🏛️ Five months, no DEA guidance

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Five months after Attorney General Todd Blanche moved state-licensed medical cannabis to Schedule III, California's top cannabis regulator says DEA headquarters still hasn't sent the states formal guidance on how it works. Four House members gave the administration until September 30th to answer their own list of questions. Alabama finished its review Thursday and let the federal change through. A North Carolina council subcommittee put a state-run retail tier on the table, the Boston Globe's own teen-use numbers undercut the headline it ran them under, and Alaska's cannabis board meets tomorrow on cuts written to hit a governor's target.

🏛️ Questions in, none out
🏪 The state behind the counter
🗳️ Where's the surge?
📣 Cutting to a number

Clint Kellum, who runs California's Department of Cannabis Control, told the state's Cannabis Advisory Committee that DEA headquarters has sent no formal implementation guidance on the order Attorney General Todd Blanche signed in April, Cannabis Wire reports. The questions have been running the other direction. DEA sent Colorado registrants 26 follow-up questions after their registration forms, and the first asked whether they planned to order cannabis from other states. On Thursday, Alabama's State Committee of Public Health voted unanimously to withdraw the objection it filed in May to buy time while its lawyers worked through what rescheduling meant for pharmacies and patients. State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said the legal team resolved those concerns, and that July's hearing drew comments about medical cannabis itself rather than the consequences of moving it. Alabama's program ran under state Schedule I the whole time, with three dispensaries open and seven more coming, because the 2021 statute decriminalized authorized use. DEA deserves a fair hearing on the delay. It is registering businesses under an order that reaches only state-licensed medical products, in states whose licenses often mix medical and adult-use, while the administration defends that order in the D.C. Circuit and a broader proceeding waits on Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek Julius. Guidance written now could be undone by a court or a final rule within a year.

The nearest deadline is September 30th, the date Reps. Dina Titus, Dave Joyce, Ilhan Omar and Greg Steube set in their August 18th letter to Blanche, HHS Secretary Kennedy and Treasury Secretary Bessent. They asked whether a patient's home grow sits in Schedule I or III, whether dual licensees keep 280E relief, whether DOJ will work with CMS on Medicare coverage, and what happens to operators that never register. I don't expect substantive answers by the 30th. Most of those questions sit inside litigation DOJ is defending or tax positions Treasury hasn't taken, and an agency with a live appeal does not stake out its position in a reply to four House members. A written notice from DEA to its new registrants before the end of the year, published or sent directly, would tell me I read the silence wrong. (Cannabis Wire; Alabama Reflector; The Marijuana Herald)

🪪 Two bipartisan House bills filed last week go after federal penalties that follow cannabis well outside the store. Reps. Jamie Raskin and Zach Nunn introduced the CURE Act on Thursday, which would bar agencies from using past use to deny a security clearance or a federal job. Every agency would also have to review, on request and within 90 days, denials going back to 2008. Current use stays disqualifying, the same line House Oversight drew in 2023 when it advanced an earlier version 30 to 14. A day earlier, Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Warren Davidson reintroduced the CLAIM Act, H.R. 10471, the House companion to the Cramer and Gallego bill in the Senate. It bars federal penalties on insurers, brokers and agents who cover state-licensed businesses, and it obliges nobody to write a policy. This is the fourth straight Congress to see the insurance bill, and the 2023 CURE vote never reached the floor, so I'd be surprised if either one gets a markup before this Congress ends in January. (Marijuana Moment; MMJDaily)

A two-page draft prepared for Thursday's meeting of the Advisory Council on Cannabis's Market and Regulatory Subcommittee, marked for discussion only, puts private licensees in charge of growing and manufacturing and keeps retail under state control. Two retail models are on the table. One is centralized state-run stores. The other borrows the state's ABC system for liquor, with a state commission, local boards and locally operated stores. Wholesale is still open among private distributors, a central state warehouse modeled on the ABC warehouse, or a mix. The draft cites Quebec, calls for statewide product approval, limits on vertical integration and a controlled retail footprint, and treats retail price as a tool against the illicit market, while noting that owning the stores would not require the state to set prices. Governor Josh Stein created the council by executive order in June 2025, its April interim report recommended adult-use sales through licensed retail, and its final recommendations are due at the end of this year. In a privately licensed capped market, the premium that comes with scarcity goes to whoever holds a license. Put the state behind the counter and the premium goes to the treasury, or the state can decline to collect it and price to pull buyers away from the unlicensed shop. I think the final recommendation lands on the local-board version. North Carolina already runs liquor through local boards, and a General Assembly that has never sent a medical cannabis bill to a governor is likelier to extend a system its members know than build state stores from scratch. The full council meets September 29th and the subcommittee returns October 16th. (North Carolina Advisory Council on Cannabis, Market and Regulatory Subcommittee; NCDHHS; The Marijuana Herald)

🧾 TerrAscend filed a 38-page motion Thursday asking the District of New Jersey to dismiss the government's suit for the $8,360,683.19 it refunded after the company amended its 2020 return. Among its arguments, the United States sued an entity that doesn't exist and filed in the wrong venue. I'd expect the court to let the government fix both by amending, which means the motion mostly buys time. The question underneath is the 280E refund years that April's order left open, and operators that amended earlier returns on the same theory are waiting on the answer. (The Marijuana Herald; Law360; United States v. TerrAscend USA, Inc., No. 2:26-cv-05640, D.N.J.)

The Boston Globe ran Bryan Hecht's piece Friday under a headline saying the repeal campaign claims legalization amplified teen use and experts "aren't so sure." The reporting underneath leaves very little to be unsure about. Past-month use among 12- to 17-year-olds fell to 5 percent last year from 6.1 percent in 2021, and the same federal survey put it at 7 percent in 2015. National adolescent use is lower than it was a decade ago, and most of the country's legalizing happened in between. The Globe's own analysis found the decline was steepest in the states where adult-use has been legal the longest. In Massachusetts, a Cannabis Control Commission analysis found daily or near-daily use among 16- to 20-year-olds roughly halved between 2019 and 2023, to 7 percent, and Boston Public Schools puts current use at 12 percent, about ten points below 2015. Past-month use among southern Berkshire County 12th graders rose 70 percent from 2021 to 2025, and Dr. Cheryl Foo of Mass General Brigham says population surveys can miss harm concentrated among teens already at psychiatric risk. Those findings make the case for closer surveillance and prevention where the numbers are moving. Dr. Sharon Levy of Boston Children's, who signed a 2019 letter opposing Massachusetts stores, told the Globe youth use hasn't turned into the wave people feared, and she would rather tighten the rules than repeal them. Wendy Wakeman, the SAM-supported front-lady of the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts answered all of it by saying the research hasn't been done, and offered that as a reason to vote yes. Where is the evidence that would justify closing every adult-use store? When a campaign's central factual claim runs against ten years of federal survey data, a headline that frames the question as open gives the campaign something the reporting never did.

The Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce endorsed No on 8 on Friday. Chambers of commerce are traditionally conservative rooms, and this one is led by Tim Murray, who served as lieutenant governor under Deval Patrick before taking the job. The chamber counts $8.54 million in local cannabis excise to Worcester since legalization, $1.89 million of it last year, and $22.59 million to Worcester County municipalities since 2019. Murray didn't argue that the market is finished. "Massachusetts should continue looking for ways to make its legal cannabis market work better while supporting this industry," he said, which is a reform position from a business group that could have stayed out of it. StoptheRepealMA.com has the campaign's filings and schedule, with 43 days to go before November 3rd. (The Boston Globe; SAMHSA, National Survey on Drug Use and Health; No on 8 campaign release via Cannabis Business Times; Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission)

🌾 Argentina's hemp and medical cannabis regulator, ARICCAME, published Resolution 69/2026 on September 3rd, creating licenses for horticultural hemp under 1 percent THC with flower and biomass included. The license categories run from farming to manufacturing, services and foreign trade, and medicinal, food, cosmetic, veterinary, industrial and research uses are all permitted downstream under the 2022 hemp law, Law 27.669. One percent is more than three times the 0.3 percent line in U.S. law, and it arrives as Section 781's total-THC standard prepares to push most smokable American hemp flower out of the federal definition on December 11th. An Argentine grower will be licensed to sell flower that a U.S. buyer can no longer call hemp. (ARICCAME Resolution 69/2026; HempToday)

The Marijuana Control Board meets in special session tomorrow on more than a dozen draft projects written under Administrative Order 360. Governor Mike Dunleavy issued that order in August 2025 to cut regulatory requirements across state government 15 percent by the end of this year and 25 percent by the end of 2027. The advertising draft would repeal the five warnings every Alaska cannabis ad now carries, covering intoxication, impaired driving, health risk, adults-only use and pregnancy. It would also drop the rule that lets a licensee sponsor an event only when under-21s make up no more than 30 percent of the expected crowd, while the ban on ads that appeal to minors and the buffers around schools stay. Another draft would eliminate the daily purchase limits of seven grams of concentrate and 5,600 milligrams of THC, leaving the one-ounce flower limit in place. The rest is housekeeping, folding five packaging and labeling sections into two, gathering inventory rules into one section, and replacing the MJ26 sample form with a note in the tracking system. The housekeeping earns its credit, since a requirement written in five places is harder to follow and no safer for it. The warnings and the purchase limits are public health choices, and a percentage target counts them the same as a duplicated paragraph. My guess is the board advances the consolidation drafts tomorrow and sends the warning and purchase-limit repeals back for more work, since those are the pieces that will draw comment from outside the industry. Nothing adopted Tuesday takes effect without a full public notice process. (Alaska Marijuana Control Board meeting documents; Office of the Governor, Administrative Order 360; The Marijuana Herald)

📡 Mack Hueber of the Empire Cannabis Manufacturers Alliance argues in a Times Union commentary that New York's spending on its licensees' Metrc tags, about $10 million by his count, pays off only if the Office of Cannabis Management has investigators to act on the data. An operator asking the state for more enforcement is the less common version of that argument. The system is already producing what regulators bought it for, which is how OCM was able to count 87 retailers behind on their supplier bills this month. A delinquency or a diverted package that shows up in the ledger still needs an investigator to follow it, and that line item belongs in the next budget next to the tags. (Times Union commentary; New York Office of Cannabis Management)

💊 Starting January 1st, every Minnesota retailer holding a medical endorsement has to carry every product the Office of Cannabis Management designates as high medical need. OCM can suspend or revoke the endorsement if a listed product isn't available at the store within 24 hours of a patient's request. Chapter 123 sets the floor at pills, water-soluble powders and granules, orally dissolvable products such as lozenges and sublingual tablets, and tinctures, and lets OCM add more. Manufacturers with medical endorsements have to make them. The same law replaces the medical combination license with a macrobusiness license and opens medical endorsements to other license types. The designated list is what retailers and manufacturers need next, since a product added in December has to get through cultivation, manufacturing and testing before a patient can ask for it. (Minnesota Laws 2026, chapter 123; Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management; The Marijuana Herald)

🤠 Texas filed a 39-page reply brief Thursday asking the Fifteenth Court of Appeals to uphold the consumable hemp rules DSHS and HHSC adopted March 31st and to vacate the injunction the Texas Hemp Business Council won in the trial court. The state says counting THCA toward total delta-9 is a testing method for the statutory 0.3 percent line rather than a new limit. It defends the $10,000 manufacturer and $5,000 retailer fees as inspection money, with DSHS growing its inspection staff from seven to 23 for more than 14,000 licensees. The brief also leans on the federal total-THC standard taking full effect December 11th. The same court declined in July to keep that injunction in force while the appeal runs, and the rules have been enforceable since. (The Marijuana Herald; Texas Fifteenth Court of Appeals filing)

⚠️ Assemblywoman Aura Dunn filed A5463 on September 14th to require New Jersey retailers to post a point-of-sale warning on high-potency cannabis. The notice would cover risks for people under 25 and for anyone with or at risk of a psychotic disorder, along with where to get help cutting back. The Cannabis Regulatory Commission would write the notice and decide what counts as high potency, and the bill sets no THC ceiling and bans nothing. Washington stores have posted a similar notice since December 31st, 2024. The potency concern comes from New Jersey's own State Auditor, who found average reported flower THCA rising from 24.5 percent in 2023 to 27.81 percent in 2025 and questioned whether the commission can verify lab results at all. A warning keyed to high potency depends on the number printed on the label being right. (The Marijuana Herald; New Jersey Legislature, A5463; New Jersey Office of the State Auditor)

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