Pete Ricketts

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, we have a drug problem in this country today, and right now, there is an industry that is targeting our children with look-alike products with intoxicating levels of THC. THC is tetrahydrocannabinol. Now, this is the psychoactive ingredient that you find in marijuana.

How could we possibly let this happen? Well, let's take a step back. In 2018, we passed a farm bill, and at the time, there were those who wanted to separate hemp--a plant that has some THC in it--from cannabis, which is a marijuana plant. Hemp used to be grown in this country, made into rope back in the 1940s.

This is what we were told was going to happen. The bill was written, but in that farm bill, it said you had to keep the THC for delta-9, a certain type of THC, down to 0.3 percent by dry weight. Well, what happened was some clever chemist figured out that you could take this product, which makes CBD oil, right, which is commonly available, and take CBD oil, chemically alter it, and create delta-8 and delta-10, which also have those intoxicating effects.

The problem is, this is all unregulated, and so an industry exploded--an industry that in part targeted our kids with look-alike products that had THC at intoxicating levels, targeted kids with them.

For example, we have an example here of Sour Patch Kids look-alikes. You may say: Why are they doing that? Well, they are trying to grow their market share. Sadly, the outcome was that this past July, a 3- year-old and 4-year-old in Nebraska took these out of their mom's purse and got THC poisoning. Even worse news is that this is not an uncommon occurrence.

We have seen the potency of THC over the last few years, from 1995 to 2021, increase and increase four times.

We have seen, since 2016 to 2023, the number of THC poisonings of children under 5 go up 10 times and the number of hospitalizations of children under 5 go up 3 times.

In 2024, that was 620 children under the age of 5 poisoned. Of those children being poisoned, 100 have been hospitalized and ended up on ventilators. This is a serious health risk problem.

And I mention the Sour Patch Kids here, but let's look at some of the other examples of how this industry is targeting and trying to confuse consumers.

Here we have Nerds, a candy many children are familiar with, and a Nerds knockoff that has THC in it. Here we have Fritos--the regular Fritos product that is a safe product--and Fritos with THC in it. Here we have a safe product, again, that looks like gummy worms, and here we have a product with THC in it.

This is an industry that, because we made a mistake in the farm bill in 2018, has taken advantage of a loophole of the law to manufacture delta-8 and delta-10 THC to be able to infuse it into these products.

Now, again, you cannot grow the hemp plant in concentrations to make this. You have to manufacture this. This was done on purpose. It was manufactured. And, by the way, this kind of knockoff doesn't happen by accident either. This was on purpose too. And this is what is poisoning our children. We have to shut this loophole down.

And so last year we did. We actually changed the definition to cover all THC that would be in these types of products; that all THC products would have to stay below that 0.3 percent case. So it is not going to impact CBD oil because that is below 0.3 percent. It wouldn't impact any of those products that are used for clothing or for jewelry because they are all below 0.3 percent.

In fact, the only place it is going to impact is for the intoxicating products that are out there in the marketplace, that are only out there because of this loophole that we created back in 2018.

So, last year in our Ag appropriations bill, we closed this loophole. Now, one of the Senators in our body offered an amendment to strip out that loop--closing the loophole. And we had Republicans and Democrats vote together to stop that amendment--75 Senators, 51 Republicans all came together to say: No, we want to close this loophole.

Well, now in our continuing resolution, somebody has decided to open that loophole back up again. We gave the industry until November 12 to adjust. We said: The loophole has been out there. We are going to give you a year to get your products in line with the new law. It has got to be below 0.3 percent, and you have got until November 12.

But in our current continuing resolution, somebody wants to keep that extended until December 11.

I have cosponsored an amendment with Ted Budd to take that amendment out of the continuing resolution. I am cosponsoring that because we don't need to extend this. This has been out there for a year. People know what is coming. One month more is not going to make a big difference in doing this.

For those of you who say this is going to impact agriculture, I will tell you right now, hemp production in the United States probably presents about 0.0056 percent of all the farmland--49,000 acres--and only 17,000 are using it to grow the kind of hemp that would go into these kinds of products.

There are pilot programs right now on how to use CBD oil in the treatments of things like cancer. They are all out there. They are not going to be impacted. We should let this expire November 12.

My colleague Ted Budd and I--the Senator from North Carolina--we want an amendment vote to be able to take this out of this continuing resolution and call upon my colleagues to help pass it.

This is literally--these high-THC products disguised as candies-- could get into the hands of young children and poison them. It has done so already.

Let's stop this right now because we know when THC gets into young people's minds, it can reduce their IQs, lead to mental health issues, such as suicidal ideation, anxiety, depression. This drug is bad for young people. So let's close this loophole and keep it closed.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, integrity--integrity inspires confidence. We have a problem here in the Senate and in the House: 80 percent of Americans believe we do a poor job of keeping our financial interests separate from the insider information that we have. People don't have the confidence in us, and that leads to an approval rating of 15 percent for Congress.

But we can help restore integrity, and therefore confidence-- confidence in the Senate, confidence in the House, confidence in our institutions. We can do that with a bill that I have introduced called the Stop Insider Trading Act.

Now, it is well known that Members of this body and the House have bought individual stocks. In fact, we have seen that people will post on social media the stock trades of the former Speaker of the House and trade off of her trades. In fact, as crazy as it sounds, that has become a legitimate investment strategy because it makes money. And that undermines the confidence people have in our institutions.

We have disclosure laws, which is how people can see those trades and make them. But it is not enough for the integrity of the institution. We need to make the rules stronger. We need to stop people from being able to buy individual stocks in the Senate and in the House.

We need my Stop Insider Trading Act because that is exactly what it does. It says that, if you get elected to the House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate, you can no longer buy stock. Trading on insider information will become impossible because you won't be able to make that purchase.

Now, we also want to make sure that if, say, you come from a successful business, we don't want to penalize you. We are not going to force you to sell your stock of your company. But we are going to say that you have to give notice, 7 days at least, to let people know if you are going to sell any positions you own. Remember, you can't buy any more. But if you have some already and you want to sell them, you have to give 7 days' notice.

And that will address the issue of, for example, when we had a member of the Intelligence Committee sell about a million and a half dollars' worth of stock right before the COVID pandemic selloff of the stock market.

Even the perception of impropriety undermines the integrity, and therefore the confidence the people have. So let's stop it altogether. Let's ban people's ability to use insider information to buy stocks and make sure, if they are going to sell any, that they have got to tell everybody well in advance so that Americans and the market can know.

My bill also has real teeth in it. It is a $2,000 fine or 10 percent of the proceeds. Let's say you sell a million dollars in stock, and you didn't tell the market ahead of time, like you were supposed to. You didn't follow that 7-day rule. It is a $100,000 penalty--a 10-percent penalty. So either $2,000 or 10 percent, whichever is bigger, plus you have to give up all your profits. That is a penalty with teeth that will get the attention of Members here on Capitol Hill.

It is time that we restore the integrity and the confidence in this body when it comes to inside information. We, because of our position, have access to this, but we should not benefit from it. This is supposed to be public service. No one should come here seeking a profit.

And yet, on Monday night, some of my colleagues tried to pass a unanimous consent, passing the Stop Insider Trader Act that the House of Representatives passed, and Democrats blocked it. Democrats blocked my Stop Insider Trading Act, which would have helped restore confidence in this body.

It is time that we got the Democrats on board, that we get this passed. It passed in the House with Democrat support. And 13 Democrats and 2 Democratic cosponsors are on the Stop Insider Trading Act in the House, which the House was able to pass. They have sent it here for the U.S. Senate--for us--to do our job.

I call on my Democratic colleagues--my colleagues across the aisle: Please, get on board. We need to restore faith in the institution. A 15-percent approval rating is terrible. We need to restore the integrity. We need to restore the confidence.

My Stop Insider Trading Act does just that. I encourage all of my colleagues to get on board this commonsense proposal to be able to restore integrity and confidence in the U.S. Senate and prevent insider trading from getting between us and the American people.

I yield the floor.