🏛️ Andy Harris can't amend the hemp delay, so he's voting against the rule

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The House takes up the Senate's continuing resolution tonight under suspension of the rules, which means two-thirds, no amendments, and Democrats. Rep. Andy Harris, who wrote the hemp ban and chairs the Freedom Caucus, told Punchbowl he will vote against this week's rule over it, a no that cannot reach the CR and can stall everything behind it. DEA sent Colorado dispensaries 26 follow-up questions after their federal registration forms, and the first one asks whether they plan to order cannabis from other states. In Sand Springs, Oklahoma, the arrest affidavit says the extraction lab that killed two men was running on a license and a registration that had both lapsed, and the murder charge runs through that paperwork. In Boston, Martin Weinberg cross-examined Frank Perullo. And more than two dozen Massachusetts consumers told the Boston Globe what they would do if Question 8 passes, which is mostly what they did before 2018.

🏛️ A no vote aimed at the wrong bill
🔍 DEA's 26 questions
🧯 The license that had lapsed

Leadership put H.R. 6500, the Senate's continuing resolution, on tonight's suspension calendar, which requires two-thirds of members voting, bars amendments, and therefore needs a large share of House Democrats. Punchbowl reports most of them are willing, since the bill is clean and cleared the Senate 90 to 6. The hemp provision moves the federal definition change from November 12th to December 11th for most products. Intermediate and finished products containing cannabinoids the plant cannot make on its own keep their November 12th date regardless of what happens tonight, so the manufactured-THC shelf clears in ten weeks either way. Rep. Andy Harris of Kentucky, who wrote the original ban as the Agriculture appropriations cardinal and chairs the Freedom Caucus, told Baltimore's Fox affiliate in August that the products "are not hemp, they are basically marijuana," and told Punchbowl's Jake Sherman on Monday that he will vote against the rule this week because the CR carries the delay. The CR comes up on suspension, which needs no rule, so Harris's no lands on the vehicle carrying the rest of the week's floor agenda rather than on the bill he objects to, and a Freedom Caucus chair who can sink a rule can stall a week. On the CR itself his tools are a no vote and a whip list, and the math only works for him if Democrats walk too. Rep. Morgan Griffith, who wants the delay, said as much a week ago. In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear used a Thursday press conference to call hemp a farm crop the state's growers need, to say a state government can keep delta-8 away from children without federal help, and to tell voters they "should look for an alternative to the current person who would vote yes on something like that." The delegation he was addressing includes Reps. James Comer and Andy Barr, and Barr co-wrote the regulatory framework the industry wants riding on the December vehicle. My read is that tonight passes and Harris's rule vote is a receipt he intends to cash in December. A continuing resolution under suspension gives him a speech. Whatever funds the government after December 11th goes through Rules, and the cardinal who writes the agriculture bill has just told leadership what a rule costs. (Punchbowl News; Jake Sherman on X; Washington Examiner; Roll Call; The Marijuana Herald; Marijuana Moment)

Once a Colorado dispensary files DEA's registration form for state-licensed medical cannabis, the Rocky Mountain Division inspects the premises and sends a 26-item questionnaire, which Marijuana Moment obtained. Item one asks whether the business will order cannabis or cannabis products from other states. No statute grants that authority and April's order created none. The form asks for the names, addresses, and DEA registration numbers of every supplier, and DEA has yet to release the registration forms for cultivators, manufacturers, and labs it says are coming, so no Colorado supplier holds a number to give. It asks whether the dispensary will order synthetic cannabinoids, whether it will grow from seed on site, how it disposes of moldy or expired product, and for its labeling policy, with a pointer to 21 CFR 1301.13(k)(8), which requires a warning on every medical cannabis product that transferring it to anyone but the patient is a federal crime. The division covers Colorado, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming, one of which has no medical program. Mississippi applicants inspected by the New Orleans Division in June got a different list, with questions on license transfers, disciplinary history, and security plans, and DEA did not answer Marijuana Moment's question about why the regions diverge. The questionnaire reads like a pharmacy registrant's paperwork with the drug name changed, which is what it is. The Controlled Substances Act is a closed system in which every registrant buys from and sells to other registrants, and DEA is fitting a state license into that template one field at a time. Colorado's rules answered every one of these questions before a single store opened, and nothing on this list is information the state does not already hold. The interstate question is the tell. A federal form asks it either because nobody edited the template or because somebody did, and Colorado dispensaries are about to find out which by answering no. (Marijuana Moment; DEA Rocky Mountain Division questionnaire, via DocumentCloud)

🩺 Washington's revised medical cannabis authorization form is mandatory today. The new version drops the patient's specific qualifying condition, which no longer goes into the state registry either, and has the practitioner certify only that a terminal or debilitating condition under state law exists. It also has the practitioner acknowledge that a first authorization requires an in-person exam. The Department of Health made the change on privacy grounds. A registry that records a diagnosis is a discoverable document, and the state just decided the card works without it. (Washington State Department of Health; The Marijuana Herald)

The Tulsa County arrest affidavit for Ryan Bassham, reviewed by KJRH, says Solos Extracts LLC held an Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority license and a Bureau of Narcotics registration and that both were invalid, and that Bassham's name does not appear on the OBN registration at all. A tenant who shared a wall told OSBI agents Bassham had taken the business over only recently. An OMMA license can be sold and transferred. An OBN registration cannot, and that difference is the charge. Because the manufacturing was unregistered, the affidavit treats it as illegal manufacture of a controlled dangerous substance, and because Michael Newman and Stephen Scott died during it, the warrant is for first-degree murder. Bassham surrendered Sunday and posted a $2 million bond the same day. Fire Marshal Michael Nobles told investigators he inspected in January, found an extraction booth and an outdated suppression system, and told employees to have a contractor disconnect the booth until reinspection. The business was chasing an updated certificate of compliance at the time to keep its OMMA license and OBN registration current. The propane he saw after the blast was not there in January. The neighboring tenant said a carbon dioxide sensor pegged about two months ago and that he got lightheaded walking in. Newman, on the way to the hospital, told a first responder the ventilation was inadequate and that someone was still inside. These are allegations in an affidavit. What the file now shows is a business that changed hands with the transferable license and without the personal one, and two agencies that each knew, at some point this year, that the paperwork was being chased. Whether either one knew the booth was back on is the next document. (KJRH; Tulsa County District Court arrest affidavit)

Headset Inc., the Seattle firm whose retail data show up in most of the market reports the trade press runs, including MJBizDaily's Monday piece on disposable vapes, agreed to pay $1,012,876 to settle False Claims Act allegations that it was ineligible for the Paycheck Protection Program loan it took in February 2021 and had forgiven that August, because its customers are cannabis businesses. Sidesolve LLC filed the qui tam in May 2024 and collects ten percent plus $20,000 in fees. Headset paid $100,000 within 30 days of an early-August signing and pays the rest through August 2030, with no admission. Headset never touched a plant. The SBA's rule reached indirect marijuana businesses, meaning anyone whose revenue comes from the industry, and a certification signed in 2021 does not get amended by an order signed in April 2026. The San Diego office built the Gold Flora case this summer on a founder's forms, and Seattle just built one on an analyst's. A relator can read a customer list. (U.S. Attorney's Office, Western District of Washington; KOMO)

💊 Connecticut's Department of Consumer Protection told dispensary facilities and hybrid retailers Friday what Public Act 26-8 requires them to hang. A sign at the main entrance, at least 12 by 18 inches, names the licensed pharmacist available to medical patients and caregivers in person or by telehealth. A sign at every register, at least eight by ten, says a pharmacist is available for consultation, and the same notice goes on the website. The state drew sample signs and does not require them. Connecticut kept the pharmacist inside the hybrid model when it added adult-use sales, and this is the state making sure the patient walking past the adult-use line can still find the person the license is named for. (Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection; The Marijuana Herald)

Dana Gerber interviewed more than two dozen regular consumers for the Globe about what they would do if Question 8 ends adult-use sales and home cultivation on November 3rd. The answers were a drive to Maine or Rhode Island, a medical card through Leafwell for under $100, plants in a closet regardless of the statute, and, for a 43-year-old from Foxborough who remembers buying behind a 7-Eleven, the parking lot again. Wendy Wakeman, lead local shill of the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts said consumers' "business is complying or not complying, and facing the consequences," which is a repeal campaign answering a supply question with an enforcement one. The Globe leans on a Cannabis Control Commission report drawn from the International Cannabis Policy Study, which found about 14 percent of surveyed residents used daily or near-daily across 2019 to 2023 and 24 percent of past-year consumers bought from an underground dealer in that window with licensed stores open. Stated intentions in a newspaper predict behavior loosely, and the Globe's own polling calls the measure a longshot. What the piece establishes is the shape of the fallback: two legal routes, one gray, one illicit, and all of them already in use by a quarter of the market. Learn more at StoptheRepealMA.com. (The Boston Globe; Cannabis Control Commission, Cannabis Use Trends in Massachusetts)

🚚 Drop, a delivery marketplace launching in Denver, says it syncs inventory with each retailer's point-of-sale system, integrates with Metrc so compliance reporting runs automatically through the delivery, and handles age and ID checks, purchase limits, and address eligibility before dispatching a licensed transporter. Kat Savoy and Teri LeBlanc founded it. The capabilities are the company's description and launch retailers are not named. The state's tracking system is the rail a startup can build on, and one just did. (GreenState)

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health published a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in JAMA Network Open on Monday: 40 adults, 19 to 45, who use edibles at least monthly, dosed with placebo, 2, 10, or 20 milligrams of THC and run through a driving simulator at roughly two, five, and 24 hours. The 10 and 20 milligram doses degraded lane-keeping at two and five hours while blood THC stayed near or below the thresholds roadside enforcement relies on. Bernard Le Foll, the first author, said blood THC "may not fully reflect a person's level of impairment." Public Safety Canada paid for the study. Canada's per se limits are two and five nanograms, and the five-nanogram line is also what Washington and Colorado enforce. A per se number is a term somebody wrote into a statute, and the people who wrote it were thinking about smoke. Every state that has argued about impaired driving this year, Massachusetts included, has been arguing about a measurement, and the measurement just got audited by the people who fund the enforcement. (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health; JAMA Network Open)

Martin Weinberg's cross-examination of Frank Perullo on Monday worked one question: why a witness who says he was extorted campaigned for his extortionist, exchanged warm texts with him between repayments, and never told him no. Perullo, asked whether he is easily intimidated, answered "not usually." On direct, prosecutors had him walk the repayment checks, mostly $12,000 or $12,500 at a time, some with memo lines he said were written at Steven Tompkins's request so the money would not be taxed, and had him explain the pressure as Ascend's reentry hiring partnership with the sheriff's office, which anchored the positive impact plan on the company's Boston license. Weinberg established that Ascend had other ways to meet that requirement, including roughly $1 million to the Last Prisoner Project, and that nobody at the Cannabis Control Commission and not Andrea Cabral ever told Perullo the license was in jeopardy. He also walked the jury through the immunity agreement and what Perullo stood to lose without it. Cabral testifies this week. The government's theory needs the jury to believe the threat was real to Perullo even though nobody ever made it explicit, and the defense spent Monday showing how much of the relationship looked like a friendship. Both can be true, and the verdict is which one the jury weighs. (WBUR; The Boston Globe)

🔒 Maine's Office of Cannabis Policy is handing out 12,000 lockable storage bags through more than 140 retailers and public health partners across all nine districts, free, no purchase required, to any medical patient 18 and up or adult-use consumer 21 and up. The 2024 pilot moved 5,000 bags through 222 retailers, so the state bought more than twice the bags and has fewer storefronts to hand them out. A retailer that declines to give away a free lockbox is telling the agency something about counter space, or about the pitch. (Maine Office of Cannabis Policy; WMTW)

🏙️ A judge's August 14th order lets Nature's Touch Dispensary depose Leo Pellegrini, the former Hoboken human services director and Cannabis Review Board member now in federal prison for embezzling city recreation funds, by October 15th. Nature's Touch sued in 2024 alleging that then-Mayor Ravi Bhalla, now a state assemblyman, and former Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop slowed its application to benefit a planned dispensary in a storefront co-owned by Fulop's wife. Those are allegations, and Pellegrini's own suit against Bhalla was dismissed last year. Hoboken capped itself at six dispensaries in 2022, and a cap is what turns an application into something worth interfering with. (Patch; Hudson County View)

🍁 Health Canada issued 45 production licenses in the first eight months of 2026 and revoked 56, 46 at the licensee's request and ten by the minister, for a net loss of 11 and a national count of 900. Thirty-two of the new licenses are micros, British Columbia took 18 of the 45, and six standard licensees downgraded to micro. The country's licensed footprint has stopped growing and started re-sorting toward the smallest tier the Cannabis Act allows, which is the size the market can actually feed. (StratCann; Health Canada)

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