🕰️ “Delay is preferable to error.”

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DEA told its own judge that the bid to reopen the rescheduling record is a fishing expedition. Adria Berry is stepping down after five years running Oklahoma’s medical cannabis agency. The Massachusetts House moved to let veterans register with a VA diagnosis, and Worcester’s council came out against Question 8 with five members abstaining. Idaho voters decide in two weeks whether to give up their own initiative power, and a federal CBD benefit for Medicare patients has six takers and ten weeks left.

🏛️ Fishing, declined
🤠 The adult in the room
🎖️ A diagnosis, no doctor
🗳️ Courage, abstaining

DEA filed its answer Wednesday to the motion from NDASA, DUID Victim Voices and Dr. Kenneth Finn to reopen the rescheduling record for discovery and testimony on September’s GAO report. The agency still doesn’t object to Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek Julius admitting the report. It opposes everything the movants want to build on top of it, calling the request an “obvious fishing expedition based on a Report that is clear on its face.” DEA argued that the report documents gaps in how the agency wrote its process down, adds no new evidence on the question before the judge, and that the Administrative Procedure Act doesn’t allow general discovery once testimony has closed. Julius gave the movants leave to reply, and the hearing stays frozen until he rules. DEA’s posture is assertive, and it reinforces the agency’s stance that rescheduling should advance. It isn’t looking for administrative delays or encouraging the judge to slow roll anything, which should please advocates. That said, all of this is likely to be reviewed by a court soon enough, and process will be considered and evaluated there. The consolidated D.C. Circuit challenge already has a proposed briefing schedule that runs to February 19th. (Marijuana Moment)

Gov. Kevin Stitt announced that Adria Berry is stepping down as executive director of the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority “to pursue new opportunities.” She stays on as the state’s secretary of licensing and regulation for the rest of his term. Jason Yingling, OMMA’s deputy chief of compliance and enforcement and a veteran of the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office and the Highway Patrol, takes over as interim director. Berry has led the agency since 2021. She inherited the wild west and worked to tame it over her tenure. It is a thankless task, but she was up to it and corralled the program. Plenty of work remains, and her own governor suggested the program be repealed. With a new administration coming in soon, she deserved to leave on her own terms. Her legacy will be one of being the adult in the room when one was desperately needed. (KOCO; News9; The Oklahoman)

💊 Spain’s first registered standardized medical cannabis preparations, Curaleaf’s CAN-1 and CAN-2, were set to begin shipping to about 50 hospitals this week under Royal Decree 903/2025, which took effect a year ago this month. Prescribing stays inside hospitals and covers four indications. Prof. Manuel Guzmán of the International Association for Cannabinoid Medicines calls the framework “extremely restricted,” community pharmacies are challenging the hospital-only model in Spain’s Supreme Court, and reimbursement hasn’t been settled. (Business of Cannabis)

The supplemental budget the House advanced Wednesday, H.5699, would let a veteran register as a medical cannabis patient with official documentation from the Department of Veterans Affairs of a debilitating condition. The Cannabis Control Commission “shall not require” a written certification from a clinician. The bill also adds PTSD, opioid use disorder and chronic pain to the qualifying conditions. Gov. Maura Healey filed the original version, and the House added opioid use disorder and wrote the Commission into the language. The VA still bars its own providers from completing state recommendation forms. The Commission will have to navigate how best to receive, evaluate and possibly store VA records, and data security is my first concern. It also isn’t clear that veterans would be receiving care alongside their cannabis. Their VA providers likely won’t be advising them on things like dosing and titration, so who will if they skip the provider recommendation? The Senate still has to take it up. (Marijuana Moment)

📊 Rhode Island’s Cannabis Control Commission counted $31.5 million in retail sales for the third quarter, plus $13.2 million in wholesale transfers between licensees. Packaged flower led at $12.1 million and prerolls followed at $7.0 million. The average transaction came to $34.95, and year-to-date retail sits near $92 million. The state has 6,643 registered medical patients. (MMJDaily)

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services opened its Substance Access Beneficiary Engagement Incentive on April 1st, letting accountable care organizations in its ACO REACH model give patients up to $500 a year in hemp CBD products. The ACO buys them out of its own budget. Six of 74 ACOs are approved, and CMS didn’t say how many have handed anything out. ACO REACH ends December 31st, and the LEAD model carries the incentive forward on January 1st. CMS says eligible products must meet “any future statutory limits,” so a product that loses hemp status on December 11th loses its place in the program, too. “No one’s going to start a program a couple months before it has to wind down,” Jim Higdon of Cornbread Hemp told MJBizDaily. The federal CBD benefit is obviously the motivator for the White House encouraging Congress to act on the so-called hemp ban, so there is certainly a window to resolve it. Is it likely, with voters already submitting ballots in the midterms and power possibly changing hands in January? It is certainly running out of time, but there may be political will. The CBD program, to be clear, is different from the intoxicating hemp interests pushing against the same ban. Strange bedfellows. (MJBizDaily)

The Worcester City Council passed Mayor Joseph Petty’s resolution against Question 8 on Tuesday, 6-0, with five abstentions. Councilor Tony Economou said he supports legal sales but doesn’t feel “this body should be the body to tell people what to do,” and Councilor Morris Bergman objected to singling out one of nine ballot questions. Hard disagree. Elected officials are a natural source of guidance on how to vote and on local impact, so who else would voters look to? Talk about profiles in courage. Politicians saying they shouldn’t tell voters how to vote, unless it’s for them. The case for voting no is at StoptheRepealMA.com. (Worcester Guardian)

🖥️ Michael Ward spent about $20 million in 2020 on a 32,850-square-foot grow in Kalamazoo, and when cannabis prices sank, Harbor Farmz tried to sell it as a data center. The city granted zoning clearance in April, then passed a moratorium in August after residents complained about noise, power bills, grid strain and water. The listing came down in September. Cannabis growers spent a decade hearing about the energy and water their indoor grows used, so where are the host community agreements for data centers? “Breaking even is the new succeeding,” Ward told Forbes. (Forbes)

House Joint Resolution 4 goes to Idaho voters November 3rd. It would amend Article III, Section 26 of the state constitution to bar citizen initiatives legalizing specified psychoactive substances, leaving that decision to the Legislature, and it passes with a simple majority. At an October 19th forum in Coeur d’Alene, Sen. Ben Toews defended it, and Reclaim Idaho’s Luke Mayville said it “would essentially be the voters of Idaho voting to give away a big piece of their own power.” I’ve not been shy about hating ballot questions, but I can also confirm that we wouldn’t have adult-use cannabis in Massachusetts without the mechanism. It is incredibly pompous of legislators to seek to take away the voters’ right to petition, especially when they’ve indicated no interest in taking it up themselves. (Coeur d’Alene Press)

Rep. James Gallagher, the California Republican who won a special election this year to succeed the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa, wrote FBI Director Kash Patel on Monday asking the Sacramento field office to work with the Siskiyou and Shasta County sheriffs on the groups behind illegal grows. He cited more than 332,000 plants eradicated in Siskiyou County in 2025. I’m not sure the FBI is the right agency, but state regulators and authorities could certainly use assistance protecting the legal market against illicit activity. California has long been home to a legacy market that ought to be migrated into a legal one, and criminal elements hiding behind a legal market undermine trust and confidence and threaten public health and safety. There are other ways to confront it, too, short of returning to a war on drugs, which is what I picture the FBI salivating over these days. (Marijuana Moment)

🗺️ Around the map: New Mexico’s Regulation and Licensing Department told lawmakers the state has logged about $2.4 billion in licensed retail sales since adult-use began, and Superintendent Clay Bailey said enforcement removed 11,173 illegal plants this past year. A Capitol Compliance Management study found 81 percent of California’s equity-labeled storefront licenses still active, against 76 percent of the rest, though CCM serves equity licensees. MassDEP fined The Botanist $7,730 over air, waste-oil and wastewater violations at its Sterling grow. Kentucky has 46 of 80 approved medical cannabis businesses operating, Gov. Andy Beshear said, with more than 29,000 cards approved. (KRQE via AOL; National Law Review; Talking Joints Memo; Marijuana Moment)

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