📝 Oklahoma's DEA registration order

Built by a former cannabis regulator, Policy, Decoded helps operators read the policy terrain before it shifts beneath their feet.

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Worth noting: Adria Berry, executive director of the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, joined Erik Gundersen and me on the most recent episode of The Hybrid. Her timing now looks prescient. Today's lead story is OMMA's parent agency translating federal rescheduling into the first concrete state compliance directive in the country, and the conversation we had with Berry sits underneath that news in useful ways. Separately, my former CCC colleague Christine Baily published her own account of the May 4 SJC oral argument in Marijuana Moment this week. There's a sidebar on it below.

Oklahoma is the first state to publish a hard compliance directive, telling licensed manufacturers and distributors they must register with DEA or risk losing their state license, with an enforcement clock running through January 2027. The White House drug czar used a Newsmax interview to pull the federal framing back to "still illegal," giving the administration room to keep enforcement pressure on the channels rescheduling did not touch. SAM v. Kennedy heads to the bench on the CMS Substance Access Beneficiary Engagement Incentive, the federal pilot that lets Medicare beneficiaries access hemp-derived products under clinical oversight. Underneath all of that, the hemp beverage and luxury wellness channels keep building real-world political coverage while the November 12th cliff stays on the books.

🏛️ The drug czar holds the line
⚖️ SAM v. Kennedy under advisement
🛎️ Burns finds the hemp ban's luxury spa problem