📮 Georgia approves delivery. Carriers haven't.

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Georgia's medical cannabis commission voted Wednesday to let dispensaries ship to patients by mail and private carrier. In Pennsylvania, Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman said legalization won't come this session, and Montgomery County's district attorney charged 46 stores over THC products. Washington told clinics that a remote first visit doesn't produce a valid medical card, and New Jersey is shopping for someone to audit its lab data. From London, the Global Cannabis Regulatory Summit published its white paper.

📮 Mail, pending carriers
🏛️ Not this session
🩺 Exam room first
🌍 London, on paper

The Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission voted Wednesday to adopt its Chapter 351 rewrite. Rule 351-6-.11 now lets dispensing licensees deliver to registered patients, caregivers and health care institutions, and it names the U.S. Postal Service and private carriers as permitted channels. Before handing anything over, the licensee has to confirm the recipient's identity and an active registry card and keep a record of who received the order. The package also adds a recall framework and a new chapter that lets Georgia colleges and universities study product from licensed producers. All of it implements SB 220, which took effect July 1st and removed the 5 percent THC cap. Executive Director Andrew Turnage made the access case in August with the patient who drives two hours around mountains and lakes to reach a dispensary, and it is a good case. The commission decides who may ship. Whether USPS, FedEx or UPS will take the box is their own decision, and none of them answered when Marijuana Moment asked in August. I don't expect a Georgia patient to sign for a mailed delivery this year, and an announcement from any one of those three would change that the same day. (The Marijuana Herald; Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission)

🔍 Mackenzie Slade, an uber-smart friend of the podcast, and Cannabis Public Policy Consulting ran the survey Metrc released this week. They showed 3,061 recent consumers and registered patients in 33 jurisdictions a product carrying a state-issued QR code linked to its test results, license and recall status. Eighty-eight percent said the information would help them tell regulated product from unregulated. Nearly 90 percent said it would make them likelier to buy from a licensed store, and more than 95 percent wanted the same information on every product type. These are stated preferences from an online panel, and the authors pair their findings with a call for consumer education so people know the code is there. Their other recommendation is to keep the regulator's branding visible on the page the code opens, since the whole value is that the assurance comes from the state. Colorado made Retail ID available to its licensees last week without saying yet whether it will be required, and this is the evidence a regulator weighing that question will ask to see. (Cannabis Equipment News; Cannabis Public Policy Consulting)

Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman told reporters Monday, "I don't see it coming before this session ends." House Speaker Joanna McClinton and Sen. Sharif Street had argued days earlier that flipping Senate seats in Bucks, Montgomery and Lehigh counties would pass a bill. Pittman wants national direction while marijuana stays federally scheduled. He called the House's 2025 bill unserious for putting sales in the state liquor stores, which he said couldn't comply with federal law. He also cited the auditor general's critical report on medical cannabis to argue the Department of Health hasn't earned a bigger job. The state-store objection has real force, because it puts state employees behind the counter selling a Schedule I product. The Health Department point is fair, and it also argues for a different regulator, which is what the Senate's own Cannabis Control Board bill would create. That bill lost on the floor in June and is pending reconsideration. I think nothing reaches Gov. Josh Shapiro before the session ends November 30th, and the reconsideration motion says more about 2027 than the results in those three counties will. If Pittman's caucus moves that bill this fall, I'd revise toward a negotiated path even without a Democratic Senate. (Marijuana Moment)

🚔 Montgomery County is one of the three counties Pennsylvania Democrats are counting on in November. It is also where District Attorney Kevin Steele just charged 46 smoke shops, gas stations and corner stores across 26 townships after undercover buys of THC gummies, vapes and drinks. Each business faces a felony count of possession with intent to deliver. No owners were charged, and the stores have to clear the products or face upgraded counts. The charges are allegations. Steele's office holds that outside medical dispensaries, selling THC in any form breaks Pennsylvania law, whatever the label says about hemp. A grand jury he convened reported last October on products up to 2,000 milligrams with false lab paperwork. Pennsylvania has no age limit or testing rule for hemp THC. Until a Republican senator's planned 21-and-over hemp bill gives the legislature a turn, a prosecutor is writing the shelf rules in Montgomery County. (PhillyVoice; Marijuana Moment)

The Cannabis Regulatory Commission wants a contractor to analyze the state's testing data twice a year for patterns by laboratory, gaps in contaminant detection and lab shopping, which the RFP names outright. The budget tops out at $50,000, the narrative is capped at five pages, and bidders need experience with lab data from multiple states. Statistics can show which labs report consistently high potency before anyone opens a sample bag. That makes this an inexpensive first look next to Michigan's state reference lab, funded since 2024 and still unable to accept a sample. (Heady NJ; New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission)

Washington's Medical Cannabis Program sent a compliance notice to retailers, medical cannabis consultants and health care professionals after inquiries about third-party clinics issuing initial authorizations remotely. Under their rules, a first authorization requires an in-person physical exam and an ongoing treatment relationship, on tamper-resistant paper. The notice says an authorization that skips those steps "does not constitute a valid medical cannabis authorization." Renewals may go by telemedicine when the provider documents that an office visit would be a severe hardship. Under WAC 246-72-030, consultants may not take anything of value for steering a patient to a clinic, and providers may not run a practice made up mainly of authorizations. The notice names no business and announces no enforcement.

Telehealth has brought real access to medicine, and for a patient two counties from the nearest willing provider, a video visit is access. It can just as easily give someone the appearance of access with no meaningful care behind it. Cannabis is especially exposed to that, because most of a patient's cannabis care happens outside the traditional medical setting. The authorizing provider is often someone the patient never sees again, and the visit seldom lands in a medical record their own doctor will read. A quick video call that ends in a card, with a referral fee changing hands somewhere along the way, is the arrangement Washington's notice describes. The in-person exam is how the state makes sure a clinician actually saw the patient. The notice leaves one question open for patients already holding a remote authorization and for the budtender checking it. The Department of Health owes both of them an answer about whether those registrations stand. (Greenway Magazine; Washington State Department of Health)

🗳️ At a debate Monday, Rep. Mike Lawler was asked whether New York's legal cannabis market is helping or hurting. He said hurting, and his Democratic opponent Cait Conley said helping. It fits his record. He called rescheduling wrong last year, signed a letter calling dispensaries "addiction-for-profit," and cosponsors a bill to keep 280E in place after rescheduling. Federal filings show America First Agriculture Action has spent $288,774.79 supporting him. That money comes from the $11.5 million that Trulieve, Curaleaf, Verano, Ascend and entities tied to Green Thumb and AYR gave the committee in June. The ad it runs for him is about insider trading and taxes on tips. Money given this way buys a place near a majority, and the companies could fairly decide that was worth the price. The caution is in the structure. The committee shares a treasurer, Charles Gantt, with MAGA Inc., it picks the candidates, and the industry has put its whole federal bet in that one basket. Lawler stood at a podium Monday, paid for in part by that basket, and told voters the product hurts people. (Marijuana Moment)

The Montana Department of Revenue's rule on third-party contracts took effect September 26th alongside the operational-control rule. A licensee must disclose any outside arrangement for management, consulting, financing, staffing or revenue sharing before work begins. The third party may not start until the department confirms in writing that the disclosure is complete. Accepting a disclosure is not approval, and under SB 74 the licensee stays liable for whatever the contractor does. A dispensary that signs a compliance consultant on Monday now gets its start date from the department's inbox. (Bloomberg Tax; Montana Department of Revenue)

Cann says its 3 milligram Half & Half and Lemon Lavender social tonics will be poured at every bar at Austin City Limits for festivalgoers 21 and older, October 2nd through 4th and 9th through 11th in Zilker Park. Eighty miles south, Sherpa launched in January out of a 34,000-square-foot plant north of San Antonio International Airport. About 55 employees there make gummies, drink powders, spirit alternatives and canned seltzers, which are now behind a handful of local bars. Its parent, TCF Manufacturing, has made THC products for more than 40 brands since 2019. Founder Holden Hylander says the plant can turn out 4 million gummies a month, using oil partly grown on 1.5 acres in Spring Branch. He credits Spec's and Total Wine with taking the category mainstream. Research Brewbound reported this week from NIQ, MRI-Simmons and Dry Atlas puts relaxation and stress relief at the top of buyers' reasons, in a segment it sizes around $300 million.

Both companies operate in a state that spent the summer tightening. The DSHS and HHSC rules took effect July 31st, with felony exposure for delta-8, delta-10 and the other cannabinoids Texas moved onto its controlled list. In Galveston federal court, Thomas Monti and two hemp businesses have now moved for summary judgment against those rules. The delta-9 drinks on these bar menus answer to Section 781, which takes any finished product above 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container out of the federal hemp definition on December 11th. "Point four milligrams is catastrophic," Hylander told the Express-News, and Sherpa also sells 50 and 100 milligram cans. The Texas name in that fight is Rep. Beth Van Duyne. Her H.R. 10079, the Beverage Regulatory Parity Act, would allow 5 milligrams per serving under alcohol-style rules, and the Hemp Beverage Alliance is working it in Washington. As of last week it had five members attached and no hearing scheduled. Congress has more to say than Austin about whether Cann pours at Zilker next October. (Cannabis Equipment News; San Antonio Express-News; Brewbound; Law360)

💊 Tennessee's Senate Judiciary Committee spent Wednesday on Sen. Ferrell Haile's SB 459, a 99-page medical cannabis framework sent to summer study, and picks it up again today. It reads like a pharmacy program. It requires a pharmacist at every dispensary, a consultation before every first purchase, and an in-person exam before the first prescription, with no flower, no home grow, and every sale logged in the state's Controlled Substance Database. Sen. London Lamar asked whether the state would track patients at every purchase, and commission attorney Matt Gibbs answered, "100 percent." Delivery to a patient's registered address is in it, and a city or county would have to vote in before any business opens. The bill takes effect 30 days after federal action moving marijuana to Schedule III. The April order already moved state-licensed medical cannabis there, which reaches nothing in a state without a licensed program. I expect that trigger to be among the first lines rewritten before the bill returns in 2027. If it comes back unchanged, the drafters are waiting on the broader proceeding in front of Judge Derek Julius. (The Marijuana Herald)

The Global Cannabis Regulatory Summit released its 2026 white paper this week. It runs 100 pages, drawn from the London meeting, which brought together participants from nearly 30 countries and 20 regulatory jurisdictions. I was there, and the premise held up in the room, since every country present regulates cannabis medicines under the same UN conventions and each has built a different system. Artemis Growth Partners and The Liaison Group conceived the summit as a place for regulators to compare notes with peers, and the paper keeps its three proposals distinct.

The Cannabis Medicines Regulatory Accord, chaired by former UN drug-control official Pavel Pachta, works on alignment, helping governments read the conventions consistently without new treaties. The S3 Collective, founded by ASTM D37 committee chair David Vaillencourt, builds the research behind standards, and D37's intoxicating-product symbol is already in use in nine U.S. states. The Global Cannabis Responsibility Alliance, anchored by Potash Global Strategy, takes on industry responsibility, starting with a standards framework and a standard label and health statement. A chapter by Shawn Hauser and Andrew Livingston of Vicente LLP, with Franziska Katterbach of Oppenhoff, covers April's Schedule III order and argues most U.S. operators can't clear European pharmaceutical standards quickly. American states found out the same thing about working alone, which is why a few of us started CANNRA. The next summit meets in Zurich April 5th through 7th, 2027, under the theme "Markets in Practice." GCRS is the sort of group that is comfortable talking about the big picture vision of stuff, and the rare organization then capable of pulling it off in practice. The sort of room that exacerbates my imposter syndrome when I look around. (Business of Cannabis; Global Cannabis Regulatory Summit)

The Baltimore City Council voted Monday to let police padlock smoke shops after a second citation for selling illegal cannabis or other prohibited products. Council President Zeke Cohen put the count at more than 1,400 shops, up from the 1,200 a March report found. A summer bill already bars them within 750 feet of schools, rec centers and parks and limits how bright their lights can be. That March report found the Health Department completed 149 of a targeted 1,000 compliance checks in 2024, with nobody assigned to the work full-time. A padlock comes after the second citation, so its reach depends on how many first citations a department running 149 checks a year can write. (WYPR)

🦨 A group called NoSkunkButts.org has sued San Diego County over its Socially Equitable Cannabis Program, and the name does a good share of the advocacy on its own. Attorney Todd Cardiff filed the petition September 18th in San Diego County Superior Court claiming the program's environmental review falls short of the California Environmental Quality Act. According to the group's release, supervisors certified that review 3 to 2 on August 19th. They finished adopting the program September 2nd after about $5 million in development work, and the release singles out the program's 600-foot setbacks. CEQA is where land-use fights go after a board vote is lost, and the equity applicants waiting on these licenses now wait on a Superior Court judge as well. (EIN Presswire)

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