🌴 Florida overrules its judge, keeps its 22

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Florida's Department of Health licensed the same 22 treatment centers it picked in 2024, setting aside the rescore its own administrative law judge recommended in May. Minnesota's Office of Cannabis Management marked a year of adult-use sales today with a medical program more than twice the size it was before fees came off. In North Dakota, the health department asked lawmakers to restore certification fees they cut three years ago, and Sen. Kristin Roers told it the request runs against what the Legislature intended. Nebraska's commission, meanwhile, put its fee rules on a calendar that reaches into 2027.

🌴 Twenty-two, as first announced
🌾 Medical grew anyway
💵 The ceiling comes back
🌽 Nebraska waits on 2027

The Florida Department of Health entered a Final Order on Friday, September 11th, closing the April 2023 licensing cycle. Vicente partner Sally Kent Peebles reports that the order grants Medical Marijuana Treatment Center licenses to the same 22 applicants the department picked from 74 in November 2024, and declines Administrative Law Judge Mary Li Creasy's May recommendation to rescore the field. The winners include STIIIZY Florida, Theory Wellness of Florida, Star Buds Florida, KLUTCH Cannabis, Belushi's Farm Florida and Greenlight. Each owes $5 million in financial assurance within ten business days, which Vicente puts at September 25th, and the cultivation, processing and dispensing requests fall due at 180, 270 and 365 days. The department is entitled to overrule a recommended order once it has weighed the parties' exceptions, and it did so the same day it published proposed Rule 64-4.214 to govern every cycle after this one. Creasy, though, sat through a three-month evidentiary hearing on how the department applied its own scoring, recommended adjustments for eight applicants, and heard a record in which the lowest awardee finished a single point ahead of one challenger. Section 120.68 gives any adversely affected party 30 days to seek review in the First District Court of Appeal. I would put money on at least one challenger filing there with a stay motion attached, because three years of legal fees spent chasing a one-point margin rarely stop at the agency. A quiet October at the First District would mean the department's order held better than I expect. (Vicente LLP; Florida Office of Medical Marijuana Use; WUSF; Florida Administrative Register)

📊 House Majority Leader Steve Scalise's line last week that cannabis is a gateway drug has a constituency, and most of it sits in his own party. Rasmussen Reports surveyed 1,234 adults September 8th through 10th and found 55 percent calling cannabis not very dangerous or not dangerous at all, against 37 percent calling it somewhat or very dangerous. On whether cannabis leads to more dangerous drugs, respondents split 45 to 46, with 9 percent unsure. Republicans rated cannabis dangerous at 50 percent to Democrats' 33, and accepted the gateway claim at 60 percent to 42. Those are the voters a House majority answers to, which is how an administration defending Schedule III in the D.C. Circuit and a majority leader repeating the gateway line end up on the same team. (Rasmussen Reports; Marijuana Moment)

Minnesota's Office of Cannabis Management marked one year of state-licensed adult-use sales today with more than $250 million in combined purchases, about $150 million adult-use and $100 million medical. Medical enrollment has more than doubled since the Legislature eliminated patient fees in 2023 and widened qualifying conditions in 2024, from just over 41,000 patients to more than 90,000. OCM points out that most states lose medical patients once adult-use stores open. Supply is the other story. Licensed plant counts rose 575 percent in twelve months, from 72,083 across 11 license holders to 486,720 across 102, and 95 cultivators were licensed in June, July and August alone, after tribal compacts carried the early shelves. Of the state's 369 licensed businesses, 43 percent are owned by verified social equity applicants. The $45.6 million in tax revenue OCM reports covers ten months and folds in lower-potency hemp edibles and beverages, which sit outside the seed-to-sale system, so the state's own data cannot say which channel produced which dollars. I expect OCM's Cannabis Market Monitor to show lower flower prices in December than today, because a nearly sevenfold plant count reaches shelves this fall as manufacturers turn harvest into edibles and vapes. Steady prices through the holidays would tell me demand kept pace and I read the market wrong. Erik Gundersen and I spent an episode of The Hybrid earlier this month with OCM Executive Director Eric Taubel on running adult-use, medical and hemp markets from one office, and this release puts numbers on most of what he described. (Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management; Marijuana Moment; KTTC)

The Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission said Monday its fee and licensing amendments will not be final until next year, the same day ten manufacturer applications came in before the window closed. Nothing gets licensed until fees take effect, which requires an October 15th hearing, a commission vote on October 19th or in November, review by Attorney General Mike Hilgers, approval by Gov. Jim Pillen and five days on the books. Voters approved the program in November 2024, and nearly two years on, no Nebraska patient can buy from a Nebraska licensee. I think the first manufacturer license issues no earlier than spring 2027, and Brett Long starts as executive director on September 28th with that calendar already set. (The Marijuana Herald; Nebraska Public Media; Nebraska.tv)

🧾 Germany's Frankfurt Social Court turned away a patient with idiopathic dystonia who had received insurer-approved cannabis flower for about three years, 120 grams a month at €8.50 a gram, roughly €1,020 she says she cannot pay herself. The court held that no statutory right to flower reimbursement has existed since July 30th, and that the Bundestag wrote no transitional provision for patients whose treatment was already approved. Her condition is serious without being life-threatening, so no exception applied, and the judgment points her toward another cannabis medicine or buying flower on her own. That other route now runs through a six-month trial on an approved finished medicine, and Vertanical's Exilby, one of the four on the list, is still in price negotiations and not yet reimbursable. The Bundestag could have protected the patients insurers had already approved with a sentence of transition language, and it did not write one. (Cannabis Health; Sozialgericht Frankfurt am Main)

Testifying Monday before the Legislature's Administrative Rules Committee, the Department of Health and Human Services' Jason Wahl asked to return medical cannabis certification fees to the amounts the 2017 law originally fixed, $110,000 for a manufacturing facility and $90,000 for a dispensary per two-year certificate. The current rule, amended in October 2023, charges $75,000 and $60,000, so the request works out to increases of roughly 47 and 50 percent. The department's case is simple enough. The statute now sets those figures as ceilings, the agency sets the actual fee by rule, and a program with eight dispensaries has a small base to bill. Sen. Kristin Roers, R-Fargo, answered that SB 2201, Sen. Scott Meyer's bill in the 2023 session, existed to lower these fees, and that the ceiling language was the compromise that let the department keep some flexibility. She called the proposal contrary to "express legislative intent," which is the phrase that carries weight in that room. Under N.D.C.C. § 28-32-18, the committee can void a rule for an agency's failure to follow express legislative intent, or carry it to one more meeting while the agency brings back an amended version. (Rob Port, InForum; N.D. Admin. Code 33-44-01; N.D.C.C. § 28-32-18)

🗳️ The SEIU Massachusetts State Council, which represents more than 23,000 human service workers and educators, and the Law Enforcement Action Partnership each endorsed No on 8: Stop the Repeal on Tuesday. Question 8 would end licensed adult-use retail and home cultivation while keeping possession legal and the medical program intact. It appears on the November 3rd ballot as "Prohibit Retail Sale of Adult Recreational Use Marijuana." SEIU and Local 509 President Dave Foley built his case around workplace protections and the right to organize. LEAP Executive Director Diane Goldstein, a retired police lieutenant, argued that repeal would leave demand in place and hand the market to illicit sellers. Cannabis Control Commission Chair Chris Harding told Marijuana Moment the agency takes no position on ballot questions. Speaking generally, he said repeal of the adult-use industry "could eliminate thousands of jobs, hundreds of businesses and billions in tax revenue." Neither endorsing group sells cannabis, and both came with arguments about work and policing. StoptheRepealMA.com has the filings and the schedule. (Marijuana Moment; Talking Joints Memo; Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth)

🥤 Missouri's HB 2641 takes effect November 12th and moves anything intoxicating, or anything over 0.4 milligrams of THC per container, into licensed dispensaries, with beverages keeping their current shelves until the federal date of December 11th. The makers with the least room to adjust sell low-dose, full-spectrum products to people managing pain. Healer CEO Brad Feuer told the Missouri Independent his company will not try to work inside the marijuana rules, since licensed cultivators grow high-THC, low-CBD plants that do not fit its formulas. Leaf411 founder Katherine Golden said many one- and two-milligram products have already left dispensary shelves for lack of sales, while Missouri Cannabis Trade Association Executive Director Andrew Mullins expects dispensaries to lean further into medicinal products as unregulated channels close. Sponsor Rep. Dave Hinman says any federal carve-out for full-spectrum products would still need a Missouri bill in January. Should Congress write that carve-out, a Missouri patient would still be waiting on Jefferson City to buy one. (Missouri Independent via KCUR)

Reps. Lauren Boebert and Derrick Van Orden introduced H.R. 10150, the Advancing Botanical Drug Development Act, on August 27th, barring FDA from approving generic or hybrid applications that reference a newly approved botanical drug for 12 years. The bill reaches every plant-derived drug, and AJNA Biosciences CEO Joel Stanley, a Charlotte's Web co-founder whose company is developing a cannabinoid treatment for autism, is among its backers. FDA's request for information on the botanical pathway, Docket FDA-2026-N-9550, counts four approvals ever and closes November 3rd, so the agency and the bill are working the same problem on separate tracks. It sits in Energy and Commerce with no hearing scheduled. (Marijuana Moment; Psychedelic State(s) of America; Congress.gov)

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