🏛️ 84 for 84, and no manual

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Before we get into today, a thank-you to the reader who called yesterday about Michigan. His point was that the roughly $100 million already sent to local and tribal governments comes from the 10 percent excise, and repealing the 24 percent wholesale tax wouldn't touch it. That's fair, and I appreciate the call. I do actually listen to the feedback...and with that, to today.

The Government Accountability Office went looking for the written rules DEA uses to schedule drugs and found a perfect record of following HHS and almost nothing on paper explaining how the agency gets there. Missouri's Supreme Court heard a licensing case that turns on the same gap, where the scorers of the 2019 medical round were told to keep their notes thin. In Albany, Curaleaf bought a full page of the New York Post to ask Gov. Kathy Hochul to sign a bill that punishes licensees for falsified tracking records. And Delaware opens a regulated aisle for THC drinks on October 21st, seven weeks before the federal hemp definition narrows.

🏛️ Eighty-four for eighty-four
⚖️ The notes nobody took
🗽 Policing the house
🥤 An aisle of its own

The Government Accountability Office reviewed all 208 substances DEA acted on from 2020 through 2025 and published the results Wednesday. In the 95 cases where the Controlled Substances Act required an HHS scientific and medical evaluation, DEA considered one every time. All 84 of those that reached a final rule by the end of 2025 landed where HHS recommended, and the other 11 remain under extended temporary orders. GAO then went looking for the procedures behind that record and mostly came up empty. DEA has no written policy assigning who gathers information before a rulemaking, who runs the eight-factor analysis, or how staff weigh the HHS recommendation. FDA's Controlled Substance Staff has no written procedure for its own evaluations. "Potential for abuse," the phrase the whole schedule turns on, is defined neither in statute nor in FDA policy, so the analysis runs partly on professional judgment and on training passed from one person to the next. The agreement governing FDA's coordination with the National Institute on Drug Abuse is more than 40 years old and names offices that no longer exist. For the marijuana proceeding, the number that carries weight is 84. HHS recommended Schedule III in August 2023, the Office of Legal Counsel told DEA in 2024 to give HHS's findings significant deference, and the 11-day hearing on the rest of marijuana closed July 15th. I expect DEA's final rule to follow HHS the way the last 84 did, and the development that would change my mind is DEA reopening the eight-factor analysis on its own. DEA told GAO the statute and its regulations were guidance enough. I ran an agency that leaned on institutional memory in its early years, and that works until the people carrying it leave, which is GAO's point too. DOJ, DEA, HHS, FDA and NIH all agreed to write the procedures down, starting, one hopes, with the NIDA agreement. (U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-26-108623; Marijuana Moment; The Marijuana Herald)

🚁 IM Cannabis, which sells medical cannabis in Israel and Germany, filed a Form 6-K on Wednesday announcing a non-binding agreement to buy 51 percent of Space Defense Innovations, a company it describes as working in the European tactical drone market. CEO Oren Shuster did not explain what the two businesses have in common beyond a Nasdaq ticker, and nothing is final until a definitive agreement is signed. There are only a few practical uses for drones in cannabis, and none of them require an ownership stake in a defense contractor. Curious to see how this one shakes out. (IM Cannabis Corp. Form 6-K; The Marijuana Herald)

HB 373, signed July 23rd as 85 Del. Laws c. 394, takes effect October 21st. From that day, infused beverages can be sold only by licensed package stores and retail marijuana stores for consumption off the premises, which is why DelawareOnline's headline is about restaurants and bars losing them. The caps are 10 milligrams of delta-9 per single-serving can of at least 12 ounces, 60 milligrams per multipack and 170 milligrams per 750-milliliter bottle, with no alcohol and no THC other than delta-9 extract, though CBD, CBG, CBN and CBC are allowed. The drinks sit in their own marked section, carry a THC symbol and can't be shipped or delivered by a third party. Marijuana stores buy them through a licensed importer, the same tier alcohol moves through. A tax of 50 cents per can and $8.50 per bottle starts February 1st. The statute defines its delta-9 extract by reference to the USDA hemp program, and on December 11th Section 781 takes any finished product above 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container out of the federal hemp definition, whatever its source. So a Delaware can will be legal to sell under state law and outside federal hemp at the same time, which is where every state with a beverage law is headed. Delaware at least put the product behind counters it already licenses, cards and inspects. (DelawareOnline; Delaware General Assembly, HB 373; Delaware Code Title 4, Chapter 13)

🍺 Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a Wisconsin Republican, became the fifth member attached to H.R. 10079, the Beverage Regulatory Parity Act, alongside sponsor Beth Van Duyne and Reps. Greg Landsman, Josh Gottheimer and Susie Lee. The bill would regulate hemp THC drinks like adult beverages, 21 and over with a 5-milligram serving cap, according to the Hemp Beverage Alliance. Minnesota shows what that category looks like at the register. Jon Halper told Shanken News Daily that THC runs about 15 percent of sales across his 16 Top Ten Liquors stores. Twelve-packs are up 150 percent this year, and in his words, "the category has moved from trial to stock-up." Two Republicans and three Democrats is the bill's roster today, and neither Energy and Commerce nor Ways and Means has scheduled it. (The Marijuana Herald; Hemp Beverage Alliance; Shanken News Daily)

The Missouri Supreme Court heard argument Wednesday in Hippos LLC's fight over 13 cultivation, manufacturing and dispensary licenses from the 2019 medical round (No. SC101617). The state hired Nevada-based Wise Health Solutions to score nearly 2,000 applications, and Hippos showed identical answers drawing different scores from the same grader. The Administrative Hearing Commission settled the conflict by assigning the most common score, and in March the Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Jeffrey Bates, held that unexplained scores can't be reconciled that way and ordered the licenses issued. State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick's audit found Wise told its scorers to take limited notes so there would be less to produce in litigation. I understand that instinct, since its true that every note a scorer writes is a document someone will eventually subpoena. It is also, though, the only thing that lets an agency defend a number seven years later. Assistant Attorney General Sean McDowell asked the court to review only the commission's decision, and Chief Justice W. Brent Powell pushed back that the statute folds the agency's conduct in with it. Hippos' lawyer, Austin Preston, asked the court to set the scores itself and order the licenses. I think the case goes back to the commission rather than ending in 13 licenses by judicial order, because McDowell offered remand as the fallback and Judge Zel Fischer's questions were about how a fact finder's silence should be read. (Missouri Independent; KRCG; Hippos, LLC v. Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, SD38218)

🪪 Oregon's minor decoy operations sent underage buyers into licensed cannabis stores all year, and they were turned away nearly every time, according to Liquor and Cannabis Commission data NORML highlighted Wednesday. NORML says alcohol retailers in the same program did worse. That result is paid for. Licensed stores carry trained staff, an ID check at the door and a license that can be suspended over a single sale, and the seller operating without a license carries none of it. Massachusetts licensees work under the same obligations, and Question 8 would close their stores while leaving the other seller exactly where he is. Learn more at StoptheRepealMA.com. (NORML; Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission)

Curaleaf ran a full-page ad in the New York Post on Wednesday urging Gov. Kathy Hochul to sign A10698B/S8951B, the Cannabis Supply Chain Integrity and Anti-Inversion Act from Sen. Jeremy Cooney and Assemblymember Landon Dais, which passed 60-1 and 139-0 in June. The bill defines illicit cannabis to include any product on which required state tax wasn't paid, which reaches product from unlicensed sources and product brought in from out of state. It bars licensees from trading in undocumented product, fraudulent certificates of analysis and falsified tracking records. Violations carry $10,000 a day, capped at five times the estimated revenue from the sale, and the Office of Cannabis Management can seek suspension orders against licensees and labs. Former Cannabis Control Board member Jennifer Gilbert Jenkins called inversion the market's dirty secret back in 2024. OCM only finished its Metrc rollout this year, and a prohibition on falsified tracking records works because there is now a record to falsify. Curaleaf competes on price with the product this bill targets, so it is an interested party, and the vote margins say it has plenty of company. I'd expect Hochul to sign, possibly with chapter amendments on the penalty math, since a bill against illicit product with one dissenting vote is a hard thing to veto. The penalties land on licensees, and licensees are the ones asking for them. The industry can show regulators and voters that it takes the integrity of state markets seriously, or someone with less patience will do it for them. (Cannabis Business Times; New York State Senate, S8951B; New York State Assembly, A10698B)

🗳️ Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America published a congressional election guide asking candidates whether they support excluding intoxicating cannabinoid products from the federal hemp definition and letting the changes Congress enacted take effect, Marijuana Moment reports. The guide lands six weeks before the midterms, and December 11th falls five weeks after them. The beverage bill above and CADCA's questionnaire are working the same calendar from opposite ends. Both want candidates on the record before November 3rd. (Marijuana Moment)

📡 Washington's Liquor and Cannabis Board is asking for nearly $12 million and eight full-time positions in the 2027-29 budget to replace the Cannabis Central Reporting System, the in-house platform it built in 2021 after Leaf Data Systems, which had replaced BioTrack in 2017. The Legislature didn't fund a $3.97 million request for the same project this year. LCB's own documents call CCRS a stop-gap that runs on weekly reporting, against the real-time movement and sales data a full traceability system provides, and a 2023 request for information returned estimates from a few million dollars to $50 million. Going out to market doesn't guarantee a change, and a state running on a stop-gap for five years owes its taxpayers and licensees the test. The governor's budget comes first, then the Legislature. (The Marijuana Herald; Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board)

📋 Judge Vernon D. Oliver dismissed Brant Smith's challenge to Connecticut's social equity licensing preference on Tuesday, without prejudice, because the complaint never said whether Smith applied for a cultivation license or why he doesn't qualify as a social equity applicant (Smith v. Lamont, No. 3:25-cv-1728, D. Conn.). Smith, a hemp farmer, argues the preference violates the dormant Commerce Clause, and he has until October 21st to amend. Oliver did not give Connecticut the ruling it would have liked, holding that the Second Circuit's Variscite decision binds him and applies the dormant Commerce Clause to federally illegal markets. The Ninth Circuit held the opposite this year. Oliver's order leaves the question waiting on a plaintiff who can show he was actually turned away. (Law360; The Marijuana Herald)

🧾 MJ's Market wanted to open in Tyngsborough, near the Nature's Remedy store Jushi bought in 2021. It alleges the deal paid the sellers extra if no competitor opened nearby, which it says explains the permit objections that ran out its approvals. MJ's asked Judge Margaret R. Guzman for summary judgment in August, calling what its motion describes as a $10 million provision a naked restraint of trade, and briefing closed with its reply on September 18th. Guzman let the Sherman Act claims past a motion to dismiss last year, finding the petitioning allegations plausibly a sham, and all of it remains allegation until she rules. In a state where a host town's permit is the scarcest input, the antitrust fight happens at the zoning board. (Law360; MJ's Market, Inc. v. Jushi Holdings, Inc., No. 4:23-cv-40037-MRG, D. Mass.)

📱 Rep. Valerie Foushee and Del. James Moylan introduced H.R. 10433, the SAFE Platforms Act, on September 16th. Platforms with 100,000 monthly users or $25 million in revenue would have to put advertisers in high-risk categories through extra identity and business verification, with periodic re-checks. The bill text names "tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, and other consumables restricted by age" among those categories, alongside crypto and housing. Licensed operators who can already buy very little platform advertising would face one more layer of paperwork for what's left. Cannabis appears on the list beside alcohol and tobacco, which is the company the industry has spent a decade asking to keep. (Marijuana Moment; H.R. 10433)

🌾 The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics searched Californication Farm LLC in Hulbert on September 22nd and reported seizing 3,895 plants and 69.2 pounds of processed marijuana in an investigation of cultivation without an OBN registration. Arrests are pending. The agency's post credited its Marijuana Enforcement Team for taking the state from a 2022 peak of about 8,400 farms with active registrations to 1,299 today. Enforcement closed some of those farms, and wholesale prices and a market licensed well past its capacity closed others. OBN's post counts them all as its own. (KNWA/Fox 24; Fox23; Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics)

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