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DEA opened its registration form to medical cannabis manufacturers, distributors and labs on Monday, and one of its questions asks whether the applicant will also handle adult-use product. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who opposed legalization as attorney general in 2016, says she will vote no on Question 8. New Jersey's Cannabis Regulatory Commission suspended a Bridgeton grower over plants that never made it into Metrc, and Georgia's commission director says mailed delivery could begin October 28th. Florida's environmental regulator signed a consent order with Trulieve, and Missouri liquor stores are clearing hemp shelves ahead of a November 12th felony.

📝 The adult-use box
🗳️ Healey, ten years on
🌱 Plants without tags
📬 Mail by Halloween

DEA's Diversion Control Division opened Form 225 on October 5th for state-licensed medical cannabis manufacturers, distributors and analytical labs. Its website had listed these registrations as coming soon since May. Fees run $3,699 for a manufacturer, $1,850 for a distributor and $296 for a lab, and businesses that applied earlier don't refile. The business-activity section asks two yes-or-no questions: whether the firm will handle medical marijuana, and whether it will handle "recreational marijuana." Treasury put 280E on its guidance plan last week in a single line, so a dual licensee is now answering a question on a federal form that the tax side hasn't answered. The form doesn't say what a yes does to the application, either. The background section asks about controlled-substance convictions for the applicant and for every officer, partner and stockholder of a privately held company. Under 21 U.S.C. 843(d), a false answer carries up to four years. I expect the first Form 225 registrations to go to medical-only operators. DEA has sent the states no formal implementation guidance, and its Colorado questionnaire was still asking dispensaries whether they planned to buy from other states. A registration issued to a business that checked both boxes, before Treasury says more about 280E, would tell me DEA settled the question on its own. (Cannabis Business Times; DEA Diversion Control Division)

🚛 Heavy Duty Trucking editor Deborah Lockridge has the trucking side of Schedule III, and very little of it has moved. DOT wrote oral-fluid testing into its rules in 2023, but testing can't start until HHS certifies at least two laboratories, and the September 2026 federal list had…zero. After April's order, DOT said a state medical card still doesn't excuse a positive test. The research she walks through explains the caution. One study of 40 regular users found impaired simulated driving after 20-milligram edibles, while blood THC stayed under the 5-nanogram threshold many states use. In ATRI's 2023 survey, nearly 44 percent of carriers said one past positive disqualifies a driver even after the return-to-duty process. Until two labs are certified, a driver's drug test works exactly the way it did before April. (Heavy Duty Trucking)

Gov. Maura Healey told WCVB's On the Record on October 4th that she would vote no on Question 8. "We've got to keep recreational marijuana here in Massachusetts," she said. Ten years ago, as attorney general, she opposed Question 4, the initiative that created the market she now wants voters to keep. Her Republican opponent, Michael Minogue, has said it's too late to repeal. That leaves the repeal campaign without either nominee for governor, running mostly on SAM Action's more than $3.2 million. The question would also undo part of a law Healey signed in April. The legislature raised the possession limit to two ounces, and Question 8 would make anything between one and two ounces a $100 civil fine. It would also repeal home cultivation and Chapters 94G and 64N. UMass had the question losing 55 to 33 in August, and the University of New Hampshire had it losing 71 to 24 in September. I'd put the no side above 60 percent on November 3rd, with both nominees for governor on the same side and neither poll showing yes above a third. Stop the Repeal makes its case at StoptheRepealMA.com. (Cannabis Business Times; WCVB)

Executive Director Andrew Turnage told WSB-TV that patients could receive medical cannabis at the door as soon as October 28th, 20 days after the Chapter 351 rules are filed with the Secretary of State. As of Monday, the rules were not on the Secretary of State's site. The Postal Service's own mailing standard ties a controlled substance in the mail to a DEA registration or an authorized dispenser, which puts today's lead between Georgia's rule and the first package. I still don't see a patient signing for a mailed order this year. When delivery does work, it reaches the patients the current map misses. Georgia has about 20 dispensaries, most of them in metro Atlanta and central Georgia. The pharmacies that fill the rural gaps can't sell the vape cartridges and other formats SB 220 added. For a patient two hours of mountain road from the nearest dispensary, the mail is the first realistic route to those products. (WSB-TV; Axios Atlanta; USPS Publication 52)

The Cannabis Regulatory Commission voted 4-0 at a special meeting Monday to summarily suspend Magic Garden Botanicals' cultivation license, effective Wednesday, October 7th. Vice Chair Jackie Ferraro was absent. Acting Executive Director Christopher Riggs told commissioners that inspectors found an outdoor grow at the Bridgeton site last Tuesday. The company had been warned more than once that outdoor cultivation needed Commission approval first. The area had no compliance fencing, and the plants weren't tagged or entered in Metrc. Chair Harris Laufer said "untracked cannabis poses an immediate risk to public safety." CEO Oscar Carillo told Heady NJ the company is retaining counsel. The vote covered the cultivation license only, leaving Magic Garden's Penns Grove manufacturing license in place. The Commission used the same tool in February on Mollitiam NJ over inventory tracking and transport failures, and later revoked that license. A tag is how an inspector tells a licensed plant from an unlicensed one, and every grower in New Jersey who tags each plant is competing against the crop that skipped the step. (Heady NJ; New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission)

🫀 FDA opened a 45-day request for information Monday on how early trials of ibogaine should be built. The agency proposes small dose-ascending groups with a starting dose no higher than 10 mg/kg, cardiac and neurologic monitoring, stopping rules and independent safety oversight. HHS is steering federal research money toward adults with opioid use disorder and PTSD. FDA has already let an early study of noribogaine for alcohol use disorder proceed. CDER Director Michael Davis put the serious safety concerns in the same sentence as the scientific promise. Comments on Docket FDA-2026-N-10429 close November 20th. Cannabis reached patients through state ballots for two decades before FDA wrote its research guidance, and ibogaine is getting the trial design first. (Marijuana Moment; FDA)

The Department of Environmental Protection's October 2nd consent order finds that Trulieve sprayed wastewater on an outdoor lawn at its Jefferson County cultivation facility without a permit, and that some of it moved past the property line. Trulieve admits no wrongdoing. It either pays $80,000 within 90 days or completes a $120,000 environmental project. It owes DEP an interim plan now to keep water on site and a wastewater permit application within 120 days, with a final permit decision about a year out. Neighbor James Lamb, among the first to complain, called the order an important step. Trulieve declined to comment to the Tallahassee Democrat. Until a permit issues, the interim irrigation plan is the document that governs what leaves the property. (Tallahassee Democrat)

🧃 Missouri liquor stores have five weeks to empty a shelf. House Bill 2641 makes selling most intoxicating hemp products a class D felony on November 12th, with a $5,000 fine per transaction. Corey Spaulding of Gomer's in Kansas City tells Axios that THC products are about 9 percent of the store's monthly sales. He won't restock them, since suppliers aren't taking returns. Bill sponsor Rep. Dave Hinman says stores had time to sell down. Judge M. Douglas Harpool still hasn't ruled on the state's motion to dismiss the MoHemp Trade Association's challenge. A win for the plaintiffs would buy a month at most before the federal hemp definition changes December 11th. New Jersey's Senate president spent last week tying his state's beverage deadline to Washington's calendar. Missouri picked its own date, a month earlier. (Axios Kansas City)

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 762 on September 28th. Starting January 1st, 2027, nobody may import or manufacture disposable battery vapes for sale in California, and the sales ban follows on January 1st, 2028. The statute covers devices containing tobacco "but not cannabis or a cannabis product," so integrated cannabis vapes keep their place on the shelf. The Department of Cannabis Control's packaging rules still bar calling a cartridge or all-in-one disposable. Its marketing rules require directing spent devices to hazardous-waste collection. A brand that prints "disposable" on the box still has a DCC problem the new law never reaches. (mg Magazine)

💼 Richard S. Cohen, a former Holistic Industries board member, sued co-founder and CEO Joshua Genderson in D.C. Superior Court on September 14th for at least $5 million. Benjamin Horowitz of Venable filed the complaint. It says Genderson promised Cohen a $5 million disposition payment for waiving preemptive rights and holding his shares through Holistic's recapitalization with Island Capital, which closed in December 2024. It then describes more than a year of wire confirmations the banks had no record of, and two images of the same $5 million check that don't match. Cohen pleads breach of contract, fraud and promissory estoppel against Genderson personally, and none of it has been tested. Neither Genderson nor Holistic has commented publicly. Holistic is privately held, so a fight over what was promised in its recap comes out in a courtroom, with no public filing to check it against. (Outlaw Report)

Curaleaf said Monday it will raise its hostile offer for Aurora Cannabis to 0.4013 Curaleaf shares plus $1.00 in cash. It values that at $5.00 a share, up 25 percent, and lifts the cap to $6.00. The expiry moves from December 1st to December 4th. Aurora's board unanimously recommended rejecting the earlier offer, and CEO Miguel Martin has pointed to Curaleaf's debt of more than $1 billion. Boris Jordan's release asks for a fair process "if Aurora is providing diligence access to other parties." That is how a bidder writes when he thinks someone else is in the data room. (StratCann; Curaleaf)

🌍 Uganda's State Minister for Internal Affairs, Juma Witonze Kisekka, told licensed medical cannabis and industrial hemp growers that anyone who abuses a license, falsifies records or diverts product "will face appropriate action within the law." He said it Friday in Kampala at the first annual general meeting of the newly registered Uganda Medical Cannabis and Industrial Hemp Cooperative Society. ICT Minister Justine Kasule Lumumba told the same room the cooperative isn't there to promote adult use, or to tell Ugandan parents their worries about drugs are misplaced. The country's framework is the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Control Act, in force since April 2025. Diversion is the core concern of the Single Convention. That is the same treaty Todd Blanche cited in April when he sent U.S. medical licensees to the DEA registration that opened Monday. (Monitor)

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