🏛️ White House Schedules CBD Meetings as States Race to Redraw Hemp and Cannabis Lines

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The federal government is showing signs of life on CBD while states keep rewriting the rules around hemp beverages, cannabis taxes, and market access in real time. Colorado wants into the low-dose beverage lane it helped inspire. New Jersey is pulling hemp drinks out of convenience stores and into licensed channels before the federal sunset hits in November. Michigan operators are watching a 40 percent tax burden become a campaign prop. And Minnesota is learning that supply problems and sequencing problems do not always respond to the same fix. Across every story today, the same question keeps surfacing: who gets to set the pace of this market, and whether the people building businesses inside it will have enough stable ground to plan on.

🏛️ CBD meetings land on the White House calendar
🥤 Two states, two beverage strategies
⚖️ Workplace law meets cannabis legitimacy

The White House has scheduled four stakeholder meetings for April 1st and 2nd on FDA's still-unpublished cannabidiol compliance and enforcement policy. Movement alone does not solve the category's problems, but this issue has needed movement for years, and the machinery is finally turning. OIRA review means the file is alive and inching through real channels of government rather than sitting in political amber. Plenty can still go sideways, especially if FDA narrows the lane without offering a workable path to compliance. Progress on a stalled federal question still counts as progress. (Marijuana Moment)

The Supreme Court has still not answered whether marijuana consumers can be stripped of gun rights under federal law even when their use is legal under state law. That is not a new fight, and we have been tracking it, but the fresh coverage reminds us the contradiction remains unresolved at the highest level. In U.S. v. Hemani, the justices are wrestling with whether the ban fits the Court's current Second Amendment framework. The legal question is narrow. The governance problem is broader. Washington continues to tolerate a system where states normalize conduct that federal law still uses to trigger serious constitutional consequences. (Minnesota Lawyer)

🥤 Convenience stores now sell more THC beverages than every retail channel except liquor, which makes them impossible to dismiss as a fringe venue. They already know age-gated commerce through alcohol and tobacco. The larger question is whether regulators can separate a credible beverage lane from the broader mess that gave us the gas-station-gummies reputation in the first place. (CSP Daily News)

Colorado lawmakers are preparing a bill that would raise the hemp beverage THC cap to 10 milligrams, scrap the current CBD ratio rule, and allow sales in bars, restaurants, movie theaters, dispensaries, and other alcohol-licensed venues. Sen. Julie Gonzales and Reps. Matthew Martinez and Steven Woodrow are responding to something beyond category enthusiasm. Consumer demand has kept evolving, and Colorado has to decide whether it wants a real seat in the low-dose beverage market or prefers to let other states own the momentum. For a state that pioneered legal marijuana, this is a revealing turn. Colorado helped build the modern cannabis market and still found itself behind on one of the most commercially promising formats in the room. (The Denver Post)

New Jersey has been moving fast on hemp beverages, and the latest action landed today. Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed S3945, revising restrictions on intoxicating hemp beverage sales through November 2026. The bill extends key compliance deadlines from April 13th to May 31st, drops the requirement that liquor store licensees keep hemp beverages behind the counter, and adds a resealable packaging mandate for containers exceeding 10 milligrams of THC. The revisions amend a broader framework signed by Gov. Phil Murphy in January, which barred convenience stores, gas stations, and general retailers from selling intoxicating hemp products and channeled beverage sales through licensed liquor stores and cannabis dispensaries at a cap of 5 milligrams per serving and 10 milligrams per container. The whole category sunsets November 13th when the federal ban takes effect. New Jersey is not trying to erase the hemp beverage market. It is pulling it out of open retail and placing it inside channels that already manage age-gated commerce and compliance expectations. The tradeoff is just as deliberate. Order and control go up, but access narrows, and the growth of the category will now run through a smaller set of licensed doors. (News 12 New Jersey)

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has clearly not let this go. His interim charge directs the Senate Health and Human Services Committee to study THC through the language of psychosis, emergency detentions, health care costs, and criminal justice burdens, after his earlier push fell short. House Speaker Dustin Burrows sent the Public Health Committee in a different direction, telling it to monitor implementation of the state's ibogaine clinical-trial law, a track former Gov. Rick Perry has publicly supported. That split says plenty. Texas wants to hit the next session ready for a renewed hemp fight while still embracing a tightly managed medical research lane it finds more politically comfortable. (Marijuana Moment)

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🧠 A new NBER paper links dispensary openings to lower suicide rates among some older adults, adding useful evidence to the access conversation. Nobody serious is arguing cannabis is a universal answer to systemic mental health problems. Research like this still matters because anything that may help some people deserves closer study, especially when the policy debate is often louder than the data. (AZ Marijuana; NBER)

Genesee County Sheriff and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Swanson has promised to repeal the 24 percent wholesale cannabis tax tied to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's road funding plan, calling it "not fair and equitable" to an industry that provides goods, services, and jobs for the state. The tax, which took effect January 1st, sits on top of Michigan's existing 10 percent excise tax and 6 percent sales tax, pushing the combined burden to 40 percent. January dispensary sales fell 8.3 percent year over year to $226.8 million, the smallest total for that calendar month since 2023, even as adult-use flower volume hit its highest January mark ever on an average price near $59 per ounce. Michigan Cannabis Industry Association Executive Director Robin Schneider praised Swanson's opposition, telling reporters that businesses were already operating payroll to payroll before the new tax landed and that mass layoffs have followed. A bipartisan group of eight senators has already filed SB 810 to repeal the tax outright. Lower taxes are usually good politics. Good governing is harder. The state has already grown attached to the revenue, which means any repeal pitch has to answer the budget question, not just the applause line. Politicians like the money, candidates like the promise of relief, and operators are left wondering which version of the argument survives after Election Day. (Michigan Advance)

Minnesota lawmakers are considering changes that would make it easier to blend medical, adult-use, and hemp operations, partly to boost cultivation and ease supply shortages. The state's Office of Cannabis Management estimates the market could support up to 2 million square feet of cannabis canopy, but current production sits around 400,000 square feet, with medical operators holding at least 30 percent of that footprint. That helps explain why some lawmakers want more flexibility and more production. It also explains why newer entrants and tribal stakeholders are uneasy. Minny Grown owner Zach Rohr said businesses have already invested based on the structure Minnesota has been building for the last year and a half. Sen. Nick Frentz warned that constant revisions send a message the rules may keep changing year after year. Prairie Island Indian Community representative Blake Johnson made the same point from a market-formation angle, arguing the originally envisioned system needs time to grow roots before lawmakers tilt the field again. Minnesota has a real supply problem, but it also has a sequencing problem, and those are not always solved by speeding up the rewrite. (FOX 9)

Florida officials say nearly 1,600 signatures tied to a marijuana legalization petition were flagged as fraudulent, with a paid circulator at the center of the investigation and FDLE now involved. Florida has done everything it can to make this path harder, and every process failure gives opponents another excuse to keep voters from reaching the merits. That serves elected officials just fine. It also preserves a market structure favoring the largest operators with the resources to survive delay, litigation, and procedural friction. When a state keeps constraining the public's chance to vote, the fight stops being about marijuana policy alone and becomes a test of who gets to decide whether the question may be asked at all. (CBS12)

Medical cannabis patients, dispensary owners, growers, and Rep. Lee Yancey rallied at the Mississippi Capitol to push lawmakers to override Gov. Tate Reeves' veto of House Bills 1152 and 895. HB 1152 would create a right-to-try pathway allowing a treating provider to petition the Mississippi State Department of Health for patient access even when a condition is not on the approved list. HB 895 would remove certain THC potency limits, extend caregiver cards to two years, and end the automatic six-month follow-up requirement. The politics are straightforward. Mississippi built a medical program, then kept arguing with itself about whether patients should be allowed to use it in a more practical way. Reeves' veto keeps that tension alive by favoring caution after the Legislature had already shown willingness to loosen some of the program's rougher edges. A veto override requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers, so this is less a protest story than a test of whether lawmakers are willing to defend the policy choices they already made when the governor pushes back. (WLBT)

🎓 The University of New England launched a suite of online cannabis career certificates this spring through a partnership with Green Flower, covering cultivation, retail, compliance, and medical applications. They join programs at the University of Arizona, University of San Diego, Baker College, and others building workforce pipelines for an industry that now supports over 425,000 full-time jobs nationally. When colleges start treating cannabis like a credentialed career track rather than a novelty elective, the category starts to look more durable to the institutions that shape legitimacy. (MJBizDaily)

A federal judge threw out a challenge to Maryland's hemp and cannabis rules, giving state officials a procedural win as they try to draw a firmer line between licensed cannabis commerce and intoxicating hemp sales. Wins on immunity and posture help regulators hold the field while the larger policy fight continues. That has real value for rulemaking stability. It also leaves operators with a fair frustration, because regulated businesses need a credible path to challenge rules they believe overreach or misfire. Maryland may have strengthened its hand, but the durability of that framework still depends on whether the state can pair enforcement confidence with rules that feel defensible on the ground. (Law360)

Mobile is trying to pass an ordinance so it can resume approving consumable hemp businesses after a dispute with the Alabama ABC Board over who holds local approval power. City Attorney Ricardo Woods said the city believed it had already delegated that authority during a 90-day transition period, while Mayor Spiro Cheriogotis pointed to stalled applicants and forgone tax revenue. The bottleneck traces back to HB 445, signed by Gov. Kay Ivey and effective January 1, 2026, which shifted all consumable hemp oversight to the ABC Board, banned smokable products, and created a new licensing and excise tax regime. As of early March, only eight retailers statewide had secured the new hemp license, while cities like Mobile, Auburn, and Opelika are still writing the local ordinances ABC requires before it will finalize approvals. This is the unglamorous side of policy, but it matters. Markets do not move because a statute exists on paper. They move when governments write the handoffs clearly enough for somebody to say yes. (1819 News)

Arkansas officials teamed up with the DEA to seize thousands of illegal cannabinoid, nicotine, and tobacco products from 28 shops. That deserves watching for more than one reason. It raises the immediate enforcement risk for retailers still betting on loose boundaries, and it puts DEA in the middle of another cannabinoid enforcement story while marijuana rescheduling remains unresolved. Those are separate legal tracks, but they live in the same federal atmosphere. A government still debating marijuana's medical status is also showing up in state-backed retail crackdowns. That tension is worth keeping an eye on. (Ganjapreneur)

Bill Paschall of the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association said the state's eight licensed cultivators are producing into a market that cannot absorb the output. Arkansas had roughly 114,878 active medical marijuana cards as of late March, and the state caps cultivation licenses at eight and dispensary licenses at 40. That is a useful reminder that oversupply stories are often growing-pain stories too. Arkansas does not look like a market in collapse. It looks like a market whose production base matured faster than patient growth in a system that bars home cultivation and requires every gram to move through licensed retail. If the state wants to relieve the pressure, it may need to widen qualifying conditions, loosen friction around cards, or accept that competition will keep squeezing margins until weaker positions give way. (Arkansas Business)

The EEOC sued Ascend Wellness Holdings over alleged sexual harassment at its Collinsville, Illinois facility, claiming female employees faced unwanted touching, sexual comments, advances, and requests for sexual relations, and that complaints to human resources failed to stop the conduct. The agency says the problem dates to at least February 2021 and involved the facility manager, which matters because misconduct from line staff is one problem and misconduct tied to site leadership is a deeper management failure. According to the EEOC, at least one employee was forced to resign because the environment became intolerable. The case was filed in the Southern District of Illinois after pre-litigation conciliation failed. This is a labor and governance story as much as a cannabis story. As the industry keeps pressing for mainstream legitimacy, basic employment compliance remains part of the test. Regulators and courts will have little patience for operators that want the benefits of normalization without the discipline that comes with it. (EEOC)