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The first phase of the federal hemp change took effect Thursday, with the 0.4 milligram cap still set for December 11th. New Jersey’s governor signed the delay of the state’s hemp beverage cutoff, Illinois regulators published their penalty terms, and Philadelphia’s kratom and hemp ban ran into a lawsuit the city moved to federal court. Massachusetts commissioners sent draft testing rules forward (finally), Maine caregivers are weighing DEA registration, and the governors-elect of Wisconsin and Iowa put revenue numbers on legalization. Plus Texas, Colorado, West Virginia, Montana, and FDA.

📆 Phase one begins
🥂 New Jersey buys time
🔔 No license to apply for
🔬 Testing rules move on

Cannabinoids that a cannabis plant can’t naturally produce stopped counting as federal hemp yesterday, the first phase of the federal ban. The change covers intermediate and final products, while the federal cap of 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container for most products still waits for December 11th after the September funding bill moved it. Phase one does not reach the conversion of cannabinoids the plant does produce, such as CBD turned into delta-9 THC, delta-8 THC, or isomers, and Marijuana Moment reports disagreement over HHC, which occurs in trace amounts in the plant.

Josh Glasstetter of the ironically named anti-hemp American Trade Association for Cannabis and Hemp told NPR that “virtually nothing changes today.” The bills on the table take different routes: Rep. Beth Van Duyne and Rep. Greg Landsman would tax and regulate hemp THC beverages like alcohol, Rep. James Comer is circulating a draft that pairs a delay with packaging, testing, and age limits, and Rep. Andy Barr has filed one with labeling, sales, taxation, and a minimum age of 21. Phase one reaches the products the plant can’t make on its own, so for most shelves nothing changes until December 11th, and whether that date moves is up to the current lame duck Congress. Where HHC and other converted cannabinoids land is disputed, and the FDA list that would settle the edges is more than nine months late. (Marijuana Moment; NPR)

Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed the bill yesterday that moves New Jersey’s hemp beverage cutoff from November 13th to December 11th, or to any later date Congress sets for the federal limit. It took effect immediately, and the text bars the date from landing earlier than December 11th. The Senate passed it 37 to 0 and the Assembly 75 to 2, and The Marijuana Herald reports that qualifying liquor stores, wholesalers, and cannabis licensees keep selling until then under the existing potency, testing, and under-21 limits. Licensed hemp producers may also hold and move intermediate product above 0.3 percent THC while they process it, per the bill text.

New Jersey kept its beverages in a licensed channel with a wholesale paper trail until the federal date, and tied its own cutoff to a calendar Congress controls, so another federal delay would carry through without a second bill. After that date, beverages over the cap would generally sit in the licensed cannabis market and nowhere else. (The Marijuana Herald; New Jersey Governor’s Office; New Jersey Legislature)

⚖️ Illinois regulators put penalty terms on their new hemp rules Thursday. According to the state’s release, carried by the Times Tribune, products over 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container now count as cannabis under state law, and unlicensed sellers face cease and desist orders, civil penalties up to $10,000 per offense with each day counted separately, and referral to law enforcement. The state has agreed not to enforce the law against the businesses suing over it, including roughly 250 members of the Illinois Healthy Alternatives Association, until a November 19th federal court hearing. The first priorities are candy-like or child-oriented packaging, untested or mislabeled products, and businesses posing as licensed dispensaries, and the release says capacity is limited against the number of businesses. Child-oriented packaging, untested products, and storefronts posing as licensed dispensaries are the right first targets for an agency that says it cannot reach every business. (Times Tribune; Block Club Chicago)

The ordinance, introduced by Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson, reclassifies kratom and hemp products, including gummies, beverages, and smokable flower, as intoxicating products FDA has not approved, and it took effect Thursday, November 12th, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Sellers need a license that, according to a spokesperson for the councilmember’s office, the Department of Public Health will not create, so “there are no products allowable for sale.” Fines run $2,000 per day. The Pennsylvania Healthy Alternatives Association and CBD Kratom, a St. Louis-based company with three Philadelphia stores, sued Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and the Licenses and Inspections co-commissioners on Tuesday, and Judge Brian R. Kisielewski set an injunction hearing for Thursday afternoon. The city moved the case to federal court 40 minutes before it began, and the judge said, “I wish they provided you or myself notice.” Whether enforcement has started was unclear.

The ordinance requires a license the councilmember’s office says will not be issued, so the practical result is a ban whatever the label. A seller there should confirm with the Department of Public Health, and with counsel, whether enforcement has started and where the case now sits before relying on any state-court hearing date. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

🤝 FDA’s public database now shows that agreements with Connecticut’s Department of Consumer Protection and South Carolina’s Department of Agriculture, which were due to end October 31st, run to October 31, 2031, and that New York’s Office of Cannabis Management was added, per The Marijuana Herald. Those were two of eight agreements scheduled to expire at the end of October. Six agencies are listed with passed dates, and the database does not say whether they renewed. With FDA’s own cannabinoid list still unpublished, these agreements are one of the few channels by which states see federal information on hemp products, so the six agencies showing passed dates are worth a call to FDA before anyone assumes a lapse. (The Marijuana Herald)

At its public meeting yesterday, the Cannabis Control Commission advanced the draft testing rules released at its October 22nd meeting and decided the policy questions the draft left open, according to the Commission’s release. Compliance testing will come before any sale, targeted microbial speciation will apply to organisms of public health concern, failed results will be retested automatically by Independent Testing Laboratories before a Certificate of Analysis issues, the Standards Laboratory license type will be eliminated, and labels will say whether a product was sanitized or remediated. Commissioners are expected to approve the rules in December, wider public comment starts in January, and the rules would take effect about six months after promulgation, tentatively April 2027. Commissioner Anthony Wilson leads the testing working group.

Testing before any sale and an automatic retest of failures address two different problems, failures that slip through and failures that come from lab error. Sampling protocols decide how much either rule changes, and, naturally, the release schedules sampling and pesticide updates for later in 2027. One step forward. More steps ahead. (Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission)

🧠 Teen cannabis use in Massachusetts has fallen by nearly half from a decade ago, a report finds, but a study of records from 7,000 patients found a nearly fourfold increase in cannabis use among minors in psychiatric emergencies, GBH News reports. Cheryl Foo of Harvard Medical School and Mass General Brigham is a co-author, and Ryan Dominguez of the Massachusetts Cannabis Coalition, a trade group, questions whether the findings tie to legalization. The two figures measure different groups, and the second is the number a youth-focused rule has to answer. Neither finding establishes a cause, a caveat the study’s co-author makes too. (GBH News)

Shannon Lord, owner of Triple Goddess Wellness in Milo, told WABI that vendors and other stores have asked whether she is applying for DEA registration, and that “we don’t even know what’s going on.” She says registered businesses cannot work with unregistered ones and that she has lost 90 percent of her suppliers, which is her own estimate. Catherine Lewis of Medical Marijuana Caregivers of Maine recalled a 2010 visit from federal marshals, and vice chair Kristi Shaw believes the change favors larger companies. Alexis Soucy of the Maine Office of Cannabis Policy says federal enforcement is outside the office’s jurisdiction and it has received no guidance from federal agencies, DEA did not respond to the station, and Rep. Jared Golden responded to Lord’s letter.

The hesitation has a practical side, too. Maine’s medical program still has no mandatory contaminant testing or statewide inventory tracking, by the Office of Cannabis Policy’s own description, while its adult-use market has both. That’s a thin file to bring to a federal registration built around a closed, documented supply chain. It isn’t for lack of trying in Augusta. The office tested 120 caregiver samples in 2023 and found about 42 percent carried at least one substance banned in adult-use. It has pressed lawmakers for mandatory testing and tracking, and this spring’s bill died on adjournment. The Legislature has yet to catch up with its regulators. (WABI; Maine Office of Cannabis Policy; Maine Legislature; Maine Morning Star)

🤠 Texas’s agriculture commissioner-elect, Clayton Tucker, told The Texas Standard that “hemp, I think, is going to be our saving grace” for farmers, Marijuana Moment reports, and said his main concern is preventing corporate monopolies. Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa wants voters to decide legalization by referendum, which under state law would need the Legislature to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot. Tucker speaks for the farm side of Texas hemp, which gets less attention than the retail side, and his worry about monopolies is a licensing question the 2027 bills will have to answer. (Marijuana Moment)

Wisconsin Gov.-elect David Crowley told CNN he wants legalization revenue to help offset federal Medicaid cuts, and said at a debate last month that “if we were to go to full legalization, we could bring in anywhere between $80-170 million,” an estimate that is his own. Rep. Greta Neubauer, elected the Assembly’s next speaker, said, “we do hope to pass marijuana legalization in the coming year,” and Sen. Dianne Hesselbein, elected the Senate’s next majority leader, said it is “to be determined” whether it rides in the budget or a standalone bill. The Legislature convenes in January, per Marijuana Moment. In Iowa, Gov.-elect Rob Sand, the state auditor who won by roughly 11 percentage points, told Iowa PBS, “We should treat cannabis the way that we treat alcohol,” and estimated $54 million in the first year and “hundreds of millions of dollars” annually against a deficit he puts at $1 billion to $1.3 billion, The Marijuana Herald reports. Both estimates are the governors-elect’s own.

Wisconsin’s legislators have not chosen between a budget and a standalone bill, which decides how fast it moves. Iowa’s revenue figure is a governor-elect’s estimate heading to a Legislature Republicans still control in both chambers, and that he has to bargain with, and the first test is whether it survives the budget. (Marijuana Moment; The Marijuana Herald)

🏷️ A University of Colorado Boulder study in the Journal of Cannabis Research checked 480 products from 52 Colorado dispensaries and found 14 percent met every labeling requirement, per the university’s release. Nearly all, 99.2 percent, carried the THC symbol, fewer than half had expiration dates, and about half of flower samples were inaccurately labeled for THC. The symbol and the warnings are nearly universal, and the gaps are expiration dates, storage conditions, and THC accuracy on flower, which gives a regulator a short checklist. (Newswise)

🗺️ Around the map: The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission is targeting March 2027 for supplemental and hospitality social consumption applications and June 2027 for event organizers, with 36 months of exclusivity for social equity, economic empowerment, microbusiness, and craft cooperative applicants, plus municipal opt-in, per The Marijuana Herald. West Virginia’s Intermediate Court of Appeals held November 10th that state law sets no minimum distance between competing medical dispensaries. Montana’s Supreme Court upheld a DUI conviction in State v. Rogers because the defense objected too late. Bedrocan’s trustees picked a restart bid for its Dutch operations. The dates behind these stories sit in Deadlines, Decoded, our free monthly email. (The Marijuana Herald; West Virginia Intermediate Court of Appeals; Montana Supreme Court; Business of Cannabis)

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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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