📊 "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

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Massachusetts' repeal campaign put its first ads on television, and the driving statistic at the center of them matches a coroner study from one Ohio county. Regulators in Georgia, Vermont and California say DEA headquarters still hasn't answered their Schedule III questions. Rhode Island and North Carolina hemp sellers are working toward December 11th. California's cannabis appeals panel says it can't hear a destruction order, and Maryland is pricing what federal change would mean for its market.

🚗 Ohio's numbers, Boston's airwaves
🤝 The states know the plant
🥤 Two states, one ceiling
🧊 Condemned, no courtroom

The Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts put its first two television spots on the air this week, and both tell voters that "forty-two percent of drivers in fatal crashes test positive for THC." The figure matches a coroner review of 246 drivers killed in Montgomery County, Ohio, between 2019 and 2024, presented to the American College of Surgeons last October. In that study the rate barely moved with legalization, 42 percent across the period and 45 percent after Ohio's adult-use law took effect. So the campaign wants Massachusetts to close its stores on the strength of one Ohio county where legalization didn't change the number.

The first spot opens on smoke at bus stops and in parks. Anyone who has been to a summer concert expects a little of that, and a fair amount of it traces to a gap that the ballot question ignores. Ten years after voters authorized social consumption, Massachusetts still has no licensed access, so a patient whose lease bars smoking has nowhere legal to take a medicine the state certified them to buy. Using behind the wheel is never acceptable, and driving impaired was a crime long before anyone drafted Question 8. The question lets adults 21 and over keep an ounce, so the smoker at the bus stop keeps his inconsiderate routine and loses only the licensed, tested store he bought it from. The second spot tells voters the question leaves alone what adults do at home. Which is bullshit, of course, if you happen to grow at home.

Jeremy Berke, writing in High Times, traced the campaign website's claim of "an almost fourfold increase" in adolescent use to drug tests from Mass General's psychiatric emergency service. The CDC's survey has past-month use among Massachusetts high schoolers falling from 24.1 percent in 2017 to 12.0 percent in 2025. SAM Action has supplied nearly all of the $3.5 million the campaign has raised, and it is buying numbers that hold up until someone reads the footnote. MassINC had the question losing 61 to 27, and $2.7 million is a lot of airtime to spend on a number that comes apart this easily. If an independent poll puts yes above a third before November 3rd, the driving message will have done more than its math deserves. The case for voting no is at StoptheRepealMA.com. (Marijuana Moment; MassLive; High Times; HealthDay)

🏪 Manitoba Justice Minister Matt Wiebe introduced Bill 56 on Monday. It would drop the province's requirement that cannabis store windows be covered and let the Liquor, Gaming and Cannabis Authority set minimum staffing during higher-risk hours. The covered window kept product out of view from the sidewalk, and it also kept a clerk working alone out of view. UFCW Local 832 brought the change to the government after violent incidents in stores, and Labour and Immigration Minister Malaya Marcelino announced it alongside Wiebe. A safety problem at work went to the labor ministry and the union first, and the cannabis regulator got the job of writing the staffing number. (CTV News; Province of Manitoba)

Georgia's medical cannabis commission approved label changes last week. Staff tried to match the warning that April's Schedule III order requires on medical product, which says transferring it to anyone but the patient is a crime. Executive Director Andrew Turnage said DEA told him it couldn't comment on proposed language, so Georgia wrote its rule without knowing whether licensees will have to relabel. In Vermont, Cannabis Control Board chair James Pepper said the Cannabis Regulators Association sent DEA headquarters a list of questions and got "radio silence." He called the regional office a great partner that simply has no more answers than the states do. California's Clint Kellum says other states are now seeing DEA inspections of registered businesses, with the follow-up questions varying from region to region.

I ran one of these state programs for six years without a federal counterpart to call, and so has every state regulator I know. Regulations were created at a time when the Cole Memo was rescinded. They built their tracking systems and inspection programs on their own, and they know this supply chain better than anyone in Washington. DEA's career staff spent their working lives treating the plant as Schedule I. Now they're standing up a registration program on a political clock, which is hard work to do in a hurry. Each side has what the other needs, and both would be better off finding their way to the same table. The natural next step is a formal sit-down between DEA headquarters and CANNRA, and the calendar argues for holding it before the year is out. Form 225 registrations are already moving, and every one issued before that meeting leaves another state learning the federal program from its own licensee. (Marijuana Moment)

The Maryland Cannabis Administration is buying a market study for its December 31st report to the General Assembly, and the scope goes well past the usual supply check. The contractor will model what 280E relief does to cultivators' cash flow and what cGMP and DEA standards would cost to meet. It will also estimate Maryland's cost per pound if interstate trade ever opens, and it counts hemp-derived THCA and delta-8 as demand leaking outside the licensed market. The last study, by Mackenzie Slade's Cannabis Public Policy Consulting, put licensed retail at roughly three-quarters of spending and found no need for more canopy. A final draft is due December 15th, which puts the numbers in front of legislators before session. (The Marijuana Herald)

🌷 Bedrocan has been the Dutch government's only contracted medical cannabis grower since 2003, and the Opium Act still bars it from selling to pharmacies directly. Its Veendam site has been in court-supervised administration since September 25th, and its government supply contract ended January 1st. The last stockpile batches have been delivered and keep for a year. The amended law that would open the market is targeted for July 1, 2028. That leaves a gap of about ten months, which the Health Ministry itself acknowledges. Material from Bedrocan's Danish site in Køge has no import authorization. Hollandbio counts more than 7,000 Dutch patients with prescriptions and says the shortage is the government's own making. The Dutch parliament built this supply chain around one grower and one buyer, and its own timetable doesn't fix it until 2028. (Business of Cannabis)

Rhode Island's regulated hemp market sold $2.85 million in 2025, according to Cannabis Control Commission data, and THC drinks and seltzers were $2.36 million of it, about 83 percent. The state's 2025 rules allow 1 milligram of THC per serving and 5 per package, and on December 11th the federal ceiling drops to 0.4 milligrams per container. Mariana Ormonde, the Commission's chief legal counsel, told the Rhode Island Current that "we can't treat hemp like cannabis because it's not cannabis." The state licenses adult-use cannabis under its own law, while hemp lives inside a federal definition Congress just rewrote. Lovewell Farms launched a 5 milligram lemonade in September and has pallets of it waiting for liquor stores.

North Carolina sellers have less to work with, because HB 328 is paused while legislators look for a compromise. Ben Erichsen of Wilmington Dispensary says a compliant jar would hold about a twelfth of one of his mildest gummies. Justin Hamilton of Hemp Farmacy expects Congress to buy a year or two, and he keeps a countdown clock in his flagship store in case it doesn't. President Trump's call to protect full-spectrum CBD covers a different product from either the lemonade or the gummy. The Rhode Island Commission says revised guidance is coming in the next few days. That guidance won't move December 11th, because Ormonde's argument rests on federal supremacy and supremacy leaves her no room on the date. The useful part will be whatever it says about inventory already sitting on pallets. (Talking Joints Memo / Rhode Island Current; WilmingtonBiz)

🎃 Herb Light wants your cannabis horror stories. The hemp beverage brand is running a Halloween contest that sends two winners to a pair of haunted houses in Illinois stocked with its 1 milligram cans. The spot features Frankenstein's monster on jumper cables and a werewolf with no manners, and the pitch is that a low dose leaves nothing to be afraid of. The scariest date on Herb Light's calendar comes six weeks after Halloween. On December 11th, Section 781 caps hemp products at 0.4 milligrams per container, and a 1 milligram can becomes, in Washington's eyes, two and a half times too strong. (Muse by Clio)

Department of Cannabis Control investigators embargoed about 390 pounds of frozen flower and concentrate at Euphoric Life in Hollister in April 2025. The company says a new compliance officer had the Metrc tags off the bags to photocopy them, a practice DCC's own investigator had suggested in an October 2024 email. Its Metrc manifests and package histories are the evidence it has offered that the product came from licensed farms. In February, Administrative Law Judge Juliet Cox sided with the department and ordered the product destroyed and roughly $36,000 in costs paid. She called owner Aiden Rafii's testimony "aspirational but not credible."

In June the Cannabis Control Appeals Panel ruled it has no jurisdiction over condemnation orders, after DCC had told a Santa Clara judge the panel was the right venue. The panel said leaving licensees with no clear route to appeal can't stand. The Sixth District Court of Appeal stayed destruction July 29th while it decides whether to take the case, and DCC argues the company missed its 30-day window. Investigators who had already been on site four or five hours and asked for records afterward made a defensible call. The harder question is what came next. AB 1826 would have sent these orders to the appeals panel, and it died in Senate Appropriations over a cost of about $2 million a year. A track-and-trace record is supposed to let a compliant operator prove where product came from, and so far no one with jurisdiction has had to read this one. If the Sixth District declines the writ, the 390 pounds get destroyed without a court ever weighing the manifests. (Cannabis Business Times)

Judge Esther Salas gave the Justice Department until November 19th to answer TerrAscend's motion to dismiss the suit over an $8.36 million refund. She also moved the motion to December 21st, to be decided on the papers. Both dates are now on our Deadlines, Decoded tracker. TerrAscend's lead argument is that DOJ sued "TerrAscend USA, Inc. & Subsidiaries," a label on a consolidated tax return rather than a company anyone can serve. The refund came from an amended 2020 return claiming about $64.6 million in deductions the company had originally left off under 280E. A dismissal on the caption would settle nothing about whether the money was owed. (The Marijuana Herald)

🌾 Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet told a University of Health Sciences audience in Phnom Penh this week that his government has turned down foreign companies proposing to grow medical cannabis for export, along with the law changes they wanted. Export was the stated purpose, he said, "but I believe it cannot be effectively controlled." He pointed to Thailand, which he said opened cultivation with exports in mind and then lost track of where the product went. Thailand's cabinet approved a draft bill last month to pull its market back toward medical standards, which suggests Bangkok sees the same problem. (Khmer Times)

The Texas Hemp Business Council published its voter guide Wednesday. It carries legislative candidates' answers to a 20-question survey on hemp regulation, retail standards, agriculture and consumer safeguards, and the council keeps adding responses as they arrive. Texas closed voter registration Monday, so the guide reaches only Texans already on the rolls.

In Kansas, Attorney General Kris Kobach told a Johnson County Bar Association debate Tuesday that Kansas having no medical program at all is a good thing. Challenger Chris Mann said legislators should listen to Kansans who want some form of legalization, and both agreed the Legislature decides. Anyone not yet registered still can in North Carolina until 5 p.m. tomorrow, in Kansas until Tuesday, and in Massachusetts, where Question 8 is on the ballot, until October 24th. (Texas Hemp Business Council release; KCUR)

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