, but served as a death knell for local businesses propped up on selling highs from hemp edibles, vapes and flower in a workaround to the state’s limited marijuana licenses.
Johnson’s veto is the second of his term, following his veto last year of a policy that would have given the Police Department power to enforce “snap curfews.” That was the first mayoral veto since 2006.
The City Council can still override the mayor’s veto with a steep threshold of 34 votes, and hemp businesses face another existential threat with a federal ban passed in November. But that ban, which takes effect late this year, may be punted further and could be superseded by new city or state laws. Cannabis has long been federally illegal.
Johnson, who has previously backed hemp businesses, wrote in his veto letter Friday that a city ban was “premature” ahead of the impending federal ban.
“Any local hemp regulatory framework needs to both safeguard the health and wellbeing of residents, especially young people, support the stability and growth of Chicago’s small business community, and ensure that the enforcing departments have adequate capacity to conduct equitable enforcement,” Johnson wrote.
THC-A pre-roll joints are among products that would be banned by April 1 after City Council passed an ordinance on Jan. 21, 2026. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
Jeremy Dedic, owner of hemp apothecary, speaks at a press conference on Feb. 12, 2026, urging Mayor Brandon Johnson to save their businesses by vetoing a City Council ban on their products. Credit: Charles Thrush/Block Club Chicago
The budding hemp industry has formed business associations to back failed attempts by Johnson and some state Democrats to create safety regulations and tax their products rather than ban them.
But Ald. Marty Quinn (13th), a veteran Southwest Side alderman and fierce hemp critic, had gotten furthest along in pulling the industry out of the gray area, banning hemp products in his own ward before taking it up citywide. Quinn’s push to snuff out hemp, which gained steam after the federal ban was passed, also has become a test of the City Council’s increasing independence from Johnson.
Quinn has called intoxicating hemp “shady,” with products resembling popular candies marketed to children, which hemp business owners deny. Quinn said the industry grew out of a “loophole” to a federal farming bill allowing the mass production of hemp, which has small traces of psychoactive THC that can be extracted and concentrated.
“The mayor’s position on hemp defies logic,” Quinn said Friday after the veto. “He’s prioritizing dodgy storefronts over the kids of the city of Chicago.”
To override Johnson’s veto, Quinn would need two more supporters in City Council than he was able to gain in over a month of gathering votes.
“I don’t have the votes,” Quinn said.
Hemp businesses celebrated Johnson’s veto Friday.
”We are very pleased that the Mayor has decided to support small businesses and a growing industry in the City. It takes courage to stand up for principle,” Craig Katz, president of the Illinois Healthy Alternatives Association, said in a statement. “However, we know that there is still much work to do and we look forward to working with the Mayor and City Council to craft responsible regulation that protect consumers and children, while allowing businesses to thrive.”
Quinn’s ban would have put the first city law on the books restricting the products to 21 years and older, a measure that hemp businesses have also been pushing as part of proposals to regulate their products.
In recent weeks, hemp business owners have started letter campaigns and held press conferences as part of last-ditch efforts to win over Johnson, including one Thursday night at the South Loop location of Chi’Tiva, 1250 S. Michigan Ave., which markets itself as a “THC Lounge Dispensary Experience.”
Jeremy Dedic, owner of Cubbington’s Cabinet, 2015 W. Roscoe St., a pet and people apothecary, said Thursday night that most of his products would be “eradicated” if Johnson didn’t veto the ban.
“We would be a vacant storefront come April 1st if this nefarious ordinance passes,” Dedic said. “The ordinance is a form of prohibition which never works. What we need is smart regulation to protect consumer health and child safety.”
Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th), who voted against Quinn’s ban, said Thursday that the ban only protected “big industry” while putting out small storefronts like Dedic’s.
The United Center announced last month it would sell THC drinks at concerts shortly after the ban passed City Council with its carveouts allowing them.
“Big industry is the problem,” Sigcho-Lopez said. “They do not like competition.”
Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:
