👮 200,960 cannabis arrests in 2025, and the number went up

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The FBI counted 200,960 cannabis possession arrests in 2025, up from 187,792 the year before, in a country where half the states sell the product across a counter. The DEA released the corrected 2,533-page rescheduling transcript, and the record is now closed. In Massachusetts, a sheriff's extortion trial opened on the question of what a reentry hiring partnership was worth to a cannabis license, and the Cannabis Control Commission took a day of testimony on testing rules that have not moved since 2021. Michigan pulled a hemp license over certificates of analysis that read above 0.3 percent. And Humboldt County paid $350,000 to end a fight over its cannabis code enforcement.

👮 Prison is still on the table
🧾 The record is closed
🧪 Testing rules, revisited

The FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting data for 2025 show an estimated 200,960 arrests for cannabis possession, up from 187,792 in 2024, plus 17,192 for sale or manufacture, up from 16,244. Cannabis accounted for a quarter of all drug arrests, more than any other listed substance, and 92 percent of cannabis incidents involved possession alone. The number carries caveats the FBI states itself. About 13 percent of state and local agencies reported nothing for the year, the bureau extrapolates to fill the gaps, and its own tables give three different totals for drug offenses. Trust the direction more than the decimal. The direction runs the wrong way in a year when Todd Blanche moved state-licensed medical cannabis to Schedule III, twenty-four states sold adult-use product, and the DEA argued in a federal hearing that most people who use cannabis do so without endangering anyone. None of that reached the roughly 550 people a day who were booked for having some, because Schedule III changes what a federal prosecutor can charge and says nothing to a patrol officer in Indiana enforcing an Indiana statute. Paul Armentano of NORML called possession arrests "a primary driver of drug war enforcement," and the arithmetic supports him. My expectation is that the 2026 number comes in lower, since Virginia, Pennsylvania and Texas all moved toward decriminalization or deprioritization this year and possession arrests track state law more than federal signals. I would revise that if the FBI's 2026 participation rate climbs, because a fuller count can rise even while enforcement falls. (Marijuana Moment; FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program)

🗳️ Nimbus Cannabis and ten Massachusetts cultivators put a "Vote No" preroll on dispensary shelves statewide this week, flower from U4EA Farms, Garden Remedies, Resinate, Suncrafted, Tree House and others rolled under one message. Brian Adams of Hudson Botanical Processing says the point was to get the licensed industry in one room, and the product is not affiliated with the official campaign. If you are not in Massachusetts, or not in the market for a preroll, the campaign itself takes donations at StoptheRepealMA.com, our standing plug. (Talking Joints Memo)

The DEA posted the corrected transcript Tuesday: 2,533 pages, eleven hearing days, the 294 changes Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek Julius ordered last week now baked in. That sounds like paperwork, and it is the most consequential paperwork in cannabis policy this year. Every argument that follows, Julius's recommendation, Administrator Terry Cole's decision, the consolidated challenge already sitting in a federal appeals court, has to point at a page number in this document. The pages show a government lawyer, James Schwartz, opening by conceding that all controlled substances are dangerous by definition and arguing that the statute asks a different question, whether the risk is balanced by accepted medical use. They show seven designated opponents, from Smart Approaches to Marijuana to the states of Idaho, Indiana and Nebraska, attacking the two-part test the Office of Legal Counsel blessed in 2024. And they show no supporter of rescheduling at the table, because Cole seated only parties he judged aggrieved by the proposed rule. That last fact will matter more in the court of appeals than in Julius's chambers, because his recommendation is advisory and the question of who was allowed in the room is a procedural claim a court reviews on its own. Julius promised on the final day to weigh all of the evidence before he recommends, and the record he now holds is complete. The next document that matters carries his signature. (Marijuana Moment; Cannabis Business Times; DEA)

🥤 Wiz Khalifa's Khalifa Kush brand launched Kush & Orange Juice hemp drinks Tuesday with Scofflaw Brewing, 5 and 10 milligrams, sold online in select states. Eleven weeks before the federal hemp ban takes effect on November 12th, with a one-month reprieve stalled in the House and Andy Harris trying to strip it out, a national celebrity brand chose to enter the category instead of waiting it out. That is a bet that the December 11th date holds, which is the same bet I made yesterday for the same reason: suspension needs Democrats and therefore does not need Harris. It would not surprise me to see Khalifa on Capitol Hill in the coming weeks making the case in person. (BevNet; Forbes; Khalifa Kush)

Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins went on trial in Boston federal court Tuesday on charges that he pressured Frank Perullo, co-founder and president of Ascend Wellness, into selling him pre-IPO stock in 2021 and then demanded his money back when the shares fell. Tompkins has pleaded not guilty. Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Chao told the jury Perullo went along because Ascend had a partnership with the sheriff's office to hire people released from jail, and Perullo believed that partnership mattered to the company's Boston license. The government says Tompkins reminded him of it. Defense counsel Martin Weinberg answered that the case rests on the uncorroborated word of a witness testifying under an immunity agreement, and that Ascend's license was never in jeopardy. Andrea Cabral, the former sheriff who once ran Ascend's Massachusetts operation and a longtime friend of Tompkins, will say so from the stand. Nobody alleges Ascend violated a rule, so this sits outside the compliance world this brief usually covers, and the arrangement at issue is a reentry hiring program that has nothing to do with a host community agreement. What the trial will test is whether a program that rewards community partnerships hands the partner leverage, and whether a man with a badge used that leverage. Judge Myong Joun expects two weeks. Perullo takes the stand when Abner Kurtin finishes. (WBUR)

🏪 JARS Cannabis agreed to buy Sonoran Roots, taking on eight Ponderosa dispensaries and enough cultivation, production and distribution to call the combined company Arizona's largest retail network at 27 stores. The deal still needs regulatory approval. In a mature market where wholesale prices keep falling, what JARS now controls upstream of the shelf will decide more than the store count does. (JARS Cannabis via PR Newswire)

The Cannabis Control Commission heard a day of testimony Tuesday on its testing regulations and protocols, a review the General Court now requires every two years and one the shelf audit made urgent, after 13 of 63 flower products came back outside the 75-to-125 percent accuracy band. Laboratories asked for uniform sampling and quality-control standards. Outdoor growers asked for contaminant limits that account for how flower grows under open sky. I submitted testimony too, and it is linked here. Give the commission its due first. Administrative Orders 4 and 5 closed the obvious routes to lab shopping, and the shelf audit was the first in the country to put names on potency inflation at scale. Every one of those moves, though, reached the system after the sample was already in the bag. The licensee still picks the material that represents the batch, and has since the first regulations issued, on my watch included. A validated method run by a skilled analyst returns an accurate result about the wrong flower, and no order, upload requirement or retail audit fixes that. California has laboratory personnel collect the sample with the licensee watching. Massachusetts labs have asked for independent sampling in public meetings for years, and they are right that they cannot absorb the cost of running a collection fleet on current fees, which is why an accredited third party working under commission direction may be the better fit here. The system can’t withstand more chipping away - it needs wholesale change. The rest of what I asked for follows from that. The collection standard, the potency band and the audit procedure should live in regulation, where a licensee can find them and the commission can defend them, instead of in guidance, orders and a press release. The contaminant panel should catch the organisms that hurt immunocompromised patients, which today's culture-based test does not. And on the outdoor growers' request, I have never supported a lower bar for one cultivation method. The whole regime deserves rebuilding, and lowering one limit in it is the wrong place to start. The commission has the statutory occasion under the new law to do the larger job, and sampling is where it should begin. (Boston Globe; Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission)

🍺 Texas Democrats spent the weekend pointing at a June filing showing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's campaign took $275,000 from Silver Eagle Distributors, a beer distributor, and asking whether that explains his crusade against hemp. Vikki Goodwin, his opponent in November, says it does. Motive is hard to prove and the donation is a matter of record, so read it for what it is: a man who championed a felony ban on products competing with his donors' products, and then watched his own governor veto it. The lieutenant governor of Texas got outflanked on hemp by Greg Abbott. That should sting more than the ad will. (Marijuana Moment; Texas Ethics Commission filing)

Michigan's Cannabis Regulatory Agency suspended Loud Labs of Michigan's hemp processor-handler license immediately and served notice it intends to revoke, after a March 25th inspection and a May 18th inventory audit turned up products whose own certificates of analysis reported delta-9 THC above 0.3 percent. The statute the agency cites, Section 12(1)(a) of the Industrial Hemp Research and Development Act, allows suspension for intentional possession of cannabis above the hemp line and requires a hearing before revocation sticks. Loud Labs can contest it, and the allegations stay allegations until the process runs. What makes the case useful beyond Lansing is the evidence. The CRA did not need a lab of its own. It read the licensee's paperwork, and the paperwork said the product was cannabis. Every state that licensed hemp processors on the theory that a certificate of analysis would police itself is about to find out how many of those certificates say the same thing, and whether their regulators have a Section 12(1)(a) to reach for when they do. The CRA issued 75 enforcement actions in July, and a hearing officer will now decide whether Loud Labs' paperwork proves intent or just a bad batch. (Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency)

🩺 Illinois added sickle cell disease and polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome with chronic pain to its medical cannabis qualifying conditions, both through the Department of Public Health's ordinary petition process after the Medical Cannabis Advisory Board recommended them in April. A hematologist from Peoria testified for sickle cell. That is the petition process working as written, one clinician and one board vote at a time. (Illinois Department of Public Health; Illinois News Joint; KFVS)

Humboldt County settled Thomas v. County of Humboldt, the 2022 class action five property owners brought over its cannabis code enforcement program, for $350,000 and a commitment to rewrite the code. The Institute for Justice, which represented the plaintiffs, says outstanding cannabis fines against them are gone. The county's statement Tuesday stressed that the Ninth Circuit's ruling let the case proceed without deciding the merits, that the settlement admits no fault, and that Humboldt started revising its enforcement approach in 2025 as illegal cultivation declined. I ran an agency that wrote penalty schedules, and I know how easily a program designed for thousand-plant trespass grows drifts into fining a landowner for what a tenant left behind. The same board that approved the settlement revoked 14 cultivation permits Tuesday over unpaid fees. That is what enforcement looks like when it is aimed at licensees who owe money instead of parcels that look suspicious from the air. The code rewrite the settlement requires will have to attach penalties to conduct the county can prove, and the Institute for Justice, which has brought the same theory against other counties, will be reading the draft when the supervisors post it. (Lost Coast Outpost; Times-Standard; Institute for Justice)

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