💵 “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.”

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Massachusetts’ repeal campaign has raised $3.53 million, and $1,625 of it came from people who live in Massachusetts. North Carolina hemp retailers counted what December 11th takes off their shelves. Hello Farms brought in Neal Katyal to ask the full Sixth Circuit for its $31.8 million back. Wisconsin’s Democratic nominee for governor wants legalization to help pay for pre-K, and Minnesota’s cannabis director says the row-crop farmers never showed up.

💵 $1,625 from home
🧾 79 of 82 shelves
🚜 The farmers stayed put
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The Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts reported $3,531,625 raised through October 1st, and SAM Action of Alexandria, Virginia supplied $3.48 million of it in five checks, the latest for $305,000 on September 29th. Five Massachusetts residents, in Newton, Westwood, Manchester and Stoneham, gave $1,600 between them, and another $25 came in small gifts. SAM Action is a 501(c)(4), so it never has to say whose money it is passing along, and it doesn’t. Its 2024 return reported $8.6 million in contributions and $23 million in net assets, with every donor name marked restricted. That’s legal. It’s also a campaign asking a state to close its stores on money nobody in that state can trace, run by the same outfit that put one Ohio county’s crash statistic on Boston television last week. Last month we said what would change this race was SAM reloading past $2 million before mid-October. It sent $305,000. The repeal side had $831,945 left on October 1st after spending $504,486 in the two weeks before that, a pace that empties the account before the last week of October. The Committee to Protect Cannabis Regulation held $1,153,610 at the same point, with INSA, Ascend Wellness Holdings and Vireo Health among its larger donors. The University of New Hampshire had “no” ahead 71 to 24 in September, and I haven’t moved off a no vote above 60 percent on November 3rd. I’m less calm than the polls, though. Mail ballots are already moving, in-person early voting opens Saturday, and $830,000 buys a lot of late Boston airtime aimed at whoever hasn’t decided. Remember, too, that the Maine and New Hampshire Senate races are also buying air time in the same media market. The assignment now is to close, and to close with a margin the next prohibition campaign has to study. If SAM wires another seven figures before early voting ends October 30th, the last two weeks belong to its ads. The case for voting no is at StoptheRepealMA.com. (Fall River Reporter; Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance; Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth)

🎗️ A woman being treated for cancer in Mykolaiv became the first oncology patient in Ukraine to receive a cannabis-based medicine, the Ministry of Health announced October 1st. Her doctor wrote an electronic prescription, and the prescription and the pharmacy’s dispensing both went into the national e-health record. Ukraine wrote its medical framework in December 2023, in the middle of a war, and wired prescribing and dispensing together before the first patient reached the counter. Plenty of states at peace launched with less. Now if only they’d recognize PTSD as a qualifying condition… (UNN; Newsweed)

Raleigh Dispensaries, which keeps a database of hemp retailers around the Triangle, checked 82 shops across seven counties and found 79 carrying at least one product category the federal change reaches. Founder Jake St. Peter put it at more than 90 percent of shops and called it “a serious blow.” Raleigh’s Bloom Collective says it will close by the end of October, and the owners of Redhead Hemp in Durham say the limit could reach everything they stock. Chris Karazin started Carolindica in a kitchen in 2019 and didn’t take a paycheck until three years ago. He wants age limits, child-resistant packaging and lab testing, and calls prohibition “hilarious regression.” NC Newsline puts the state market at roughly $3 billion and about 16,000 jobs, without saying whose estimate that is (so don’t email me about it). Two dates do the damage. On November 12th the federal hemp definition drops cannabinoids the plant can’t naturally produce, and on December 11th the 0.4 milligram per container ceiling arrives for the rest. North Carolina has no state framework waiting behind them, since Speaker Destin Hall parked the Senate’s version in August, and Gov. Josh Stein’s Advisory Council on Cannabis owes him recommendations at year’s end, after both dates. Outside the Eastern Band’s land, the state’s entire legal THC market rides on Washington. December 11th is also the day government funding runs out, and another short extension in that package is still likelier than a framework. For a store like Bloom Collective, an extension decided in the second week of December arrives after the decision to close. Both federal dates sit on our Deadlines, Decoded tracker. (NC Newsline via Marijuana Moment)

Hello Farms Licensing MI filed a petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc on October 8th, asking the full Sixth Circuit to restore the $31.8 million jury verdict a panel erased in September. Neal Katyal, the former acting U.S. solicitor general, signed it as counsel of record from Milbank, alongside the grower’s trial lawyer, Patrick Lannen. The petition says the ruling will cause “unimaginable instability” in the circuit’s legal states. It argues the panel’s federal-illegality rule conflicts with Kaiser Steel and Kelly v. Kosuga and with the Tenth Circuit’s 2024 decision in Bartch v. Barch. The sharpest point is practical. Under the panel’s rule, a cannabis buyer sued for breach in state court can remove the case to federal court and walk away from the contract there, and the petition calls that an invitation to forum-shop. Growers, processors and retailers in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee are holding supply agreements that rule reaches. We called the en banc petition in September with a September 24th deadline attached, and the substance held while the date slipped, because Katyal asked for two more weeks and got them. En banc review is rare, and a full court agreeing to rehear a published opinion on enforcing contracts for Schedule I sales would surprise me. An order directing Curaleaf’s subsidiaries to respond would be the first sign the judges want a closer look. (Hello Farms Licensing MI, LLC v. GR Vending MI, LLC, No. 25-1759 (6th Cir.), petition filed October 8th; The Marijuana Herald)

🥬 Casey O’Neill pulled his light-dep cannabis in Mendocino County, set cabbage starts into the same beds, and last week cut heads he calls “massive, juicy and fabulous.” Two crocks of sauerkraut are fermenting now, about 300 more cabbages wait in 3-inch pots under row cover, and the softneck garlic from his mother’s line goes in before the El Niño rains. The cannabis stumps get cut at the base and left to rot between the brassicas. A lot of California’s licensed cannabis grows on working farms like his, where the bed that held a July harvest holds cabbage by October. (Redheaded Blackbelt)

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, the Democratic nominee for governor, said last week, “We want to make sure, one, that we legalize marijuana,” and he ties the revenue to universal pre-K and wider BadgerCare coverage. He hasn’t attached a number, though a 2023 state fiscal estimate projected nearly $170 million a year, and a legislative analysis found Wisconsinites spent more than $121 million at Illinois dispensaries in 2022. Republican nominee Rep. Tom Tiffany backs a tightly controlled medical program and wants to go slow on the rest. Either man would face a Republican Legislature that has stalled Gov. Tony Evers’ legalization budgets for years, so the seats that decide this pledge are the legislative ones on the same November 3rd ballot. (Marijuana Moment)

Eric Taubel, who runs the Office of Cannabis Management, said in an October 1st interview, “I don’t think we’ve seen a ton of pickup from people who were in agriculture before switching over product lines.” The reasons are practical. Minnesota’s outdoor season is short, state rules cap how much a grower can plant, and a farm growing adult-use cannabis can lose eligibility for the federally backed mortgage it already carries. April’s rescheduling order reaches state-licensed medical cannabis, and an adult-use field is still Schedule I to a federal lender. The farmers with the land and the equipment are staying in corn and soybeans, and the licensed canopy is going to people who were already set up for cannabis. (MMJDaily)

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