📊 “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

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DEA briefly posted the page where it will name the medical cannabis businesses that applied for federal registration, then pulled it. State and local police in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida are moving on hemp sellers ahead of the federal date, and Vermont’s CBD makers are pricing out reformulation. The Republican running for governor of Massachusetts is against Question 8 too, and a Pittsburgh newsroom found six chains running more than half of Pennsylvania’s medical dispensaries. Rep. Dina Titus wants Congress to hold hemp and cannabis to the same standards, and New York has a Halloween checklist for parents.

🔍 Who’s on the list
🚔 Not waiting for December
🗳️ Both sides of the ballot
🎃 Sifting the candy bag

DEA briefly posted a page for its list of the state-licensed medical cannabis businesses that applied for federal registration under April’s rescheduling order, then pulled it, Marijuana Moment reports. The page said the list will show applicants by state and by category, including dispensaries, manufacturers and distributors, and will be updated daily. April’s order promised expedited handling for anyone who filed within 60 days, with processing within six months. DEA hasn’t posted a total or a launch date. The form DEA opened October 5th asks every applicant whether it will also handle adult-use product, and three days before that, Administrator Terrance Cole denied MedPharm Research’s 2016 manufacturing application on the ground that its affiliate’s adult-use business was diversion. I’m curious to see who didn’t apply. Are there any MSOs sitting out? Do medical-only state entities dominate, given the complication with co-located adult use? And who signed up to let the feds know they’re dispensing weed? Before DEA pulled the page Wednesday, the file behind the link was a placeholder that read “TEST.” (Marijuana Moment)

🧭 Rep. Dina Titus, the Nevada Democrat who co-chairs the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, said Tuesday that “marijuana and hemp-derived substances should be held to the same basic standards when they produce similar intoxicating effects.” Her statement to The Marijuana Herald also touched on research and tax policy, and it didn’t endorse a bill or a potency limit. So she’s for standards? Is she in favor of hemp? Opposed? What does that even mean? (The Marijuana Herald)

MJBizDaily tallied a fall of state and local action against hemp THC sellers. A seven-county operation in Pennsylvania produced 12 arrests in September, and North Carolina authorities raided 13 hemp shops on October 14th. In Florida, a woman was reportedly held on $20 million bond in a warehouse case. “I see state and local law enforcement taking the lead on these issues,” said Matthew Ginder of Greenspoon Marder. Each case rests on its own state’s law. The federal limit of 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container arrives December 11th, and cannabinoids the plant can’t produce on its own lose hemp status on November 12th. For all the years we heard that cannabis was not a priority, it seems tunes have changed. There is likely to be some interesting case law made here, and even more confusion. What happens to the beer distributor holding product on December 12th? Depends on the state. What happens to the retailer with inventory? Will there be hemp safe havens across the country, like Minnesota? This is just another reason the feds need to get their shit together and hatch a plan. They banned it last year, but kicking the date out seems to suggest something is coming on oversight and regulation. (MJBizDaily)

Seven Days visited Vermont CBD producers preparing for the federal limit of 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container. Sunsoil, which says it sells through about 2,500 retail outlets, is planning reformulations. Sunset Lake Farms says CBD is about 30 percent of its combined revenue with a sister company, and roughly 60 percent of its supplements need reworking at a cost of about $100,000. Dylan Raap of Upstate Elevator puts about 90 percent of the company’s current products in the path of the change. Compliance is expensive, and this definition may sweep in product categories it didn’t intend, like topicals, balms and even seeds. (Seven Days)

Mike Minogue, the Republican nominee for governor, is on record: “I’m not in favor of repealing,” Marijuana Moment reports. That puts him alongside Gov. Maura Healey, who came out against Question 8 earlier this month after opposing legalization as attorney general in 2016. If Question 8 passes, adult-use retail sales end January 1, 2028. Its text also repeals the adult home-grow authorization, and possessing an ounce or less stays legal, according to Boston.com’s explainer. Paul Armentano of NORML made the case against it in an op-ed Wednesday, and The Suffolk Journal, the other, second best student paper at my alma mater, ran an opinion piece headlined “Back to the stoner ages.” Election Day is Tuesday. Endorsements are unlikely to have any impact on this. Frankly, in Massachusetts, being opposed to cannabis is bad for a candidate’s political prospects, especially a Republican’s. The case for voting no is at StoptheRepealMA.com. (Marijuana Moment; Boston.com; NORML; The Suffolk Journal)

🎃 It must be Halloween, so now your kids are going to get candy laced with cannabis. New York’s Office of Cannabis Management put out its seasonal checklist, which calls for locked storage, original child-resistant packaging, keeping product away from the trick-or-treat haul and calling Poison Control. Jen Rohda of the Nebraska Poison Center told KLIN that edibles that look like candy are a risk for kids at home and at parties, and said those exposures typically don’t involve anything in trick-or-treat bags. I know I’ll be sifting through my daughter’s candy looking for universal symbols and warning labels. And there may be some seltzers for the parents in the beer fridge, out of reach of the kiddos, of course. (BTPM; KLIN)

A NewsWorks Lab investigation published by TribLive found that six retail brands, Curaleaf, RISE, Trulieve, Zen Leaf, Sunnyside and Beyond Hello, operate more than 100 dispensaries, which is more than half of Pennsylvania’s total. Multistate companies control at least 10 of the 16 original permits in the state’s southwest region, and Verano reportedly paid $110 million for The Healing Center in 2021. Flower fell from $14.90 a gram in early 2021 to $7.65 by mid-2025, according to a Department of Health advisory board presentation. “There’s a gravitational-like force towards consolidation in almost any industry,” said former Sen. Daylin Leach. Markets are designed by regulation. Is this what Pennsylvania meant? And if the state considers adult use, is this its plan? Will it try to wedge a new market into this one, and how much of a head start do these companies get? We make choices as policymakers, and we live with the outcomes. Or we change the policy. (TribLive; Marijuana Moment)

Dexter Ridgway and Peter Leasure of Ohio State’s Drug Enforcement and Policy Center compared criminal incident patterns around Columbus dispensaries before and after adult-use sales began, in a working paper posted in August that Crain’s Cleveland Business covered this week. Their abstract says the results don’t support an increase in recorded crime around the stores. The authors also flag limits in their research design and data, and the paper is a law school working paper that hasn’t gone through peer review. (Crain’s Cleveland Business; SSRN)

🧑‍⚕️ Researchers from USC, Colorado State, UC Santa Cruz, CU Boulder and UC Berkeley set up a mock dispensary and interviewed 20 budtenders and 60 consumers aged 21 to 30 about harm reduction at the counter. The study ran in the Harm Reduction Journal on October 15th. The conversations covered sales, product selection, overconsumption and the relationship between budtender and customer. The study recorded what people described, and it didn’t measure whether any of that advice changed how much anyone consumed. (Bioengineer.org; Harm Reduction Journal)

A FWD.us analysis found that Black people accounted for 83 percent of the 2025 increase in cannabis arrests and 45 percent of all cannabis arrests. Black residents were arrested for possession at a rate of 182 per 100,000, against 41 for white residents. On the federal side, the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s fiscal 2025 figures show 64 percent of people sentenced for cannabis trafficking were in the lowest criminal history category, 85 percent went to prison and 42 percent were Black. It tells me how little progress we’ve made. This data should sit heavy with policymakers. (Marijuana Moment; U.S. Sentencing Commission)

Rep. Valerie Foushee’s H.R. 10433, the SAFE Platforms Act, cosponsored by Rep. James Moylan, would require platforms with 100,000 monthly users or $25 million in annual revenue to run enhanced identity and business-history checks on advertisers in high-risk categories, a list that includes tobacco, alcohol, cannabis and gambling. It adds verification and stops short of a ban. Amy Deneson of the Cannabis Media Council argued in a Marijuana Moment op-ed that “licensed cannabis operators aren’t the scam.” Does cannabis belong on that list? No. Jeremy Berke called it out on The Hybrid, describing “this congealing narrative that cannabis is just another vice,” and he’s right that cannabis is improperly placed among the vices. (Marijuana Moment; GovInfo)

Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division issued health and safety notices on October 23rd and October 27th. One covers Colorado Medical Processing vapes tied to methyl ethyl ketone, a solvent, and lists 32 stores. The other covers Nutritional Elements flower that turned up aspergillus, the pesticide pyriproxyfen and mold and yeast, and lists 37. Westword counts 69 dispensary listings in all, and some stores may appear on both. MED is doing its job and chasing public health threats. (Westword)

Victor Diaz, who owns Sweet Leaf Dispensary, filed a notice of claim on October 1st seeking $5 million from Atlantic City, and it became public this week on a City Council agenda, WFPG reports. In September, federal prosecutors charged Kashawn McKinley, a city cannabis official, with bribery connected to the local cannabis sector. The federal case describes more than $20,000 in cash and cannabis, along with a municipal fee of $2,500 for a microbusiness against $25,000 for a standard license. Under New Jersey’s Tort Claims Act, a notice of claim comes before any lawsuit, and no civil complaint has been reported. McKinley hasn’t been convicted of anything. (WFPG; Heady NJ)

HedgeRow Analysis CEO Matt Walter estimates tribal cannabis retail could bring in $300 million to $600 million a year within five years for early entrants, and more than $2 billion a year eventually. The firm’s model puts the largest opportunity per site in states that still prohibit cannabis, above $25 million a year, against $8 million to $18 million in medical-only states and $4 million to $12 million in adult-use states. It places about 40 percent of the total in the South and along the Gulf. HedgeRow sells market analysis, and every figure here is a projection. The tribal cannabis business run by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina reports about 270 employees and more than $5 million in tribal sales tax this year. (Marijuana Moment)

Zimbabwe’s Statutory Instrument 108 of 2026, published in July, cut the medical cannabis application fee from $10,000 to $1,000 and the five-year renewal from $50,000 to $7,500, MMJDaily reports, drawing on TalkingDrugs. Import and export permits fell from $5,000 to $75. Under the 2018 framework, 57 licenses went out in the first four years and 15 of those reached cultivation. In Ghana, Dr. Mark Darko of the Ghana Chamber of Cannabis Industry says neither of the two companies licensed on July 31st has started operating, and he wants the government to reconsider a license cost his chamber puts at about $45,000. Ghana allows cultivation only at or below 0.3 percent THC, for medicinal and industrial use. (MMJDaily; TalkingDrugs; NewsGhana)

🗺️ Around the map: In Peoria, Binny’s, Friar Tuck and UFS Outlet Center are winding down THC drink sales before Illinois starts treating products over 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container as cannabis. That’s November 12th, a date on our Deadlines, Decoded tracker. La Mota CEO Rosa Cazares asked Oregon regulators in June to remove her from all of the chain’s licenses, with a resignation effective September 1st, weeks before her federal tax indictment. Massachusetts’ Cannabis Control Commission takes up its draft testing regulations again on November 12th, with public comment planned for January 2027. A California judge ordered Baltimore operator Evermore Cannabis to pay a roughly $1.98 million arbitration award over unpaid advisory fees, Law360 reports. St. Kitts and Nevis’ Medicinal Cannabis Authority says talks with the St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla National Bank produced a path to deposits, payroll and accounts for licensees in compliance. (Peoria Journal Star; Willamette Week; Talking Joints Memo; Law360; St. Vincent Times)

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Policy, Decoded is compiled and edited by Shawn Collins of THC Group . AI tools help with research and source checks; the judgments are his.
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