DEA judge freezes rescheduling hearing 🧊

October 22 » The Highrise → Check out the second in our NYC series and apply to attend. Event details coming!
November 12 » Pot Policy and Politics → The second installation of the Midwest Cannabis Forum, this time in St. Louis. Ticket discounts through October 12.
COMING EVENTS → Las Vegas & Buffalo

Stay tuned for more Fall 2026 events coming soon!

What happened: The DEA paused its hearing on moving all cannabis to Schedule III.

Opponents, including the drug-testing group NDASA, want the record to include a new report on federal drug scheduling from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress's nonpartisan watchdog.

What they're saying: DEA lacks "policies or procedures regarding how its staff are to conduct evaluations or schedule substances," the GAO found.

Why it matters: Testimony wrapped in July, and a recommendation to the DEA administrator was the only step left. If the report gets in, the judge will be weighing a Schedule III proposal that a federal watchdog says DEA and FDA reached without any written policies or procedures.

Medical cannabis moved to Schedule III in April, but recreational operators are still waiting. Opponents seem to be attacking the process rather than cannabis itself. 

The news sent the AdvisorShares Pure Cannabis ETF $MSOS plunging in after hours trading.

What's next: DEA must tell the judge by October 13 whether the record should be reopened. Reopening means more briefing and more delay.

It’s cannabis — nothing’s ever easy.

-JB

“What I experienced was broken policy, regulatory dysfunction, and a state congratulating itself while people like me absorbed the cost of its “equity” experiment,” Dr. Alyza (Dr. Beast) Brevard-Rodriguez, a veteran and former New Jersey social equity cannabis license-holder writes on her Substack about how the cannabis license she thought could make her future ended up in a trail of lawsuits, disputes, and a business that never panned out.

Of course, this is only one person’s view. But the whole piece is worth a read if you want to understand the broken promises of so many state social equity cannabis programs.

I sent X into a bit of a tizzy with this tweet (Xeet?) showing 60 mg THC drinks on a bodega shelf in NYC.

I stand by it. Extra-strength THC drinks don't belong next to coconut water and kombucha.

I've said it on our livestream, and I'll say it again here. All it takes is one teenager accidentally drinking one of these and having a panic attack, and you've got a full news cycle castigating the cannabis industry. Any responsible seller should want to avoid that coverage. That's the risk.

So should bodegas be allowed to sell THC drinks? Absolutely. But those drinks should be regulated.

Potency should be capped per serving, because 60 mg is a lot of THC no matter who's drinking it. And cashiers should check IDs. Bodegas already sell beer and wine. They should be able to sell 5 to 10 mg THC drinks the same way. They don't put Everclear in the milk aisle.

That raises another question: who gets to sell the high-potency stuff?

My proposal is to keep it behind dispensary counters, so regular consumers and connoisseurs can still buy what they want legally. In exchange, the city should work with the state to allow low-dose THC drinks anywhere alcohol is sold. Including bars, restaurants, and Madison Square Garden.

Is that realistic this year? Probably not. Is it the ideal way to build a cannabis regulatory system from scratch? No.

But it's workable, and it gives something to every stakeholder: consumers, licensed dispensaries, and THC drink sellers. That's how you build alignment heading into a critical stretch for cannabis regulation.

-JB

Gotham founder and CEO Joanne Wilson joined Jay and Jeremy on Cultivated Live to discuss the upcoming Highrise event on October 22, and why bringing the industry together in a room with regulators is so crucial for the future of cannabis. We’re thrilled to partner with Joanne and the Gotham team and we’re rolling out our slate of speakers. See you there! 

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New York boasts 498 active brands. Massachusetts has 492. But here's the counterintuitive truth: Massachusetts is hyper-competitive while New York still has room to breathe.

Per capita, Massachusetts has nearly triple the brand density of New York. New Jersey — the most densely populated state in America — is compressing 472 brands into a compact footprint. Connecticut's regulatory caps keep it artificially limited at 125. And Vermont? A state of 647,000 people supports 239 brands — the highest per-capita diversity in the region.

But while core categories (flower, pre-rolls, vapes) are saturated everywhere, massive whitespace exists in beverages, topicals, and tinctures. Most states have fewer than 20 beverage brands. Topicals barely exist in single digits.

For brands planning multistate expansion, this data isn't just about counting competitors. It's about finding where the real gaps are.

See the full Northeast brand density breakdown on Lit Alerts »

John Kagia, executive director of New York's Office of Cannabis Management, told Pennsylvania lawmakers to minimize the lag between legalization and dispensary openings to head off a surge in illicit sales, a lesson New York learned firsthand. Legalization in Pennsylvania likely hinges on Democrats flipping three state Senate seats in November, and Kagia also cautioned against pinning the case on tax revenue as prices tumble.

Connecticut regulators confirmed that caregivers from other states can buy cannabis for the out-of-state patient they're responsible for. They'll need a government-issued photo ID, their qualifying credential and a completed registration form.

Nearly 9% of Americans 65 and older used cannabis in the past year, climbing from 7.2% in 2021 to 10.5% in 2024, and 11.4% of them met DSM-5 criteria for cannabis use disorder, according to a new study in Addiction. Three-quarters of those cases were mild, driven mostly by time spent getting and using cannabis and by craving, criteria that may say more about retirees' free time than about addiction.

Registered medical cannabis patients grew more than fivefold, from about 747,000 in 2016 to roughly 3.9 million in 2024, but enrollment has flattened since 2022 as more states legalized recreational sales, University of Michigan researchers reported in Annals of Internal Medicine. Chronic pain was the most common qualifying condition, at 65% of patient-reported conditions, and the number of clinicians authorized to recommend cannabis rose from about 31,000 in 2020 to nearly 36,000 in 2024.

If you care about legal cannabis, stop sitting this one out | GreenState

Opinion | To get cannabis right, regulate it. Don’t repeal it. | Minnesota Star Tribune

All Five Boroughs Sold Less Weed on Knicks Nights | New York 420 Week