Legalization ≠ commercialization

BACK-AND-FORTH
Stop conflating legalization and commercialization 🛑

I got into a back-and-forth on X yesterday with Dr. Bertha Madras, a researcher, former Bush and Trump appointee, and one of the voices who testified against rescheduling at the DEA hearings. Her argument: because Cultivated is a cannabis industry publication and runs cannabis industry ads, I'm a bought-and-paid-for shill. 

Anything I write on The New York Times’ inaccurate cannabis reporting, is in her view compromised by my incentives.

A few quick facts before I get to the point. Cultivated doesn't shill for specific companies and doesn't do paid stock promotion. We're a trade publication the same way American Banker reports on and takes advertising from the financial industry. If I'm captured by industry, that would come as news to the cannabis companies I've reported on aggressively over the years. 

And I'm not in this for the money, though I’d like to make more. It's cannabis, after all. I do this because I love it.

But that's not really what I want to talk about. The anti-rescheduling argument, stripped down, rests on a conflation: treating legalization and commercialization as the same thing.

In this view, the American and even Canadian cannabis industries are examples of unfettered capitalism pushing high-potency products on teenagers, and any negative study becomes proof that regulation itself has failed. That's wrong, and it's worth being precise about why.

Grand jury ties DeSantis to $10M cannabis-measure dark money scheme 

A leaked grand jury report found Florida officials misappropriated $10 million in Medicaid settlement funds, routing it through Casey DeSantis's charity into dark money groups that helped fund opposition to 2024's cannabis legalization measure. The amendment received majority support but fell short of Florida's 60% threshold. The grand jury found insufficient evidence to bring charges. Read Cultivated’s coverage from the campaign »

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Cannabis retailers paid $261.7 million in state tax revenue for the second quarter, pushing total collections since 2018 to nearly $8.4 billion. Q1 figures were also revised upward to $249.8 million on late and amended returns.

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LEVIA launched its cannabis seltzers in New Jersey dispensaries, the Massachusetts beverage brand's first expansion outside its home state. The rollout covers four flavors and follows LEVIA Drink Drops.

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CBD doesn't hit your THC high harder, it makes it hit longer

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Strong Weed Is No Reason for Prohibition | Reason

America’s cannabis-drinks market is booming—and imperilled | The Economist