⏳ “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”

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The Justice Department and the challengers to April’s rescheduling order asked the D.C. Circuit for a briefing calendar that runs into February. A consumer group and a reform group asked Congress for different things before December 11th. Illinois’ Metrc data shows shoppers paying less at the register. Massachusetts regulators kept their cultivation pause and closed a Great Barrington store for two weeks over penny sales.

⚖️ Briefed into February
🥤 Rules first, or time first
📊 The register, measured
🌱 Canopy on hold

The fight over April’s rescheduling order now has a calendar, and it’s a long one. On Friday the Justice Department and the 11 petitioners challenging the order jointly asked the D.C. Circuit to let briefing run until February 19th, 2027. The petitioners include Smart Approaches to Marijuana, the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association and the states of Indiana and Nebraska. They would file one opening brief on November 24th. DOJ would answer January 13th, a date the government pushed back for the holidays and its own lawyers’ travel plans. It’s a little rich coming from a coalition that spent the year telling judges this order had to be stopped right away, though the government took its share of the extra time too, and the court hasn’t signed off yet. The D.C. Circuit refused in September to put the order on hold, so Schedule III stays in force the whole time the lawyers are writing. Every Form 225 registration DEA hands out this winter rests on an order no judge has looked at on the merits, and so does every 280E position a dual licensee takes on its 2026 return. If the court adopts this schedule, argument comes in the spring at the earliest, with a decision likely next summer. The DEA hearing has its own deadline tomorrow, a day later than usual because of the holiday. The government has to say whether Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek Julius should reopen the record for the GAO report. Julius then has to rule on that and still write his recommendation, so nobody should plan around a final rule before the November 3rd election. (Mugglehead; The Marijuana Herald)

🏭 A Dutch court declared Bedrocan bankrupt on Thursday, two weeks after its Veendam site went into court-supervised administration. The company employed 70 people and supplied the Dutch medical market for 23 years under a government contract that ended January 1st. The state’s Bureau for Medical Cannabis says it holds enough product to last through September 2027 and will start importing next year, though it hasn’t named a supplier. Creditors meet December 22nd, and Dutch patients will be relying on an import deal the government hasn’t signed yet. (MJBizDaily)

The National Consumers League told Congress on October 8th that the federal hemp restrictions should take effect December 11th unless lawmakers put a real regulatory regime in place first. Beyond a shot at candy-style packaging that appeals to kids, it didn’t say what that regime should contain. The Marijuana Policy Project sent its supporters an alert the same week asking Congress to stop the ban and regulate instead, with potency caps, testing, labeling and a 21-and-over line. So both groups want rules, and what they disagree about is whether the products stay on shelves while Congress writes them. In plenty of states those products already have rules. Bob Galligan of the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild told Heavy Table that about half its members make or sell THC products. Nick Kosevich of Earl Giles said drinks were 40 percent of his business last year, and Minnesota collected $45.6 million in tax on them between September 2025 and July. In Lexington, Annie Rouse serves hemp mocktails to customers 21 and older at Cannabuzz, and Kentucky makes her test, label and register every product with the state. December 11th is also the day government funding runs out. Moving a date in a spending bill is easy in a way that standing up a federal framework with an agency behind it isn’t. Whatever NCL wants, another short extension in the December package is the likelier outcome, unless the Sheehy-Klobuchar bill gets introduced and through committee before Thanksgiving. For beverages, the narrower option already on the table is the Van Duyne-Landsman Beverage Regulatory Parity Act, backed by the Hemp Beverage Alliance. (The Marijuana Herald; Marijuana Moment; Heavy Table; WEKU)

The federal court in New Jersey entered a temporary restraining order Friday evening in The Cannabis Place 420 Corp.’s challenge to the state’s labor peace requirement (No. 3:26-cv-12967). The order came the same day the company amended its complaint to add Jersey City. The company’s counsel, Keya Denner of Constangy, says Judge Zahid Quraishi issued the order and that it keeps the dispensary’s municipal license from expiring for 14 days. The license would have lapsed October 10th after the Jersey City Council withdrew Resolution 26-659, which renewed its local support, on October 7th. The amended complaint says the withdrawal followed public comments from UFCW Local 360 organizing director Hugh Giordano. About 20 jobs ride on the license, and the allegations are untested. Counsel says the parties have a case-management call Tuesday, and the state’s likeliest move is still to ask the court to hold the case until the Third Circuit decides Curaleaf’s. (U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey docket; National Law Review; EIN Presswire)

👃 President Trump used a Friday speech commemorating Columbus Day to say Democratic-run cities smell of marijuana and other things worse than marijuana, and he tied the odor to crime. His administration moved state-licensed medical cannabis to Schedule III in April. Earlier this year he described medical marijuana as the best option among the alternatives for some illnesses. Cannabis companies gave $11.5 million in June to a committee that shares a treasurer with MAGA Inc. They got a rescheduling order out of the administration in April, and on Friday they got a speech about how their customers’ cities smell. Politics is complicated, and an industry that put its whole federal bet on one committee should be careful whom it throws its support behind. (Marijuana Moment)

Illinois sold 52,146,122 adult-use items for $1.51 billion in 2025. That’s according to the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation’s annual report, released October 7th. Illinois News Joint compared that against 2024’s monthly figures and found dollar sales down about 12.5 percent. The Chicago Tribune read the report as customers buying more at lower prices while revenue and taxes fell. Some of that drop is a measurement change. The state started moving to Metrc in July 2025 and finished in June. A review found the old system had sometimes captured prices before discounts, which made earlier months look more expensive than they really were. Metrc records the discount at checkout. IDFPR says what dispensaries reported to the Department of Revenue was accurate all along, so the tax receipts hold up even where the old price data doesn’t. Volume kept climbing. July 2026 was the first month over 5 million items, and August ran 9 percent ahead of last year. Erin Johnson, the state’s cannabis regulation oversight officer, called this year’s prices the best Illinois consumers have seen. The agency grew with the market, issuing 29 new dispensary licenses in FY26, adding five inspectors to reach 16 and raising inspections from 625 to 755. Anyone heading to Springfield next spring to argue about the tax rate should bring unit counts and the months after June 2026. Those are the only numbers measured the same way the whole time. (Chicago Tribune; IDFPR; Illinois News Joint)

The Cannabis Control Commission voted October 8th to extend through June 30th, 2027, its pause on new applications for cultivator licenses and for microbusiness licenses that aren’t majority equity-owned. The pause was first approved April 16th. Microbusinesses majority-owned by Social Equity Program participants or Economic Empowerment applicants stay exempt. The Commission kept the power to shorten or lengthen the pause if market conditions warrant, though its bulletin doesn’t cite any market data. Licensed growers get some price stability out of a canopy freeze, and would-be applicants get more time on the sidelines. With wholesale prices still soft, the Commission has a reasonable case for the pause. Publishing the supply numbers behind it would make that case stronger and tell applicants what figure ends it. (The Marijuana Herald; Cannabis Control Commission)

The Cannabis Control Commission ratified a stipulated agreement on October 8th with Highminded LLC, which does business as Farnsworth Cannabis in Great Barrington. Investigators counted 2,376 discounted transactions from February 2021 through January 2026, 1,502 of them under a dollar. The sales ran without formal procedures and weren’t properly handled in Metrc, and staff and owner discounts went as deep as 99 percent. In a February 2024 burglary, thieves took product kept at an unlicensed office for staff samples. The company told police and didn’t notify the Commission within the required 24 hours. Farnsworth’s retail and manufacturing operations close November 1st through 14th. It owes a $30,000 penalty in five installments and $5,000 to the Cannabis Social Equity Trust Fund by November 1st, 2027. The Commission’s January 2025 memo treats this kind of pennying out as incompatible with its rules and, in some cases, as diversion. Investigators could count sales going back five years because every one of them, penny sales included, went through the register and into the state’s tracking record. (Talking Joints Memo; Cannabis Control Commission)

🧾 New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority cancelled Scott Bennison’s audit license over breaches tied mainly to his work as engagement quality reviewer on Greenfern Industries’ statements for the year ended March 31st, 2024. Greenfern, a Taranaki medicinal cannabis and hemp company, went into receivership in February 2025. Bennison, of Sydney’s KS Black & Co., can appeal to the District Court, and the FMA thanked Australia’s securities regulator for its help. Greenfern’s collapse is now costing more than its shareholders and lenders, and one of the people paying is an auditor who reviewed its books. (1News)

SHF Holdings reported that deposits on its Safe Harbor Financial platform averaged $119.3 million over the 14 days ending September 30th. That’s up 7.4 percent from a year earlier and about 25 percent above the May 2025 low of $95.3 million. The numbers are preliminary and unaudited, and CEO Terry Mendez credits the company’s strategy. The same week, Credit Union Times added up what recent failures have cost the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, including an estimated $4.24 million for North Bay Credit Union in Santa Rosa. The NCUA inspector general reviewed North Bay in June. It found a heavy concentration of poor-quality cannabis business loans, weak underwriting and loose oversight of the credit union’s cannabis CUSO. It also found a core-system conversion that let Bank Secrecy Act monitoring lapse. North Bay merged into Alero Financial in April with NCUA cash assistance. Holding a cannabis company’s deposits takes a compliance staff. Lending to one takes credit judgment, and that’s where North Bay came apart. Credit union boards will have North Bay’s number in front of them the next time somebody pitches cannabis lending. Rescheduling won’t change that conversation, because the bank reporting rules don’t turn on the drug schedule. (The Marijuana Herald; SHF Holdings; Credit Union Times; NCUA Office of Inspector General)

Attorney General William Tong announced a $2 million stipulated judgment with RZ Smoke Inc., a wholesaler whose Suffield warehouse state agents and local police searched in May 2023. They found 11 pallets of high-potency cannabis products worth an estimated $792,000 at retail, some packaged to look like candy or snacks. RZ Smoke pays $375,000, with about $1.6 million suspended to ensure compliance. It may not handle intoxicating THC products in Connecticut without a Department of Consumer Protection license. The state sued under its Unfair Trade Practices Act in January 2024. In August, Tong’s office closed a New Haven smoke shop for good. This case reaches the wholesale level, where a single warrant took 11 pallets off the market at once. (Connecticut Office of the Attorney General; CT News Junkie)

🌍 IntelliNews surveyed Africa’s cannabis licensing and found permits arriving well ahead of evidence that anyone is making money. Ghana issued its first two cultivation licenses, to MG Adom and Juliopta, on July 31st under a 0.3 percent THC limit. Botswana set its industrial line at 0.7 percent and had issued two pilot licenses by February. South Africa had more than 1,400 hemp permits and about 120 medical licenses by March, while its Cannabis for Private Purposes Act still hasn’t commenced. Ghana, Botswana and South Africa have the permits on paper, while the things an investor would actually check, like export volumes and planted acreage, mostly aren’t there yet. (IntelliNews)

Rep. Brian Mast, the Florida Republican who co-chairs the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, told Marijuana Moment that rescheduling should grow into a review of how every controlled substance is classified. He named cannabis, hemp, psilocybin and tranquilizers, and he wants agencies to sort out what is working well and what isn’t. He hasn’t filed a bill, and no agency has opened a broader proceeding. His best evidence is the GAO report now holding up DEA’s hearing, which found the agency has no written procedures for how its staff evaluate drugs for scheduling. A caucus letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche asking for that review would put the idea on DEA’s desk. (Marijuana Moment)

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