🗂️ "Tell me what company thou keepest, and I'll tell thee what thou art."

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DEA denied a Colorado company's 2016 application to manufacture cannabis and called its sister company's adult-use business diversion. Smart Approaches to Marijuana and MMJ International filed their opening brief asking the D.C. Circuit to revive their challenge to Medicare's hemp benefit. Germany's coalition is narrowing the rule that sent pain patients to Exilby, the extract New York just licensed a site to study. Oklahoma lawmakers heard three agencies describe who cleans up an abandoned grow, and a Jersey City retailer joined Curaleaf and Verano in suing over New Jersey's labor peace rule.

🚫 Diversion, by affiliation
⚖️ The delay defense
🚜 Who holds the shovel
🤝 Plaintiff number three

DEA Administrator Terrance Cole signed a final order on October 2nd denying MedPharm Research's 2016 application to register as a bulk manufacturer of cannabis, and the order publishes in the Federal Register today. MedPharm Research is owned by MedPharm Holdings, which does business in Colorado as Bud & Mary's Cannabis and also owns MX, LLC. MX holds Colorado and Denver licenses and has grown and sold medical and adult-use cannabis since 2016, at the same facility where MedPharm Research proposed to operate. DEA wrote that manufacturing for the adult-use market "constitutes diversion of a Schedule I controlled substance," and it weighed the affiliates' record against the applicant. MedPharm never answered last September's show-cause order, so it defaulted and the allegations were deemed admitted. DEA judged the application under the old Schedule I bulk-manufacturer standard and says MedPharm may still apply through the new registration for state medical licensees. That keeps this order a step away from Form 225, which DEA opened Monday and which asks every applicant whether it will also handle adult-use product. Monday's form asks the question, and DEA's lawyers had answered it for one applicant three days earlier. I still expect the first Form 225 registrations to go to medical-only operators. A registration issued to a dual licensee before Treasury says more about 280E would tell me DEA wrote this order narrower than it reads. (The Marijuana Herald; Federal Register)

Smart Approaches to Marijuana, two other opposition groups and MMJ International Holdings filed their opening brief in the D.C. Circuit on Monday. They are asking the court to revive their challenge to the CMS benefit that lets participating providers furnish up to $500 a year in hemp products to Medicare patients. Judge Trevor McFadden threw the case out in May for lack of standing, so standing is the whole appeal. MMJ's sharpest line blames "the government's own unreasonable delay of nearly eight years" on its DEA bulk-manufacturing application for keeping it out of the market. That is a bold complaint from a company that spent June asking the D.C. Circuit to send state medical cannabis and FDA-approved cannabis drugs back to Schedule I while the rescheduling fight plays out. The court said no on September 10th. Dr. Kenneth Finn, a plaintiff in the district court Medicare case, is one of three opponents whose motion paused DEA's rescheduling hearing on September 29th, on a GAO question that had a fair procedural basis. The Medicare suit itself started as an emergency request to block the benefit, filed days before its April 1st launch, and McFadden denied it. By the amended complaint it had 14 plaintiffs, including 11 organizations whose standing rested on diverted resources or on David Evans. Evans directs or consults for seven of those groups, and McFadden found the odds of him taking hemp against his will too remote to count. Four of the groups never said where their diverted resources went, which makes the diversion hard to prove. My read is that this coalition files for time. Nearly every request in this run asks a judge to stop something while the merits wait, and of the ones we've covered, the September 29th pause is the only one granted. On the law, MMJ's delay argument points at DEA, which runs no part of the benefit and isn't a defendant. It also skips FDA's full clinical hold on MMJ's multiple sclerosis program, in place since February 2025, which McFadden cited and DEA had nothing to do with. Providers pay for the hemp out of their own pockets, so there is no federal money for a rival to lose. The organizations still face the Supreme Court's 2024 holding that a group "cannot spend its way into standing." I expect the panel to affirm on standing without reaching the merits. A ruling that treats MMJ like the grant applicants in Sherley v. Sebelius, who competed for the same federal dollars as their rivals, would prove me wrong. The government's brief is due November 4th, and Section 781's December 11th ceiling will shrink the benefit's product list while the plaintiffs are still briefing. (Marijuana Moment; Smart Approaches to Marijuana v. Kennedy, No. 1:26-cv-1081 (D.D.C.); D.C. Circuit order, September 10th)

🧪 New York's Cannabis Control Board approved a research license for Upstate Clinical Research Associates in Williamsville to run a site in Vertanical's U.S. trial of VER-01, an oral cannabis extract. The trial enrolls sciatica patients whose pain hasn't responded to non-opioid medication. VER-01 is the extract Germany approved this spring as Exilby, and FDA gave it Breakthrough Therapy designation in May. Vertanical has said it plans an FDA application in 2028 if the U.S. results hold. That is the botanical-drug route MMJ describes in its brief, taken by a company that already sells the product in Germany and Austria. (Cannabis Equipment News; The Marijuana Herald)

The Bundestag Health Committee takes up coalition amendments today on Germany's mandatory six-month trial of an approved finished cannabis medicine. The amendments would limit the trial to patients whose condition one of the four approved medicines actually treats. Everyone else could get a reimbursable extract right away, and patients already stable on one could stay on it. Since July 29th, the rule has sent new pain patients to Vertanical's Exilby, the only one of the four licensed for pain. Chronic pain is the primary condition for about three in four German cannabis patients. Der Spiegel has since reported that Health Ministry officials met Vertanical about Exilby's approval application in June 2024. The ministry says that meeting came before the formal filing and outside the question the Greens asked. Its own September 23rd answer to the Greens confirms Exilby's approval is conditional on a further efficacy study. Who wrote the six-month rule into July's insurance savings law is still disputed. The amendments do nothing for the roughly 65,000 patients who lost flower reimbursement, and Apotheke Adhoc reported October 1st that the emergency route left to them no longer has an agreed price. (Business of Cannabis; Der Spiegel; Apotheke Adhoc)

🚔 Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent Erica Stephens told senators at last week's medical cannabis hearings that TBI would support a program under no circumstances, the Tennessee Lookout reported Monday. She called marijuana "the number one drug associated with criminal activity, including violent crime" in Tennessee. Stunning. TBI's witnesses kept holding up Oklahoma as the failure to avoid. Sen. Ferrell Haile, whose SB 459 allows no smokable product, called that comparison apples to oranges. Sen. London Lamar pointed out that California and Colorado have lower violent crime rates than Tennessee. Republican Sen. Todd Gardenhire said the testimony had drifted from the purpose, which is keeping patients out of the illicit market. Oklahoma's own legislature spent Tuesday on what its 2018 program left behind. (Tennessee Lookout)

Sen. Darcy Jech's interim study on abandoned commercial grows met at the Capitol on Tuesday. Adria Berry, who runs the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, said SB 913, the 2023 law requiring a $50,000 surety bond from growers, needs statutory clarity. She said the larger problem is land contaminated with unregistered foreign pesticides, which nobody contemplated in State Question 788 and which needs environmental experts to remediate. The Department of Environmental Quality says it has worked 517 complaints about cannabis sites since the program began and hasn't yet had one it couldn't resolve. Jech counts thousands of abandoned sites. The two figures measure different things, since DEQ counts complaints and Jech counts properties. He told the committee the system fails if bonds are required and never recalled, recalled and never spent, or if agencies find a contaminated site and leave it for someone else. I expect his 2027 bill to name the agency that calls a bond and supervises the cleanup, since that is the question SB 913 left open. If the bill raises the bond amount instead, the Legislature will have decided the money was the problem. (KOKH Fox 25)

🗳️ Rep. Ayanna Pressley came out against Question 8 on Tuesday, two days after Gov. Maura Healey, calling legal adult use "both economic justice and racial justice policy." The same day, CommonWealth Beacon ran Wes Ritchie's reply to Robert Mellion of the Massachusetts Package Stores Association. Mellion had argued that cannabis oversight is lax and should borrow alcohol's unannounced third-party compliance checks. Ritchie co-runs Tree House Craft Cannabis and has also operated a package store. He wrote that the Cannabis Control Commission already does unannounced checks, and he knows because Tree House has had them. Then he walked through growing-medium tests, lab testing on every harvest and a statewide tracking system that follows every plant to the gram. And he asked anyone in the alcohol business to name the soil behind the grapes in a bottle of Blanc de Bleu, or to explain what makes it blue. Mellion's call to fund more inspections is a fair one, and Ritchie concedes enforcement can improve. Stop the Repeal makes its case at StoptheRepealMA.com. (Cannabis Business Times; CommonWealth Beacon)

The Cannabis Place 420 Corporation, which holds a Class 5 retail license in Jersey City, sued the Cannabis Regulatory Commission in federal court on Monday (No. 3:26-cv-12967). It is asking for an order barring New Jersey from making a labor peace agreement a condition of its license. Judge Michael Shipp entered final judgment for Curaleaf on August 10th, holding the mandate preempted by the National Labor Relations Act as applied to Curaleaf alone. The state appealed to the Third Circuit three days later, and Verano filed its own suit at the end of July. Each new plaintiff is asking a district judge for the ruling Curaleaf already won, while the Third Circuit decides whether the rule survives for anyone. I'd bet the state asks the court to hold this case until the appeal is decided, since the appeal answers the preemption question this complaint turns on. Until then, microbusinesses stay exempt and the Commission treats a lapsed agreement at any other licensee as grounds for action against its license. (The Marijuana Herald; Law360)

📦 Ohio's package rule, 1301:18-4-06, took effect Monday and covers adult-use and medical products alike. Flower packages top out at one ounce, and an adult-use edible portion or beverage can carries 10 milligrams of THC. An edible package caps at 100 milligrams, a beverage pack can hold 12 cans, and medical edibles keep 55 milligrams per serving. The Division of Cannabis Control said the standards largely carry the medical market's existing sizes into adult use, with daily purchase limits set separately. The date sat on our Deadlines, Decoded tracker. A customer buying two ounces of flower now walks out with two packages. (NBC4i; The Marijuana Herald)

A St. Louis jury on Tuesday awarded $10 million to three plaintiffs, led by AJO MO and Hi-Rise, the Missouri Independent's Rebecca Rivas reported. The fight covers six Missouri cannabis licenses and has drawn in more than 20 businesses and individuals. Jurors found for the plaintiffs on breach of contract and tortious interference. Defense attorney Jeffrey Lowe told the Independent the plaintiffs had no basis to sue for breach. Missouri regulators recognized AJO and Hi-Rise as owners of the Waynesville cultivation and manufacturing licenses in May 2024. The Division of Cannabis Regulation still hasn't approved the disputed ownership changes at four Heya dispensaries. Whatever happens to the verdict in post-trial motions, the question of who owns those four stores is still sitting with the Division. (Missouri Independent)

🏫 Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed Sen. Dayna Polehanki's SB 433 on Monday, now Public Act 104 of 2026, after Senate votes of 35-0 and 36-0 and a 99-4 House vote. The Department of Health and Human Services has until July 1st, 2027, to write a parent notice in English, Spanish and Arabic. It covers THC products, tobacco, vapes, nicotine alternatives and synthetic intoxicating hemp, including how to recognize THC poisoning. Every public and nonpublic school sends it home by October 1st each year starting with the 2027-28 school year. Parents will be reading whatever the department drafts between now and next July. (The Marijuana Herald)

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