⚖️ SAM Sues to Kill Medicare's Hemp Pilot on Eve of Launch

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SAM is in federal court trying to kill a Medicare hemp pilot that would expand the very medical access the organization claims to protect. Texas banned smokable hemp yesterday through agency rulemaking rather than legislation, and the legal challenges are already lining up. Idaho lawmakers are trying to strip voters of the power to decide cannabis policy through the ballot. New Jersey is calibrating hemp beverage rules on the fly while the federal definition clock ticks toward November. And across the country, from Nantucket to Des Moines, the distance between what the law permits and what local authorities will tolerate keeps producing collisions. Today's edition tracks a dozen of them.

⚖️ SAM sues to block Medicare hemp pilot
🚬 Texas smokable ban takes effect today
🥤 New Jersey opens multi-serving hemp drinks

Smart Approaches to Marijuana and ten allied organizations sued CMS in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday, seeking an emergency order to block the agency's hemp-derived CBD coverage pilot before it launches April 1st. The lawsuit names CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as defendants and argues the agency bypassed the Administrative Procedure Act, skipped notice-and-comment rulemaking, and contradicted its own recent determination that cannabis products were ineligible for supplemental Medicare coverage. Kevin Sabet's SAM has spent years and millions of dollars fighting adult-use legalization in states across the country, consistently arguing that cannabis reform threatens medical programs and patient safety. Now the same organization is suing to block a federal program that would expand medical access to cannabinoid products for Medicare beneficiaries. That contradiction deserves a close read. SAM is well funded, legally sophisticated, and has a track record of slowing reform through litigation. This is not a symbolic filing. Meanwhile, brands are already positioning for pilot eligibility before the case is even briefed, and CMS has signaled it will refine the model as legal developments unfold. The commercial assumptions are running ahead of the legal question, which is exactly the dynamic SAM wants a judge to freeze in place. (Marijuana Moment)

Governor Sherrill signed legislation last week removing previous THC potency limits on intoxicating hemp beverages and setting a maximum container volume of 750 milliliters, a move that tracks the spirits model in alcohol. That is a meaningful shift from the earlier framework, which capped beverages at 5 milligrams per serving and 10 milligrams per container. For context, 10 milligrams per container is still relatively liberal compared to what other states allow, and multi-serving formats open a distribution channel that looks a lot more like wine and spirits than it does like single-dose wellness shots. Hemp operators across the country are getting a crash course in civics between the state-by-state scramble and DC politics. New Jersey is further along than most in figuring out how to write rules that carry force without making the category unworkable, but the question nobody has answered yet is whether there is sufficient public education to match the pace of regulatory change. The state is still tightening the retail lane and pushing these drinks out of general stores, and ABC licensees can sell until the federal definition kicks in on November 13th. Whether multi-serving hemp beverages become the bridge too far that tests national tolerance for these products remains an open question. (Politico Pro)

🌿 The new Latino Cannabis Alliance launched today with Jes Gonzalez as president and Jason Ortiz as vice president, both well-respected national voices who have been doing this work across policy, equity, and coalition-building long before the org chart existed. The message is one the industry still has not fully answered: communities that helped carry reform want a meaningful share of policy and capital power. The next phase of cannabis politics will turn less on broad legalization rhetoric and more on who is organized enough to shape the rooms where rules, money, and access get decided. The good news for the Alliance? Jes and Jason are well organized. (High Times; Marijuana Moment; Filter)

Texas's smokable THC restrictions took effect yesterday under new DSHS rules tied to Governor Abbott's Executive Order GA-56, and the immediate question is whether the state has an enforcement plan strong enough to support the line it just drew. By shifting to a total THC calculation that includes THCA, Texas has effectively banned smokable flower and extracts while leaving beverages, edibles, tinctures, and topicals on shelves. Possession remains legal. Nearby states still offer consumers legal alternatives. Demand rarely vanishes on schedule. It moves. Some buyers will cross state lines, some will test shipping gray zones, and some will drift back to illicit channels that do not check IDs or answer to inspectors. The new licensing fees alone tell a story: $5,000 per retail location and $10,000 per manufacturer, up from $150 and $250 respectively. The Texas Hemp Business Council is already preparing a legal challenge, arguing DSHS exceeded its authority by redefining THC measurement through rulemaking rather than legislation. And this is before the next legislative session, where the question of regulate-or-ban will land again with the same unresolved politics that produced Abbott's veto of SB 3. Texas is also home to the supply chain infrastructure that serves other states' hemp markets, so manufacturers with multistate operations are making long-term business decisions right now about where to invest, where to consolidate, and where to leave. (Houston Chronicle)

🌿 Texas banned the joint but kept the bottle. Smokable hemp is off shelves while beverages, edibles, and other formats remain legal under the new rules. Format-specific prohibition has a long history, and most of it ends the same way: consumers find the next door. (Dallas Express)

The Idaho Senate has passed a resolution urging voters not to sign petitions for the Idaho Medical Cannabis Act, and the timing is the story. Advocates are trying to qualify a medical measure for the November 2026 ballot while lawmakers are also advancing a constitutional amendment that would keep marijuana legalization power inside the legislature. That is a two-front campaign against both the substance of reform and the process that might deliver it. The political class in Idaho is treating ballot access itself as the problem, which tells you public sentiment is getting harder to ignore. This fight now reaches past cannabis and into the question of who gets the final word when lawmakers refuse to move. (Marijuana Moment)

Bennett "Storm" Nolan's River Valley Relief Cultivation is still producing medical marijuana in Fort Smith even after Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herbert Wright found the license was granted unlawfully. The facility sits within 3,000 feet of the Sebastian County Juvenile Detention Center, violating Amendment 98's distance requirements, and Nolan dissolved the original holding company before receiving the license in a second round of applications. The judge was blunt about it, writing that the Medical Marijuana Commission made repeated accommodations for Nolan despite protests raised from the beginning of the application process. Nolan has appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court and says he will keep operating as long as the license is technically in hand. The question is where this ends. Arkansas has only eight cultivator licenses. The state is already under a restraining order barring the commission from issuing new dispensary licenses because of a separate lawsuit challenging the fairness of the application process. In a market this tightly capped, one contested license does not stay an isolated problem. It becomes the reference point for every future applicant, every investor doing due diligence, and every competitor wondering whether the rules apply evenly. Either the Supreme Court resolves this cleanly or the uncertainty keeps compounding. (Arkansas Business)

🔬 Federal cannabis research is getting more structured and more public-facing. The NIH-linked Resource Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research will host its first stakeholder meeting in May with NIH, FDA, and DEA in the mix, a quiet sign that cannabis science is moving deeper into formal standards, methods, and institutional process. (Cannabis Wire; R3CR)

Hawaii senators are again urging state officials to seek a DEA exemption so the state's medical cannabis program can operate without federal interference. Lawmakers are pressing a question the executive branch has been able to avoid for years: if state leaders believe patients remain exposed in employment, housing, firearms, hospice care, and inter-island access, when do they stop describing the contradiction and start challenging it? The legislature made a similar request in 2021 and got little movement. That history gives this latest push more edge. Hawaii is forcing a decision about whether support for medical cannabis means managing the gray zone or trying to break it open. (Marijuana Moment)

Nantucket has ordered ACK Natural to stop delivering cannabis, creating a fresh clash between municipal authority and the state's adult-use framework. Town officials are relying on a 2017 bylaw that bars consumer delivery even though the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission's zoning tracker lists cannabis delivery as permitted on the island. ACK Natural has paused the service and argues the town's position cannot stand if it conflicts with state law. The timing matters. Summer is coming, and Nantucket's population swells from roughly 14,000 year-round residents to over 50,000. If this is going to get worked out, it needs to happen before tourism dominates the island and access questions get louder. Cities and towns serving as roadblocks is an impractical way to manage a statewide access issue, but Massachusetts still has its NIMBY streak and its Puritan past, and both show up reliably when cannabis tries to move into a new corner of the Commonwealth. (Nantucket Current)

⚠️ New Jersey's accidental-edibles problem still has not settled down. Poison-center and hospital data continue to show young children getting into cannabis gummies and other THC products, and expect to see more of these stories. SAM and its allies will amplify every pediatric incident regardless of whether the product came from the legal market, was illicitly manufactured, or was simply stored carelessly by an adult. The source rarely makes it into the headline. The legal market takes the hit every time. That is the playbook, and it is what they will bring to your state's voters. (NJ.com)

New Jersey regulators fined Verano $20,500 over underweight pre-rolls and compliance failures, then gave Curaleaf another short extension while litigation over its labor peace agreement remains unresolved. Taken together, those decisions offer a clean snapshot of the CRC's posture. The commission will punish straightforward consumer-facing failures. It is still improvising when a major operator's license status gets tied up in a larger legal dispute. That creates an uneven kind of finality for the market. Enforcement is active, though the path to resolution gets murkier when the company is large and the issue carries broader operational consequences. (Heady NJ)

Minnesota has given hemp businesses another year to use out-of-state testing labs, extending the arrangement through May 31, 2027. On paper, that looks like a technical fix. In practice, it is an admission that the state still lacks enough in-state lab capacity to support the market it is trying to stand up. The timing matters with low-potency hemp edible license applications opening April 1st and regulators openly acknowledging a supply bottleneck. Rollouts often rise or fall on unglamorous infrastructure. Legislatures tend to notice that later than everyone else. (Ganjapreneur)

Another Des Moines hemp retailer has shut its doors, and the shutdown says something about the lane Iowa has chosen. Unkl Ruckus's Smoking Emporium joins Despensary in the growing list of businesses that say Iowa's THC limits left them without enough room to build a durable operation. Iowa caps consumable hemp at 4 milligrams per serving and 10 milligrams per container, limits that already sit well below what most consumers in neighboring states can buy legally. And the federal definition taking effect in November drops the ceiling to 0.4 milligrams per container, which would wipe out virtually every product currently on Iowa shelves. The state has two licensed medical cannabis manufacturers, no home cultivation, no flower sales, and a 4.5-gram THC purchase cap per 90-day period. That is not a market designed to absorb displaced demand. Markets built this tightly do not automatically get safer. They often get thinner, more brittle, and in some cases hand pricing power right back to the licensed operators and illicit sellers who remain. (Des Moines Register)

🌿 Nike is dropping a "Hemp Pack" Dunk Low, because nothing says mainstreaming quite like putting cannabis culture on a $120 sneaker. No policy lever here. Just another sign that hemp's cultural footprint keeps expanding whether regulators are ready for it or not. (Sneaker News)

🌿 Cannabis Business Times released its seventh annual "Best Cannabis Companies to Work For" rankings today. Distru, the Oakland-based ERP platform, took the top spot overall, while Velvet Cannabis made the list for a sixth consecutive year and Kansas City Cannabis Co. earned its fourth. In an industry where retail turnover has topped 59 percent, the companies building real retention cultures are the ones quietly separating from the field. (Cannabis Business Times) Editors Note: THC Group only has one employee, so we didn’t otherwise qualify for consideration.