🧮 Michigan's ounce costs $60.33 or $160

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Michigan published its August numbers and the average retail ounce of adult-use flower came in at $60.33. Yesterday this newsletter carried a median Michigan eighth at about $20, which works out to $160 an ounce. Both are right, and the gap between them explains why the 24 percent wholesale tax is so hard to find on a shelf. In Maryland, a court-appointed receiver is holding PharmaCann's cultivation license, its processing license and three Verilife stores, with bids closed and a December date set. A cannabis-funded super PAC that reported spending nothing on candidates through June is sitting on $11.8 million. And in Albany, a bill that hands back the labor peace mandate in exchange for a permanent wage board has been on Kathy Hochul's desk since June.

🧮 Two right answers
🔨 The receiver has the licenses
💵 $11.8 million, unspent
👷 Still on the desk

Michigan retailers sold 108,719 pounds of adult-use flower in August for $104.95 million, according to the Cannabis Regulatory Agency's monthly report. That works out to $965.24 a pound and $60.33 an ounce, which is exactly the average retail price the agency published. The state number is realized revenue over weight, so the $39 promotional ounce, the bag of smalls and the bulk deal all sit in the denominator next to the top-shelf eighth. Weedbuddy's median is a menu price for 3.5 grams, the most expensive unit a store sells and the one most shoppers actually buy. Neither number is wrong and they are about 2.6 times apart, which is a problem for anyone comparing states. MITechNews ran the $60.33 against Ohio ounces at $150 to $220 this week, and those Ohio figures are menu prices. The year-over-year lines are the ones I keep going back to. August adult-use sales were $258.79 million, down 8.5 percent from $282.84 million a year ago. Flower volume fell 11.6 percent and flower revenue fell 13.7 percent, while the average ounce moved from $61.79 to $60.33, about two percent. Eight months into a wholesale tax of 24 percent, the register barely moved and the volume left instead. Grown Rogue put its Michigan production cost at $277 a pound in the second quarter, $17.31 an ounce, down from $313, and that is the part of the chain absorbing the levy. BDSA estimates New Buffalo and Monroe together did about $124.8 million in the first quarter, in a town of roughly 1,700 people with close to 30 stores, which tells you where the product goes and nothing about who is carrying it home. (Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency, August 2026 monthly report; MITechNews; BDSA; Grown Rogue Q2 results; Weedbuddy)

📉 Connecticut's average price per gram fell to $6.61 in August, roughly 13 percent below January, after dropping from $10.57 in January 2025 to $7.69 that December, CT Insider reports from Department of Consumer Protection and revenue data. Units moved faster than dollars all year. On October 1st, eight days out, the state retires its per-milligram potency excise and starts taxing 10.75 percent of retailer gross receipts. A percentage tax falls when the price falls. The one Connecticut is dropping did the opposite, which is how it grew into an effective rate Fine Fettle's Ben Zachs put as high as 35 percent on some products. (CT Insider; Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection)

🌱 Minnesota's Office of Cannabis Management has recorded about $150 million in adult-use sales and more than $250 million counting medical since retail opened, and the retailers say the supply still is not there. Chris Gracia, who co-owns Matchbox Farms, told KTTC the state has roughly 100 licensed cultivators and that seed to harvest runs about 90 days. Shelly Buchanan, who runs a Rochester store, described high wholesale prices and almost no choice of supplier. A cultivator licensed this summer is cutting in the fall, so the shortage Buchanan is describing today should read differently by January.
(KTTC; Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management)

Opus Consulting Partners is receiver for PharmaCann of MD on a petition by Argent Institutional Trust Company, in Montgomery County Circuit Court, No. C-15-CV-26-001937. Jacques Santucci runs Opus, with Joshua Horn of Fox Rothschild as receivership counsel. (You may remember Jacques from his recent appearance on The Hybrid podcast.) The court approved bidding procedures September 4th and qualified bids were due at 4 p.m. Monday, with an auction to follow only if two or more arrived. On offer are cultivation license, processing license and three dispensary licenses, trading as Verilife, plus equipment, leases, inventory and intellectual property. The public notice sets disposition for December 7th, and nothing closes without both the court and the Maryland Cannabis Administration, which controls the license transfers and is the slower of the two gates. The stores stay open in the ordinary course while that runs. The same company is coming apart differently in three states. Cresco Labs agreed on September 3rd to buy PharmaCann Penn and its nine Pennsylvania dispensaries for $50 million in cash and a seller note. In Massachusetts, Pharmacannis Massachusetts went to auction and the buyer still had to get the Shrewsbury Select Board to approve the license transfer. Maryland is a secured trustee walking into state court. Three instruments, three sets of approvals, and no Chapter 11 holding any of it together, because a company touching the plant cannot file for one, which is why receivership law is quietly becoming the restructuring law of this industry. (Maryland Daily Record public notice; Outlaw Report; Argent Institutional Trust Company v. PharmaCann of MD, LLC, Montgomery County Circuit Court No. C-15-CV-26-001937)

⚖️ Bryan Brant and Robert Fisher are in Ontario courts over Indigenous cannabis shops operating outside the federal and provincial licensing structure. Brant's Native Cannabis Depot in Ottawa was evicted in May 2025 after police contacted his landlord. Both men filed human rights complaints seeking $1 million each, and the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal dismissed them on jurisdiction. Fisher has a separate Superior Court proceeding over a Kingston shop, asserting constitutional and treaty rights to operate off-reserve and challenging how the Cannabis Act applies to him. Sara Mainville of JFK Law and Gabriel Maracle at Carleton both put the underlying problem on consultation, and a court can resolve an eviction and a licensing question without going anywhere near that. (Ottawa Citizen via Cannabis Culture)

Cannabis Wire reported yesterday that a committee funded by the largest U.S. cannabis companies has spent about $3.7 million since September 1st supporting a dozen House Republicans. The committee's own filings fill in the rest. America First Agriculture Action Inc., had raised $13 million, spent $1,136,491.14, every dollar of that on operating costs, reported zero in independent expenditures and held $11,863,508.86 in cash. All of the September money is arriving through 24- and 48-hour notices, which the FEC leaves out of its summary totals by design, so none of it shows up in the processed record until the quarterly report due October 15th. Trulieve, Curaleaf, Verano and Vision Management Services, a Green Thumb subsidiary, each put in $2.5 million, and American Rights and Reform PAC added $1.5 million. Charles Gantt is treasurer here and at the president's MAGA Inc. A committee that raises $13 million and sits on it for a year was waiting for something, and the thing it was waiting for was the last six weeks before a midterm. (Cannabis Wire; Federal Election Commission filings, America First Agriculture Action Inc., C00906701; Salon)

🛡️ Nine insurance trade associations signed a letter supporting the CLAIM Act, among them the American Council of Life Insurers, the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers, the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies and the Reinsurance Association of America. The bill bars federal penalties against insurers, brokers and agents who cover state-licensed businesses and obliges nobody to write a policy. Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Warren Davidson filed the House version, H.R. 10471, last week, and Sens. Kevin Cramer and Ruben Gallego have the Senate companion. Nine national associations is the broadest coalition this bill has ever had, and the floor calendar between now and January is what it was last week. (Marijuana Moment)

🗳️ Sen. Jeff Irwin, an Ann Arbor Democrat, told Marijuana Moment the cannabis industry should not take John James at his word on repealing the 24 percent wholesale tax, pointing at what James has said about cannabis before this campaign. The pledge is in James's written platform and the Michigan Cannabis Industry Association endorsed him on the strength of it last week. Jocelyn Benson still has not taken a position. Michigan sent roughly $100 million in cannabis tax revenue to 313 local and tribal jurisdictions earlier this year, and any repeal has to get past every one of them that has already written the money into a budget. (Marijuana Moment)

S10643 from Jessica Ramos and A11562 from Harry Bronson passed both chambers in June and have been waiting on Gov. Kathy Hochul ever since. She has until December 31st. The bill repeals the labor peace agreement requirement from the cannabis law and puts a three-member wage board in its place, one licensed industry representative, one from the state AFL-CIO, and a public chair the labor commissioner picks, with a first hearing due no later than March 1st, 2027 and pay-scale disclosure added to licensure applications. Judge Michael Shipp held New York's labor peace mandate preempted by the National Labor Relations Act in August and the state's appeal is at the Third Circuit. So the legislature voted in June to trade away something a federal judge has since taken, and accepted permanent wage-setting as the price. The sharpest objection comes from the people who wrote the underlying law. Liz Krueger and Crystal Peoples-Stokes, the MRTA's architects, both voted against it. The Safe and Affordable Cannabis for New York Association released an FTI Consulting survey Monday putting cannabis retail wages at $25.87 an hour against $20.47 in comparison retail, with 57 percent of respondents reporting losses and 79 percent of the unprofitable ones underwater for an average of 15 months. The association commissioned that survey while lobbying for a veto and has not published its sample size or response rate, so the wage figure is the industry's own. If she signs, the association wants the board's composition changed, its subpoena power stripped, any recommendation phased in the way the farm wage board's was, and an overtime tax credit to match. The Third Circuit is not going to rule by New Year's Eve, which means Hochul decides whether to trade the mandate away before anyone knows whether New York still has it. (New York State Senate, S10643; New York State Assembly, A11562; Times Union; MJBizDaily; Marijuana Moment)

📊 CDC posted 2025 Youth Risk Behavior Survey results showing current cannabis use among high school students at its lowest point in the survey's thirty-plus years, with ever-use also at a three-decade low. NORML's Paul Armentano puts the decline at roughly 60 percent over the past ten years. CDC's last published national figure for current use was 21.7 percent in 2019; the 2025 number lives in the agency's Explorer tool rather than in a report. Half the country legalized adult-use over the stretch those lines were falling, which does not make legalization the cause and does make the prediction wrong. The Massachusetts repeal campaign is running on that prediction. Learn more at StoptheRepealMA.com. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Youth Risk Behavior Survey; NORML)

🌏 Thailand's cabinet approved a draft cannabis bill this week that would register growers by plantation size and location, put them into crop tracing, and require any retailer renewing after its current license expires to meet medical-facility and practitioner standards. The government counts more than 10,000 shops and cultivation sites, says more than 95 percent are already in its tracking system, and has dispensary licenses expiring in stages through 2028. Public Health Minister Pattana Promphat still has to move it through parliament, where the text can change. Thailand took cannabis off its narcotics list in 2022 without a statute governing what came next, and this is year four of writing one backward. (The Business Times; Briefs.co)

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