🌹 "A rose by any other name..."

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🎧 Jeremy Berke of Cultivated Media joined Erik and me on Episode 25 of The Hybrid, "Who Tells the Story of Cannabis?" Cultivated's new membership runs $12.50 a month or $100 a year. The free daily newsletter stays free, and members get at least one exclusive feature, analysis or investigation every week. Jeremy says the money goes toward hiring more journalists, and more reporters on this beat makes everyone's coverage better, including ours. Listen on Spotify and everywhere you get your podcasts.

Missouri filed new rules on who may own a cannabis license the same week a federal judge kept Good Day Farm's ownership fight in court. Michigan revoked a Muha Meds store that split orders for two influencers, and CDC wants to change how it asks high schoolers about cannabis. In North Carolina, the cannabis council drafted a public-use ban with one opening for THC drinks, and a California concentrate CEO wants the rest of farming to test like cannabis.

📋 Owned, or managed
🛒 Split at the register
📊 A wider question
🚭 Home, or a restaurant
🧪 Test like cannabis

The Division of Cannabis Regulation at the Department of Health and Senior Services has filed amendments to 19 CSR 100-1.070 and 100-1.100. These are the rules that set ownership requirements for Missouri licensees and govern what happens when ownership changes. By the department's summary, the package would drop preapproval when a licensee's ownership changes by 50 percent and build a framework for publicly traded companies to hold licenses. It would also let microbusiness licenses pass to eligible family members, and set recall procedures for product that can't be traced back to a licensed Missouri grow. The text publishes in the November Missouri Register. Comments run November 2nd through December 2nd (the window goes on our Deadlines, Decoded tracker), and DHSS expects a final rule next year.

In Kansas City, U.S. District Judge Stephen Bough has denied Good Day Farm's motion to dismiss Damon Frost Jr.'s consumer class action. The suit alleges the Little Rock company runs a group of more than 60 Missouri dispensaries that narrows brand choice and keeps prices up. Bough found Frost hadn't pleaded his losses with enough specificity and gave him until October 19th to amend. Good Day Farm's motion made two arguments. First, the constitution's 10 percent cap limits how many licenses it owns and says nothing about how many it controls or manages. Second, if it does control the stores, they operate as a single enterprise that can't conspire with itself.

That first argument rests on a real change in the text. The 2018 medical amendment counted licenses under "substantially common control, ownership, or management," and the 2022 adult-use amendment kept only ownership. Read together, the two defenses ask a court to accept that Good Day Farm may run the stores as one business so long as it doesn't own them. That is the line DHSS now has to draw in 1.070. A rule can't write the missing words back into the constitution, but it can say what counts as an owner. Discovery in Frost will pull management agreements into a federal record while the comment period is open, and I'd put money on Good Day Farm's competitors quoting that record in their comments. If the November text reaches management contracts, the lawsuit and the rule end up arguing over the same sentence. (KFVS; Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; Missouri Independent)

🔎 Sens. Tom Cotton, Susan Collins, Pete Ricketts and Ted Budd asked Attorney General Todd Blanche on Wednesday to investigate Chinese transnational criminal organizations in the cannabis and intoxicating-hemp markets. They want DOJ to look at the networks' financing, land, chemical imports and any ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The letter leans on DEA's 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment, April's charges against 29 Chinese nationals in a case centered in Oklahoma, and illegal grows in California's Siskiyou County. Unlicensed grows are already illegal everywhere, so the hemp paragraph is where the letter does its political work. It warns that leaving the "loophole" open past December 11th buys those networks time. Cotton, Ricketts and Budd stood together on Budd's hemp amendment in August, and Collins brings a fourth vote to that side of the argument. The other side's Senate vehicle is close. Sens. Tim Sheehy and Amy Klobuchar are nearing introduction of a regulatory companion to the House's Lawful Hemp Protection Act, according to a single unnamed source who spoke with The Marijuana Herald. (Office of Sen. Tom Cotton; The Marijuana Herald)

Michigan's Cannabis Regulatory Agency revoked the adult-use retail license of Budbridge LLC, doing business as Muha Meds Ypsilanti, and fined it $251,250. Executive Director Brian Hanna signed the final order Thursday. On June 24th and July 7th of last year, employees broke orders for two social media influencers into smaller transactions so the register wouldn't throw an oversale warning. They then handed each influencer hundreds of vape cartridges in a single transfer over the legal limit. Crain's reports the investigation also turned up a fake customer profile used to move vapes. On one occasion, Crain's reports, an employee walked 487 cartridges worth nearly $4,400 out to a car in the parking lot, in a state that caps each sale at 15 grams. The seven violations include failures to check identification, tag and track inventory, secure product containers, and report criminal activity. "Deliberately bypassing purchase limits is a serious violation of the responsibilities that come with a marijuana license," Hanna said.

Last month the agency fined Michigan Investment 10, the Pinconning processor licensed to make Muha Meds products, $2 million. It revoked that company's medical license after the company surrendered its adult-use one. Crain's reports the brand's Detroit store isn't part of either action. The brand, Michigan's third-best-selling vape, now has a licensing deal with Distro 10 in Vassar. Distro 10 co-founder George Sinishtaj told Crain's that none of the prior licensee's "regulatory history follows the brand." Michigan licenses entities, and a brand is intellectual property that can move to a licensee with a clean record and its own operating procedures. The statewide monitoring system will show Hanna's staff soon enough whether the new arrangement keeps its tags in better order than the old one did. (Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency; Crain's Detroit Business)

📝 Virginia's Cannabis Control Authority is asking medical patients how the program works for them, in a 10-to-15-minute survey open through October 16th. More than 114,000 patients bought from a Virginia dispensary in 2025. The agency's 2024 survey produced a recommendation for more provider education, which it then carried out. Acting head Jamie Patten's staff is also finalizing the adult-use rules. The patients who answer are talking to the people deciding how dual-use stores will treat them when adult-use sales start next July. (The Marijuana Herald; Virginia Cannabis Control Authority)

The draft 2027 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey that CDC sent to the White House budget office would stop telling students to leave "CBD-only or hemp products" out of their answers. The Marijuana Herald, which reviewed the draft, reports that students would be told to count cannabis and marijuana, with only CBD-only products excluded. They would also get a new question on how they usually consume it, from joints and edibles to drinks, vapes and dabs. The OMB filing shows CDC submitted the package August 6th as a "no material or nonsubstantive change." It carries 12 new questions, eight removals and two modifications, and no public comment period comes with it. The 2025 survey put past-30-day use among high schoolers at 12.9 percent, the lowest since comparable data began in 1991.

Counting the delta-9 seltzer from the gas station is the right call in a country where those cans sit at eye level. The consumption question is overdue too, since it hasn't appeared on the national survey since 2015. What it costs is comparability with the trend line. If 2027 comes in higher, anyone citing it should have to say how much of the rise is teenagers and how much is a wider question. CDC could settle that in advance by publishing a crosswalk with the results. (The Marijuana Herald; OMB ICR 202608-0920-003)

📈 Researchers from Düsseldorf, London, Hamburg, Leipzig and Maastricht ran 23 repeated surveys of 35,957 Germans from spring 2022 to spring 2026. In a paper in the International Journal of Drug Policy, they found no statistically significant change in past-year use or daily and near-daily use after the April 2024 reform. The authors call for longer monitoring across more data sources, since effects may arrive later. The reform they measured allowed home growing and nonprofit clubs and no commercial shops. A two-year read from Germany therefore tells a dispensary state less than the headline suggests. (International Cannabis Business Conference)

Anne Doyle and Kaycee Deen of the state Division of Public Health brought five draft recommendations on THC consumption to the Advisory Council on Cannabis this week. Public use would be barred everywhere from parks and beaches to bars and event venues. There would be no exception for a "private event" that turns a public business into a consumption site. Consumption and open containers would be barred in moving vehicles without any showing of impairment. Dedicated lounges would be off the table, landlords and homeowners' associations could restrict further, and civil fines would be the default penalty. The one opening under discussion would let licensed restaurants serve THC beverages for on-site consumption, carded and portioned like a mixed drink.

Roxboro Police Chief David Hess said North Carolina's municipal police have no statutory authority to write civil infractions, a job that belongs to sheriffs. He said sending officers out to fine people for public use would "erode public trust." That is the most practical objection the council heard, because a penalty no local officer can issue governs on paper only. Forrest Parker of Great Smoky Cannabis Company, which sells legally on Cherokee land, added that his visitors already have nowhere lawful to consume. State Health Director Larry Greenblatt called the drafts a work in progress. The subcommittees have through November to hand Hess an enforcement clause his officers can use before the report goes to Gov. Josh Stein on December 31st. (NC Newsline)

⚖️ New Jersey wrote its cannabis law to give minority-owned, women-owned and other disadvantaged applicants a head start on licenses. Justin Shoham, a Democratic consultant who spent two years as chief of staff to Sen. Raj Mukherji, alleges that Mukherji turned that preference into a business model. In a 12-count suit, Shoham says Mukherji recruited people from his political circle to be majority owners, on paper, of dispensaries they didn't control. He says Mukherji then swapped partners among operators so each could claim the preference. Shoham himself was the 60 percent owner of Story Dispensary in Springfield. He says the store was actually run by a national cannabis executive and a management company bearing Mukherji's initials. That company collected $20,000 a month plus 11 percent of gross revenue, loaded the store with more than $4 million in debt, and closed it within a year. Shoham says he was promised $180,000 for his stake, never got it, and has Mukherji on tape explaining the arrangement. Mukherji denies wrongdoing and told Politico he was stunned by the suit. Lee Vartan, a lawyer for Jason Vedadi's Story Companies, called it "a shakedown lawsuit of the worst kind." The allegations are untested. (Politico)

🌾 Nonna Farms grew New York's first outdoor medical cannabis crop last year on 55 acres in Vernon. The Utica Observer-Dispatch reports that thousands of pounds of it are sitting in storage that the Office of Cannabis Management says can't be sold. Co-founder Fred Polsinelli and CEO Ajaie Gibson say they proposed the outdoor grow to OCM in April 2025 and moved ahead on the office's guidance. Their premise was that one outdoor harvest would stand in for the eight to 10 an indoor room produces. The fight is over canopy. Their license carried a 100,000-square-foot tier chosen for an indoor facility in Castleton, and they reported 36 acres planted in August 2025. By their account, a draft settlement in March would have let them keep the licensed product and sell the rest, with the proceeds going to the state. They accepted in writing within three days, they say, but OCM took more than 100 days to respond and the buyer walked away in the meantime. Then inspectors shut the storage facility with a stop-work order on August 26th. The owners say they borrowed more than $7 million and face foreclosure, and they have taken the case to an administrative law judge. OCM declined to comment, so everything here is the company's telling. (Utica Observer-Dispatch)

🫁 Tess Eidem spent four years in cannabis production and quality management before returning to the University of Colorado Boulder. She now has NIH funding to sample the air inside cultivation and manufacturing facilities for mold, allergens and other bioaerosols, and to work out what exposure levels are safe. No such limit exists for these workplaces today. "Right now, they're operating completely in the dark," she told 9News. I was running the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission in January 2022 when Lorna McMurrey died after working at Trulieve's Holyoke facility. The Commission took its share of the blame and later fined the company $350,000. A cannabis regulator's inspectors are trained on product, security and inventory. An exposure limit for ground cannabis dust was never a standard the Commission was built to write. Keeping a workplace safe is the employer's job first, and setting exposure limits belongs to OSHA, which alleged that year that the dust contributed to her death. Cannabis regulators have stepped into that space out of necessity when nobody else would, and that has left workers depending on agencies designed for a different job. Eidem's study can hand OSHA the number it has been missing, and nothing in OSHA's mandate sets a workplace aside because the plant on the line is cannabis. (MJBizDaily; 9News)

California's new pesticide action levels took effect yesterday, setting limits pesticide by pesticide, and the Department of Cannabis Control's second phase in April 2028 adds compounds and separate standards for inhalable products. Micah Anderson, CEO of LEEF Brands, argued in High Times this week for keeping those standards high. He spent two days vomiting after spraying Avid, an abamectin product now barred on cannabis, at a Mendocino grow twenty years ago. He writes that much of the contamination LEEF sees comes from a neighbor's spraying, the soil or the water, and he wants failed tests traced to their source and a federal standard so every state measures the same way. LEEF sells on clean oil and says so. The drift point deserves a regulator's attention anyway, since a farmer who failed for a neighbor's application and a farmer who sprayed the wrong product get the same result today. LEEF added Hirsh Jain to its board last month, giving a company that wants federal standards a director who knows interstate commerce. (High Times)

🍹 Urban Artifact, the Cincinnati brewery behind the THC soda Coastalo, has had to pull back its Ohio sales again after last week's Sixth Circuit order in Titan Logistics v. Tischler, the Cincinnati Business Courier reports. The brewery shipped its stock to Kentucky when SB 56 took effect on March 20th and came back under Judge Jeffrey Helmick's July injunction. The panel kept Helmick's commerce-clause holding but let Ohio require approval from its cannabis regulators before a hemp company sells, and Urban Artifact doesn't have that approval. Section 781's 0.4 milligram ceiling reaches the same cans on December 11th. That puts the brewery's next Ohio sale in front of a state regulator and Congress at the same time. (Cincinnati Business Courier)

🥤 Justin Tidwell and Anthony Puterman grew Nowadays, a hemp THC drink, to $100 million in annual retail sales in three and a half years, and their next brand has no THC in it. Unwind launched nationwide in Walmart on Thursday. It's a sparkling can built on magnesium and L-theanine, stocked in the enhanced-water aisle at $2.79 a can or $10.99 for a four-pack. TikTok Shop follows later this month and more retailers next year. Tidwell told Inc. that the back end of the energy-drink boom opens a market for "the opposite behavior." The person reaching for a calm can after work is the same person Nowadays already sells to. Unwind reaches that buyer without the ID check, the state-by-state map or a federal definition that changes on December 11th. It will never sell like a THC drink at its best, and nobody can legislate it out of the aisle on a fixed date either. Founders who keep a Walmart buyer and a payroll going while a new Congress sorts out hemp will still have both when Congress finishes. (Inc.)

🐸 The cultivar now sold as Toad Venom started life as Becky. Cannabis geneticist Anna Schwabe told Forbes contributor Peter Su that Becky apparently wasn't sexy enough, and that she'd much rather tell people she was smoking Becky. Su's tour runs from Maui Wowie through Cheetah Piss and Meat Breath, a Meatloaf and Mendo Breath cross. Belushi's Farm breeder Mojave Richmond explains that prohibition left strain names without trademark protection, which is how Girl Scout Cookies came to hear from the Girl Scouts. Several states already bar product names that appeal to kids, which gives the Becky lobby a better regulatory argument than it probably knows. (Forbes)

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