🧪 Colorado's botanical blind spot

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A Denver lab found methylene chloride in Craft vapes in August, and the recall reached dispensaries last week while Colorado's expanded solvent test waited on the health department. Montana's Department of Revenue wrote a Ninth Circuit ruling into a rule that reaches store managers and head growers. Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers wants the home addresses of a Colorado dispensary's employees, and no Nebraska patient can yet buy from a Nebraska licensee. In Boston, Gov. Maura Healey's supplemental budget puts nearly $6 million behind the Cannabis Control Commission and asks it to accept VA paperwork in place of a certification.

🧪 Six weeks, no alert
🏔️ Residency reaches the payroll
🌽 Across the state line
🎖️ The VA's paperwork

StayCon, the Pueblo County manufacturer that sells vapes as Craft, told dispensaries last week it was recalling 49 products, including its Maui Wowie and Grape Gorilla carts, some of them on shelves for more than a year and a half. Denver's Bona Fides Laboratory found methylene chloride in August while testing for pesticides and mold, and owner David Mathis says he told the company and the state right away, about six weeks before the recall. The Marijuana Enforcement Division has issued no consumer alert and told The Denver Gazette and ProPublica it does not comment on investigations. The test built to look for that solvent, a panel covering methylene chloride and 30 others that 24 of the 43 regulated states already require, was due in July. MED says the Department of Public Health and Environment, which certifies the labs, asked for more time. That's a real constraint, because a lab certified in a hurry gives every licensee who fails a test grounds to attack the certification. StayCon's notice blames a "botanically-derived" flavoring, which puts this alongside the corydalis extract in Sima Sciences' products, another non-cannabis botanical no cannabis regulator was positioned to vet. Nevada's pending R103-26 would require signed compliance attestations for flavorings and terpenes bought from outside suppliers, which is one way to write that duty down. I expect the solvent panel to be running when MED Bulletin 26-09 takes effect on September 28th. A second slip would tell me lab-certification capacity at CDPHE is the thing the General Assembly should fund in January. (The Denver Gazette; ProPublica; StayCon recall notice)

🐾 Starting October 1st, Maryland's veterinary board can't discipline a vet solely for discussing or recommending cannabis or a CBD product for an animal, under HB 452, now Chapter 47 of this year's laws. Pet owners in a state with a legal market bring the question into the exam room, and the vet can now answer it without putting a license on the line. The law doesn't vouch for any product, and none carries federal approval for animals, so the board's standard of care still decides whether the advice was any good. (MJBizDaily; Maryland General Assembly, HB 452)

Beginning Saturday, Montana licensees have to name every person with "day-to-day operational control" of the business and prove each one lives in Montana, whether or not that person owns a share. The Department of Revenue adopted the rule September 21st, and its definition reaches general managers, store managers, head cultivators and anyone who signs contracts, approves spending or controls the bank accounts. Pepper Petersen of The Coldwater Group, the only public commenter, argued the residency requirement violates the dormant Commerce Clause. DOR answered with a citation to Peridot Tree WA v. Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Control Board, the Ninth Circuit's January holding that the clause has nothing to protect in a market Congress still bans. The department did move on burden, stretching the window to report a change from 10 days to 30, and it says an employee who closes up or handles cash for a short stretch doesn't count. Peridot and the cases on the other side of the split were about who could hold a license. Montana's rule reaches who can run one, so a head grower recruited from Oregon or a regional manager based in Spokane is now a compliance question. Montana sits inside the Ninth Circuit, and I'd be surprised if the Supreme Court takes Peridot's petition while rescheduling is unsettled. A grant of cert is what would put this rule in play. (Cannabis Business Times; The Marijuana Herald; Peridot Tree WA, Inc. v. WSLCB, 162 F.4th 1179 (9th Cir. 2026))

🍺 Marijuana Moment counted at least $509,806 in alcohol-industry contributions to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton since 2014. Paxton is now the Republican Senate nominee, and his opponent, James Talarico, says that money explains the state's crackdown on cannabis and hemp. The outlet says that motive can't be verified, and its own donor table makes the picture messier. By my count of that table, about 84 percent came from beer distribution, 10 percent from wine and spirits wholesalers and 6 percent from retailers. The Wholesale Beer Distributors of Texas PAC gave $52,500, and the San Antonio Express-News reported the group backed the Safer Texas Alliance campaign for hemp restrictions. At least $32,000 came from the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America PAC, the Texas Package Stores Association and Total Wine & More co-founder David Trone. All three organizations now sit on the support list for H.R. 10079, the bill to keep hemp THC drinks on shelves under alcohol-style rules. The alcohol business is selling hemp drinks in some aisles and lobbying against them in others, and a campaign finance report can't tell you which side wrote a given check. (Marijuana Moment; Office of Rep. Greg Landsman; San Antonio Express-News)

Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers served a demand and subpoena on September 1st on Peak North Holdings, which runs Peak Dispensary in Sedgwick, Colorado, less than half an hour from the state line. He wants current and former employees' names and home addresses, the store's advertising, and any research or marketing material it holds on cannabis's effects. Peak's lawyer, John Cartier, told a Nebraska court the demand names no law the company is alleged to have broken, and says only one employee lives in Nebraska. Hilgers' office isn't saying what it is investigating. Nebraska tried the front door in 2014, when it joined Oklahoma in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Colorado's legalization, and the Court declined to take the case. At home, the program voters approved with 71 percent in 2024 has had little help from the people running the state. Hilgers carried the petition challenge to the Nebraska Supreme Court, which rejected it 7-0 this month, and in May 2025 he stood with law enforcement against LB 677, a bill to help put the program in place. He did sign off on the commission's regulations in June, and he has said his office is working with the commission rather than trying to block it. By then only one of four licensed cultivators had cleared inspection, the fee rules won't be final until next year, and executive director Brett Long starts Monday. I think a Nebraska judge will want the statute named before ordering a Colorado company to hand over its employees' home addresses, so I'd expect the demand to come back narrower, if it comes back at all. Hilgers faces Democrat Jocelyn Brasher on November 3rd. (MJBizDaily; Lincoln Journal Star; Nebraska Examiner; Nebraska Public Media)

🌲 Oregon's Liquor and Cannabis Commission says active wholesale licenses have dropped below the cap HB 4121 set in 2024, one per 12,500 residents 21 and older. Its Rules Advisory Committee meets this morning from 9 to 11 on how to reopen the category. Applications stay closed until that rule is written. The count got under the cap without a single new wholesale license issuing, which is how a moratorium is supposed to work. The committee still has to decide how OLCC hands out the openings if more applicants show up than there are slots. (The Marijuana Herald; Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission)

Gov. Maura Healey's $2.24 billion supplemental budget, H.5679, went to House Ways and Means on Thursday with nearly $6 million for the Cannabis Control Commission to carry out the overhaul the General Court passed and Healey signed in April. New money for an agency the Legislature restructured only this spring is a change in posture, and I read it as some early, dare I say renewed, confidence in the three-member commission under Chair Christopher Harding. For what its worth, I always enjoyed significant support from the Legislature and Governor during my tenure. Their budget woes are a somewhat new phenomenon. Ways and Means, of course, will write their own number for the agency. The same bill lets a veteran register as a medical patient with "official documentation from the Veterans Administration" of a qualifying condition, and no separate certification. VA clinicians still can't complete state recommendation forms, so veterans pay an outside provider for a signature on a diagnosis the VA already made. That's a real cost, and the fix is a good one. It also makes the CCC a custodian of VA medical records, which carry far more than a certification does. The commission will need rules on what it collects, how much of a record it keeps once eligibility is confirmed, and who on staff can open it. Harding came over from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, where that kind of data is handled every day, and the experience will matter here. The bill also names an agency that has been the Department of Veterans Affairs since 1989, which Ways and Means can fix while it's in there. (WBUR/State House News Service; Marijuana Moment; Massachusetts Legislature, H.5679)

🗳️ Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron argued in a Boston Herald column, republished by the Cato Institute, that Massachusetts should answer its market's problems by cutting the burden on licensed stores. He puts the combined tax on a legal purchase near 20 percent, says more than a third of municipalities ban retail, and argues that those costs, state regulation and continuing federal restrictions keep the illicit seller in business. His prescription is to keep legalization and lighten the load. Question 8 on November 3rd goes the other way, ending licensed retail and home cultivation while leaving possession legal and the medical program in place. Miron's case against repeal runs through the tax rate and the zoning map, and it comes from a libertarian think tank with no stores of its own. Learn more at StoptheRepealMA.com. (Cato Institute; Boston Herald)

Nevada's Legislative Commission approved LCB File R152-24 on Thursday, the last review a Cannabis Compliance Board package needs before it's filed with the Secretary of State and takes effect. The board adopted it June 18th after a process that began in 2024. A delivery vehicle can carry 12.5 ounces per trip, up from 5, and a store can deliver up to 2.5 ounces to one person at home in a day, up from 1. General purchase limits don't change. Anyone who keeps operating without a license after a cease order faces an administrative fine of up to $20,000, and the board can seek civil penalties up to $50,000. The minimum lab sample doubles from 10 grams to 20. Industry objected to the cost, and the CCB adopted the package without further changes because more amendments would have delayed it substantially. That 20-gram figure has a short shelf life. R104-26, headed to hearing October 15th alongside R103-26, would take the minimum to 60 grams to carry out SB 157, so labs will retool twice. Finishing the old package and amending it afterward was the right call for a board whose Legislature keeps passing bills underneath its rulemakings. (The Marijuana Herald; Nevada Legislature, LCB File R152-24)

🔬 Maine's Office of Cannabis Policy opened major substantive rulemaking on its Medical Cannabis Research Grant Program, 18-691 CMR Chapter 100, with a hearing in Augusta on October 13th at 10 a.m. and comments due October 23rd at 5 p.m. The program, created under 22 M.R.S. § 2430, pays for observational studies, clinical trials and analysis of existing research on medical cannabis, out of the Medical Use of Cannabis Fund. Major substantive rules go back to the Legislature for approval, so the first grants wait on the next session. The notice leaves the size of the grant pool open, and that's the number research teams will ask about in Augusta. (The Marijuana Herald; Maine Office of Cannabis Policy)

🚁 The day after IM Cannabis filed to buy into a European tactical drone company, police in Wrightsville, Georgia, found a drone already at work in the cannabis supply chain. Responding to a report at 3:10 a.m. Thursday near Johnson State Prison, officers recovered a large drone, its bag and a suspect vehicle, along with 1,060 grams of cannabis, 14 phones, 10 earbuds, a tablet, 837.8 grams of a liquid nobody has identified yet, and a baby bottle. The heaviest cargo was tobacco, 6,985.3 grams of it, more than six times the weight of the cannabis. Inside a Georgia prison, what sells at every gas station outside is apparently the premium freight. No arrests had been reported. (41NBC)

Section 781 takes any finished hemp product above 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container out of the federal definition on December 11th, and the WARN Act's 60 days of written notice count back from there to October 12th. The law covers employers with 100 or more workers. At a single site it's triggered by a closing that costs 50 jobs, or by a layoff of 500, or of 50 to 499 when that's a third of the site's workforce. Marc Rodriguez of Green Leaf Business Solutions told MJBizDaily that employers who gave notice for the original November 12th date need to reissue it for the new one. He also made the point that decides most of these cases. The statute excuses late notice for business circumstances nobody could foresee, and a date Congress wrote into law and then moved by 29 days is about as foreseeable as dates get. Missing it can cost up to 60 days of back pay and benefits per worker plus attorney's fees, and state WARN laws can add more. Congress can still change the date, and the Hemp Beverage Alliance, which reports the category grew 133 percent from 2024 to 2025, is working that end through H.R. 10079. A payroll plan can't wait on a bill with no committee hearing scheduled. I'd put money on a batch of notices going out the week of October 5th that name December 11th and mean unless Congress acts. (MJBizDaily; Brewbound; Public Law 119-37, § 781)

🌴 The Virgin Islands Cannabis Advisory Board voted unanimously Thursday to drop a proposed 7 p.m. cutoff on sales of intoxicating hemp and artificially derived cannabinoids, letting licensed establishments sell during their normal hours. The rules are still in draft, and the board also took up moving product between the islands. Tying sales to the store's own license hours puts enforcement on a schedule inspectors already check. The vote covered the hemp rules only, and the territory's cannabis program runs on its own track. (St. Thomas Source)

🚦 University of Minnesota researchers surveyed more than 2,300 adults at the State Fair and county fairs in 2024 and 2025. Of the cannabis users among them, 15.7 percent said they had used while or just before driving in the past year. The rate was 28.6 percent among users 18 to 20, who can't legally buy in Minnesota, against 8.7 percent among those 65 and older, according to Colin Planalp and colleagues at the Cannabis Research Center. Fairgoers who stop for a survey aren't a random sample, and self-reported use isn't a measure of impairment. Drivers too young to buy legally are the ones the Department of Public Safety's next campaign has to reach. (WCCO; University of Minnesota School of Public Health)

📡 Metrc extended its Colorado track-and-trace contract through 2029, adding its Insights analytics for the Marijuana Enforcement Division and making Retail ID available to Colorado licensees. Retail ID is the consumer-facing QR code that shows where a product came from and how it tested. Colorado has run on Metrc since adult-use sales opened in 2014, and the extension carries twelve years of the state's supply-chain record forward on the same system. Colorado hasn't said yet whether licensees will be required to use Retail ID or can opt in. (Cannabis Business Times; Metrc)

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