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A hemp-ban allegation against Susie Wiles from former HHS adviser Calley Means, reported by Politico and answered by a White House statement that Trump does not let outside groups influence policy, opens onto a larger fight over the December 11th federal ban among the alcohol lobby, legal cannabis, and hemp farmers. Illinois’s own hemp law starts Thursday, with the sponsor of the looser bill expecting no state fix before the new General Assembly begins. Sixteen governors asked Congress to pass SAFE Banking, DEA opened its 2027 quota notice to comment through December 10th, and Curaleaf says it now holds every competition clearance it needs for Aurora. North Carolina’s incoming House Speaker put decriminalization on his list, and Connecticut set an adult-use sales record at its lowest price per gram.
📰 Hemp’s crowded fight
⏳ Illinois starts Thursday
🏦 Governors want banking
🥤 0.4 versus 10
Today is Veterans Day. To everyone who has served, and to the families who served alongside you, thank you.
Let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.
Calley Means, a former senior adviser to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., says Susie Wiles, the recently departed White House chief of staff, played a prominent role in steering the White House’s hemp policy stance, which he says led to a delay in the pending ban on intoxicating hemp products, according to Politico. “It is known by everyone and widely discussed among senior administration staff that Susie put her finger on the hemp policy scale because of her family,” Means told Politico. The story’s subhead says Wiles’s son-in-law is an executive at companies that sell and distribute intoxicating hemp products.
MJBizDaily adds that Means says Wiles helped tuck the delay into the September spending bill, and that Means quit his post last month. A White House spokesman said Trump “has never allowed and will never allow outside groups to influence policy decisions.” The federal ban, now pushed to December 11th, caps hemp products at 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container.
I think the hemp issue is bigger than any one family relationship. Established, influential interests are fighting over the ban, and the alcohol lobby alone is divided. Our November 2nd edition reported, from Politico, that lobbyists for Anheuser-Busch, Molson Coors, and Diageo urged state attorneys general to sign an August letter asking Congress not to delay the ban, and our November 5th edition reported that Total Wine added a lobbying firm on low-dose hemp-derived beverages. The legal cannabis industry has a stake, and so do the farmers.
I’d add that Howard Kessler, a philanthropist and founder of The Commonwealth Project, has the President’s ear. Reason, citing the New York Times, reports his allies worked with the White House on the language sent to Congress to delay the ban. Plenty of people claimed credit for the ban, and as many or more are claiming credit for the extension. MJBizDaily says Wiles did not specifically respond, and I have nothing from her on the record. (Politico; MJBizDaily; Reason; The Marijuana Herald; The Commonwealth Project)
🤝 Curaleaf says it now holds every competition clearance it needs for its bid for Aurora Cannabis. Germany’s economy ministry approved on October 20th, Canada’s Competition Bureau issued a no-action letter on November 2nd, and Germany’s Federal Cartel Office confirmed on November 3rd that the deal does not meet the conditions for prohibition, according to a company release. The release says Germany and Canada were the only jurisdictions that required competition clearance, and that Organigram’s proposed acquisition of Aurora “remains subject to shareholder, court, and regulatory approvals.”
This is the bidder’s own release, so I would read the sequence and skip the adjectives. Three clearances landed between October 20th and November 3rd, and the enhanced offer of October 6th expires December 4th unless it is amended. (Curaleaf release)
Rep. La Shawn Ford, the Chicago Democrat who sponsored the looser bill and just won a seat in Congress, does not expect new state legislation to push back on the hemp restrictions before the new General Assembly begins next year, the Chicago Tribune reports. Glenn McElfresh, CEO of Plift, told the Tribune his company is moving business operations from Chicago to Wisconsin and may have to lay off workers if the ban stands, and he predicted customers would cross the border to neighboring states. “It makes no sense,” he said. A “last call” toast at Duffy’s Tavern & Grille in Lakeview was planned for Tuesday night. Total Wine & More, in a company release carried by MMJDaily, says about 1,000 locations in Illinois sell low-dose hemp-derived THC drinks and that their retail value exceeds $50 million a year. Those figures are the company’s.
The dates cover different things. Illinois’s own law starts Thursday, November 12th, and the pause covers the plaintiffs in the federal suit and their association’s members until the November 19th hearing. Missouri’s own hemp law also starts November 12th, a separate state date. Federally, synthetic cannabinoids the plant can’t naturally produce fall out of the hemp definition on November 12th, and the federal ban, now pushed to December 11th, caps hemp products at 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container.
A retailer that is not in the lawsuit or the association should plan for Thursday as written, because Tuesday’s pause covers the plaintiffs. Ford’s comment leaves the November 19th hearing as the only open door, and that hearing is about the Illinois law and will not touch the federal cap. (Chicago Tribune; MMJDaily; Columbia Missourian)
🧪 Texas Rep. John Bucy III filed HB 507, which would bar state agencies and local governments from requiring a negative cannabinoid test to hire or keep an employee, and from barring low-THC prescriptions, Compassionate Use Program use, or legal hemp use, according to the Marijuana Herald. It exempts peace officers and workers under federal Department of Transportation testing rules, leaves private employers out, and would take effect September 1, 2027. Marijuana Moment adds Sen. Carol Alvarado’s SB 237, with a 2.5-ounce possession limit, county opt-outs, and no new excise taxes.
A positive test is not impairment, and a drug test that cannot tell the difference ends up measuring last month. The exemptions for peace officers and federally tested jobs are where the argument gets hard. HB 507’s 2025 predecessor did not become law, so the first question is whether this one gets a hearing. (The Marijuana Herald; Marijuana Moment)
Sixteen Democratic governors sent House and Senate leaders a letter Monday urging passage of the SAFE Banking Act, according to Marijuana Moment. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who chairs the National Governors Association, led it, and Maura Healey, Jared Polis, JB Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer, Kathy Hochul, Tim Walz, and Abigail Spanberger signed. The letter says the bill would “protect public safety, increase revenues, and improve transparency in our states.” A Government Accountability Office report in September found “no indication” that any bank was penalized solely for serving the industry, while access “remain[s] difficult.” Bipartisan House and Senate versions were filed in June, and the House has passed earlier versions several times without any becoming law.
The last time SAFE Banking got a Senate committee vote was 2023, and it died with that Congress. A letter from governors is a fair thing to send, and I would ask which Senate Republicans they have called. (Marijuana Moment)
🥤 Cheech & Chong’s Global Holding Company says production of its Agua Yesca drink starts in mid-November at 10 milligrams of hemp-derived THC per 12-ounce can, with sales through its website before Thanksgiving and select stores in early December, according to a paid release. Nowadays added an Extra Lite can at 0.4 milligrams of THC and 5 milligrams of CBD next to its 2, 5, and 10 milligram lines, and High Standard is selling a final batch at a discount, per Hemp Beverage News. The federal ban, now pushed to December 11th, caps hemp products at 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container. Only the 0.4 milligram can fits under that cap as written, and Congress decides whether that changes. (Cheech & Chong release; Hemp Beverage News)
The Democrat who will lead the North Carolina House, Robert Reives II, said his caucus is interested in decriminalization and other priorities after Democrats won the chamber for the first time in 15 years, with at least 66 of 120 seats, according to WRAL. WRAL quotes him on it, “Decriminalization of marijuana has been on top of everybody’s minds,” he said, and the article is mostly about redistricting, vouchers, and the budget. Republicans hold 26 of 50 Senate seats. An October WRAL/WSOC poll found 74 percent of respondents want medical cannabis legal and 15 percent oppose. A Speaker-elect who says decriminalization is on the list is worth a call. If I were working North Carolina, I would start where one chamber has already voted, which is the Senate’s medical bills. (WRAL)
📊 DEA’s proposed 2027 quotas ran in the Federal Register on November 10th under Docket DEA-1730P, and electronic comments are due December 10th. The notice proposes 1,523,040 grams of delta-9 THC and 1,166,130 grams of “all other tetrahydrocannabinol,” and says a separate notice will cover the Schedule III drug codes once DEA settles its data sources. Quotas are DEA following the statute, so the place to argue for a different number is the docket, and the docket is open until December 10th. (Federal Register)
About 10 percent of Massachusetts cannabis businesses are in the Social Equity Program, GBH reports. Hispanic or Latino workers are 11.2 percent of the industry and Black workers 7.2 percent, per Cannabis Control Commission data, and 33 delivery businesses make up about a third of equity licenses. Duane Harden, who owns the delivery business BlazeXpress in Holyoke, told GBH his break-even is about $1,500 a day, a recent September afternoon brought in a little less than $500, and the day before about $700, and there are more than 40 dispensaries in the 10 towns he serves. Commissioner Xiomara Albán DeLobato told GBH, “Our equity mandate will always be a work in progress,” and UMass economist Lucy Xiaolu Wang said, “passing the law was a relatively easy part.”
A license gives someone permission to compete, and capital, customers, and a price that covers the rent are separate problems. The industry has an obligation to the people who were harmed, and no single regulator can deliver that alone. (GBH)
🛒 Connecticut sold $20,482,897 of adult-use cannabis in October, a monthly record that tops the $20,104,680 set in December 2025, according to the Marijuana Herald’s reading of Department of Consumer Protection data. Adult-use and medical together came to $25,770,691, and the year through October stands near $245.8 million. The average price per gram fell to $6.36, which the Herald calls an all-time low, from $8.43 a year earlier and $11.21 in October 2024.
Connecticut sold more at a lower price, which is what a legal market has to do against the illicit one. Prices at $6.36 a gram leave operators less room, and the state’s tax and retail rules will matter more from here. (The Marijuana Herald)
🗺️ Around the map: The Netherlands will publish a European tender for a new medical cannabis supplier in December, with the supplier chosen in May 2027 and deliveries from September 2027, after Bedrocan was declared bankrupt on October 8th, and the Opium Act change ending the state monopoly will miss its July 1, 2028 date, per MMJDaily. Nebraska’s Medical Cannabis Commission said Tuesday it has never set a timeline for lab testing of harvested product and gave no new estimate, after an interim chair said in October that a cultivator told her product could be stored for up to two years, according to the Nebraska Examiner via Marijuana Moment. South Dakota Rep. Josephine Garcia, who chairs the Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee, suggested ending it Tuesday as the Legislature’s Executive Board adopted interim final reports, KCCR reports. October legal sales across 29 states came to about $2.6 billion by the Marijuana Herald’s count, which includes its own estimates for several states, and Massachusetts posted $154.7 million in combined adult-use and medical sales, from Cannabis Control Commission open data. (MMJDaily; Marijuana Moment; KCCR; The Marijuana Herald)
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