“The program’s already live, even though it’s still Schedule I in Alabama.”

By Anna Barrett, Alabama Reflector

Alabama’s public health officials on Thursday withdrew their objection to the federal rescheduling of marijuana, a move officials characterized as procedural, following a July public hearing.

The governing body of the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) in May voted to delay the rescheduling so that officials could have more time to determine how to implement it, but noted that they “fully intended” to reschedule the drug.

State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said Thursday morning that he did not see any issues with the change, and the public comments did not reflect the impact of rescheduling but rather marijuana itself.

“I would say there are a lot of really passionate people that had a lot of really strong feelings about it, and I don’t want to minimize that or oversimplify that,” Harris said. “The comments were people who really support medical marijuana or who really don’t support medical marijuana. The comments weren’t really about what we were trying to get at, which [was] ‘what are the consequences of rescheduling.’”

Conservative activists at the public hearing said the rescheduling would “harm children” and “worsen Alabama’s mental health crisis.” The only proponent of rescheduling at the public hearing said not doing so would instill distrust between patients and doctors.

Harris said ADPH’s legal team resolved all of the department’s concerns, like the impact to pharmacies and those seeking the medication.

In April, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) moved marijuana from Schedule I—the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of drugs with the greatest potential for abuse and least legitimate use—to Schedule III, with drugs considered to have a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The order followed an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in December instructing the DOJ to move towards rescheduling.

Former President Joe Biden instructed DOJ to reschedule the drug in 2024, but hearings on the move were canceled in early 2025.

The federal order applies to state-licensed medical marijuana products in the states that allow medicinal use of the drug. The move means those businesses can deduct business expenses from their federal taxes and researchers have access to state-legal products. As a Schedule I drug, only cannabis grown in a federally approved facility could be studied, severely limiting the supply available to researchers.

Alabama’s medical cannabis program was created by the Legislature in 2021. Three dispensaries are open in the state, with seven more to open within the next few months. At the program’s full capacity, there will be nearly 40 dispensaries.

Harris said the rescheduling would not impact the state’s medical cannabis program.

“The program’s already live, even though it’s still Schedule I in Alabama. The reason is, the statute was written essentially to decriminalize it for people who are authorized to have it,” he said.

The committee unanimously withdrew its objection.

This story was first published by Alabama Reflector.

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A Diamond District jeweler took one of weed culture’s most temporary objects and tried to make it permanent. The finished piece looks like a luxury object. Getting there was not.

Reported with Cesar Soriano

Ahead of 4/20 last year, a bag of cannabis showed up at a Diamond District jewelry shop, and according to the crew, none of it got smoked. It wasn’t a gift for the staff. It was raw material. “We didn’t smoke any of it, of course,” said Angel, a jeweler on the TraxNYC floor. “It was for production.” The shop had never tried what it was about to: taking a real cannabis nug and turning it into solid gold.

This was not a gold-plated flower or a nug sealed inside a shell. The flower itself became the model, packed in plaster, burned out with heat, then replaced by molten metal that hardened inside the cavity it left behind. The weed disappeared. The gold kept the form, down to the texture.

For Maksud “Trax” Agadjani, who founded TraxNYC as a teenager in the early 2000s and has since made custom pieces for a long list of rappers and athletes, appeared in Uncut Gems and, this past January, went viral for a Diamond District brawl that ended with two rival jewelers under arrest, the pull was simple. “The fact that you could take a real flower and turn it into gold is amazing,” he said. He has a simpler word for the reaction it got: magic. “What catches people’s attention is magic,” he said.

The idea came from Cesar Soriano, who publishes under the name T.H.Caeczar and brought the concept to TraxNYC. He’d seen cannabis jewelry before, and credits two makers who sell under the handles @RasBoss_ and @BlingYourBud with getting there first. Their pieces relied on thin plating over a real flower, which could wear down and need refinishing. Soriano wanted the shape of the flower reproduced in solid metal instead, with no maintenance and nothing to wear off. He supplied the flower, from crosses he bred himself. He estimates he dropped off about three ounces, New York’s legal possession limit, though Angel remembered a bigger bag. Soriano stayed involved as the shop worked through the early failures, and later recorded the conversations that form the reporting backbone of this story.

The finished piece looks ready for a luxury showroom. Making it was considerably messier.

Soriano sat down with the TraxNYC crew to walk back through what happened, and High Times reviewed those recorded interviews. Nobody in them pretends the thing came easy. “Honestly, it wasn’t an easy process,” Angel said. “It took us, well, like two to three months.” They were chasing a 4/20 deadline and working blind. “That’s the first time I ever had something like that brought up to me,” he said.

Then the casts started popping and breaking apart. “I think the first five that we made kept popping on us,” Angel said. Once the nugs went into the metal, they came apart. Danny, the designer who took on the casting, watched most of the first run fail. “The first casting, when it was like ten pieces, only like three came out good,” he said. “It was like unique, one-of-a-kind shit really.”

The trouble was density. A nug packed too loose left air pockets, and air pockets wreck a cast. Most attempts failed before the team found flowers dense enough to cast clean. “It was super hazardous,” Angel said of the failures. When one finally held, he said, “it was like a caveman discovering fire.” Even then the yield was brutal: of four good candidates, he said, only two came out the way they wanted.

Moisture turned out to matter too, which answered the question that filled the comments once the shop posted video of the process: why use old weed? Because fresh flower doesn’t cast. Danny said his research pointed the other way from intuition. Drier, staler flower holds its shape in the mold. Wet flower ruins it.

The basic method was familiar to any jeweler. The material going into the mold was not. Instead of a carved wax model, the team used the actual flower. “The piece is dipped in plaster, the plaster hardens, and then you pour the molten metal,” Agadjani said. “It burns out the flower. It vaporizes it and takes its place with gold.” Anyone hoping a little of the plant survives inside is misreading the temperature. “If you’re burning it with a lighter, how do you expect it to be there after melting it with gold?” he said.

“This is way cooler. This has never been done before,” Agadjani said, and he’ll go further, calling it a first in human history. What the interviews establish is narrower. Casting real organic material into metal is an established technique, and Danny said he borrowed the approach from a casting contact who does it with real leaves, usually in brass. Nobody at TraxNYC had attempted it with cannabis before.

The only part harder than turning a flower into gold is agreeing on what happened next. Soriano and Danny described the finish as PVD, a coating they said was intended to add durability and preserve the color. Danny was loose on the specifics. “What it stands for I don’t know,” he said, “but it’s basically just like another coating on top.” Agadjani wasn’t sure it was on the piece at all. “I don’t remember using PVD on this piece, to be honest,” he said. “This should have been electroplated.” The interviews never resolve which finish the sold pieces actually got.

[[ IMAGE: Angel_XRF_Gun_Nug.JPG ]]
Caption: Angel scans the prototype with the shop’s XRF gun, under TraxNYC’s YouTube plaques. Photo by Cesar Soriano.
Alt: A TraxNYC jeweler scanning the gold cannabis pendant with an XRF gun

The metal, at least, is not in dispute. During the interview, Angel put Soriano’s own prototype under the shop’s XRF gun, which reads alloy content and, he noted, had never been pointed at the piece before. It came back at 10.81 karat, which Angel rounded to 11: a shade above the 10-karat core the prototype was built as, under a 22-karat dip. The screen broke out the rest of the alloy too, 39% copper, 10% silver and 5% zinc. The pieces TraxNYC sold were made in 18-karat gold, Angel said, with green diamonds set in the bail. A video the shop posted to Instagram is what turned the experiment into orders. Angel estimated it drew around three million views in its first day and several million since. The first sold about two weeks after it went up. The last went to a longtime client.

At least one buyer walked in with more than looks in mind. Jeff, who found the nug in the TraxNYC display window, knew on sight. “My response was like our old friend Wayne Campbell from Wayne’s World,” he said. “She will be mine. Oh yes, she will be mine.” Holding it sealed it. “Wow, that’s definitely heavy,” he remembered thinking. “It’s like a daddy falling in love with his newborn the first time he holds him.”

For Jeff, the piece is less about showing off than marking what cannabis has meant in his life. “This piece for me is a trophy piece,” he said. “Over the years I’ve benefited in so many ways from the power of this plant, so now this piece is something to never let me forget that.” He sees the gold itself as part of the value too. “This particular one weighs out to exactly 1.5 ounces of gold bullion locked into the piece,” he said, “so for me it sort of doubles as an investment.” The price of a custom one-of-one piece reflects the design and labor as much as the metal, but the gold is real, and that permanence is the whole point for him.

Asked what he’d make next with no budget limits, Agadjani went somewhere stranger. “You could make a miniature grow farm where you could put a seed in, the pendant grows the bud and you grow it in there,” he said. It isn’t a production plan. It does say something about where a shop’s head goes after weeks of blowing up gold nugs to find out what was possible.

Cannabis flower is made to disappear. It gets broken apart, burned and gone by the end of the night. This one went too. What survived was the shape it left behind, fixed in a metal built to outlast everyone who handled it.

Editor’s note: Cesar Soriano (T.H.Caeczar) originated the jewelry project with TraxNYC, conducted the interviews and took the photographs used in this story, and has a commercial interest in the design. TraxNYC sells the pieces commercially. High Times owner Josh Kesselman saw the piece at TraxNYC before this story was pitched, and has appeared wearing it in TraxNYC’s own social media. High Times reviewed the interview recordings and written responses and verified the quotations before publication.

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Legalizing marijuana is a “no-brainer” move to help ward off a “fiscal time bomb” in Iowa that could otherwise lead to cuts in funding for education and public safety in the state, the Democratic candidate for governor says.

“I think we should treat it the way we treat alcohol. That seems like a no-brainer to me, right?” Rob Sand, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, said at a town hall event in Dallas County on Wednesday in response to a question from a voter who said Iowa is “losing money” to other states that have legalized cannabis.

“Alcohol is a dangerous drug. You shouldn’t abuse it. Also, we’re not going to throw you in prison for having a beer,” Sand said. “Why is it any different for marijuana? It is a dangerous drug. You shouldn’t abuse it. We shouldn’t be throwing people in prison just for using it.”

The Democratic candidate said that “when I say treat it like alcohol, I literally mean treat it like alcohol.”

He then went through a list of common objections to cannabis legalization and explained how he would respond to them.

“So when I hear people say, ‘Well, I don’t want to smell it.’ Same. You shouldn’t be allowed to smoke it in public. Simple rule: you can’t drink alcohol in public, right?

People say, ‘Well, I’m worried about kids. I’ve heard cases in Colorado where they got colorful gummies, and the kids find them, and then the kids get sick.’ I agree. You shouldn’t be able to market it to children. You shouldn’t be able to use colorful designs on your packages. And if you’re doing gummies, they can look like an eraser, right? They don’t need to be red and blue and green and look like gummy bears.

People say, ‘Well, I don’t know, Rob. It’s a lot stronger than the stuff that I was smoking in the 70s.’ To which I say, ‘I wasn’t there. Whatever you say, I believe you.’ I don’t have a basis for comparison then or now. I actually haven’t used it. But how do we handle that with alcohol? When you buy a beer, you can see what the alcohol content is on the beer, right? We treat hard liquor differently, but you can see when you buy hard liquor what the content is on that, and that way you know what you’re getting into. We can do that with marijuana as well.”

Sand, who is currently Iowa’s state auditor, said the state currently has a budget surplus, but that annual spending is overtaking revenue.

“I call this a fiscal time bomb. Our budget is nine and a half billion,” he said. “Imagine the cuts to public education and to public safety if we don’t take action to fix this.”

“So we need to do something now,” he said, arguing that legalizing marijuana is “one of the things that we should do.”

“We would have hundreds of millions of dollars every single year if we just treat marijuana the way we treat alcohol,” Sand said, adding that the thinks the state should also put an income limit on school vouchers and make data centers pay fair taxes.

“All three of those would save us hundreds of millions of dollars a year alone,” he said. “So if we do all three of them, we do them right away, all of a sudden, our time horizon on how long that surplus is going to last gets a lot longer, and we can think about other ways to help address that and get back to having a balanced budget.”

Sand also spoke about his support for legalizing marijuana at an earlier event last month, saying that he thinks cannabis should be legalized and treated like alcohol, even if he thinks it’s “dangerous.”

“Marijuana is a dangerous drug,” he said at the time. “You shouldn’t abuse it, but we also shouldn’t throw people in prison just for using it. We should treat it the way we treat alcohol. Alcohol is a dangerous drug. You shouldn’t abuse it, but we don’t throw you in prison just for having a beer when you get home.”

The Democratic gubernatorial candidate said that Iowa is “spending perfectly good tax dollars to lock people up” for marijuana while people who want to use it are driving across the border to purchase it in other states.

“They’re spending their money in Illinois, or they’re spending it in Missouri. And then they’re driving back without their money,” Sand said. “The money stays there, and the tax dollars stay there.”

Republican gubernatorial nominee Zach Lahn reportedly opposes legalizing cannabis but doesn’t appear to have spoken extensively about the issue.

Josh Turek, the Democratic nominee in a U.S. Senate race, said this month that cannabis’s longtime restrictive Schedule I status is “ridiculous.” Marijuana “should be legalized and regulated, and let’s tax it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Iowa regulators are circulating proposed rules changes to remove the residency requirement for patients in the state’s medical cannabis program while also ensuring that military veterans qualify for reduced registration fees.

The residency-focused part of the regulatory change from the state Department of Health and Human Services is meant to comply with provisions of a bill that Reynolds signed into law in June.

In addition to allowing out-of-state residents to register in the medical cannabis program if they have a certification from an Iowa healthcare provider legislation, that legislation also doubles the number of medical cannabis dispensaries that are allowed to operate in the state.

Regulators said in the new rule filing that removing the residency requirement is expected to “primarily impact qualified Nebraska residents since Nebraska is the only bordering state that does not currently have an operational medical or adult-use cannabis program.”

“Although Nebraska has taken steps to establish a medical cannabidiol program, implementation has experienced significant delays and setbacks,” the regulatory explanation says.

Beyond the residency change that is part of the bill the governor signed this year, the new rule change also restores regulatory language that was “inadvertently removed during the 2023 Red Tape Review process” that allowed proof of military veteran status to be used to qualify for a reduced patient application fee of $25 instead of the standard $100.

Under prior law, Iowa’s limited medical marijuana program allowed only five dispensaries. That has doubled to 10 under HF 990, which the governor signed.

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The Iowa Medical Cannabidiol Board, which oversees the state’s medical marijuana program, recommended in a 2023 report that the state allow more licenses “in an effort to provide Iowans with greater geographical access to medical cannabis products.”

Under the program, patients with certain conditions can obtain cannabis products containing no more than at 4.5 grams of THC every 90 days. Flower and smoking are not allowed. Healthcare practitioners can allow greater amounts of THC for patients who are terminally ill or who have experience with the program and for whom the provider believes 4.5 grams is not enough.

Separately this session, Iowa lawmakers considered a bill to create a state-regulated therapeutic psilocybin program for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Last year, the governor vetoed earlier legislation that would have allowed doctors in the state to immediately prescribe a synthetic form of psilocybin in the event of federal approval of the psychedelic substance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), arguing that it “surrenders state authority to make an informed determination about classification to federal officials.”

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Washington has removed Venezuela from the group of countries deemed to have “failed demonstrably” in their anti-drug obligations while maintaining it on the broader list of major drug-transit and producing countries, citing growing cooperation with Delcy Rodríguez’s interim government. At the same time, U.S. oil companies and policymakers are rapidly deepening their involvement in Venezuela’s enormous crude reserves, raising questions about how energy, counternarcotics policy and Washington’s broader geopolitical strategy now intersect.

Since 2005, when former President Hugo Chávez was still governing Venezuela, Washington has presented the Latin American country as a central concern in its regional anti-drug policy. That has just changed.

On September 16, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Venezuela was no longer among the countries Washington considers to have “failed demonstrably” to meet their international drug-control obligations, as reported by Diario Red. Venezuela, however, is still considered a major drug-transit or illicit drug-producing country—a different category that does not, by itself, imply that its government is failing to meet its anti-drug commitments.

How did Venezuela go, in a matter of months, from occupying a central place in the U.S. narrative on drug trafficking to being led by a government whose anti-drug cooperation Washington is highlighting?

This shift comes as another relationship central to both countries is also changing: oil.

From Adversarial Relations to Renewed Cooperation: What Happened to the Anti-Drug Narrative

To understand what changed, we first need to separate two classifications that are often confused. Every year, the president of the United States identifies countries considered major drug-transit or illicit drug-producing countries; this is known as the Major’s List. Venezuela remains on it: it’s one of the 23 countries included in the determination for fiscal year 2027.

But appearing on that list does not, by itself, mean that Washington believes the government of that country is failing to combat drug trafficking. The State Department has explained that the designation may be based on geographic, commercial, and economic factors that facilitate drug production or transit even when authorities implement control measures. The “failed demonstrably” category is different: it applies when the president determines that a country has failed to make substantial efforts to meet its international anti-drug obligations during the previous 12 months.

Here’s the relevant change. In September 2025, the White House included Venezuela, along with Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma, and Colombia, among the five countries that had “failed demonstrably” to make those efforts. One year later, the list was reduced to four: Venezuela disappeared from that second classification, although it remained on the Major’s List.

Trump explicitly attributed that decision to the new relationship with Delcy Rodríguez’s interim government. In the determination sent to Congress, he argued that political changes in South America had opened new possibilities for cooperation and said Washington was already seeing results from its joint work with Caracas against cartels. “Given the positive steps” under Rodríguez, he said, Venezuela should no longer be considered a country that had demonstrably failed to meet its anti-drug commitments.

In September 2025, the Trump administration launched a military campaign in the Caribbean against vessels it claimed were linked to drug trafficking. The first known attack, on September 2, killed 11 people aboard a vessel from Venezuela; Trump said they belonged to Tren de Aragua and were carrying drugs, but at the time the U.S. government did not publicly release evidence about the identities of those on board or the cargo. Various experts, politicians, and news outlets questioned the legality of summarily killing people suspected of drug trafficking instead of arresting them.

Still, the campaign continued. On September 15, another U.S. attack on an alleged Venezuelan drug-trafficking vessel killed three people; once again, Trump did not publicly present evidence showing that the vessel was carrying drugs. By October, several similar attacks had already taken place.

And then came the decisive change: in January 2026, the United States captured Nicolás Maduro and Delcy Rodríguez took charge of the interim government. From that point on, Washington began working directly with that administration. Reuters describes the current situation explicitly: Trump attributed Venezuela’s removal from the “failed demonstrably” category to the results of cooperation with the Rodríguez government. The government Washington was dealing with had changed, and the bilateral relationship shifted dramatically with it.

So What Happened to the ‘Cartel of the Suns’?

Washington’s shift in tone raises another important question: what happened to the so-called “Cartel of the Suns,” a structure that the U.S. government itself presented for years as a drug-trafficking organization run from the highest levels of the Venezuelan state?

It is worth separating several things that are often conflated. One is the existence of drug-trafficking and corruption allegations against specific Venezuelan officials. Another is the allegation that state protection or corruption networks were linked to drug trafficking. And another, far more specific, is the claim that all of those activities constituted a centralized, hierarchical criminal organization called the “Cartel of the Suns.”

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice advanced precisely that last version. In the indictment filed against Nicolás Maduro and other senior Venezuelan officials, prosecutors alleged that Maduro, Diosdado Cabello, Hugo Carvajal, and Clíver Alcalá had acted as “leaders and managers” of the Cartel of the Suns and had used state institutions to facilitate shipments of cocaine to the United States. It is important to emphasize that these were criminal allegations, not convictions.

The Trump administration took that characterization even further in 2025. In July, the Treasury Department sanctioned the Cartel of the Suns as a global terrorist organization and said it was a criminal group “headed by Nicolás Maduro” and other senior officials. In November, the State Department also moved forward with its designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

But just a few months after Maduro’s capture, the Justice Department filed a revised indictment that no longer describes the Cartel of the Suns in the same way it did in 2020. The new document accuses Maduro of participating in and protecting a “culture of corruption” in which Venezuelan elites enriched themselves through drug trafficking and the protection of traffickers, and defines the Cartel of the Suns as the name given to a “patronage system” directed from the top.

The change does not eliminate the drug-trafficking allegations against Maduro or the corruption allegations against Venezuelan officials. What it changes is something more specific: the characterization of the Cartel of the Suns as a formal, distinct, centralized criminal organization. The New York Times, comparing the two indictments, noted that the earlier document mentioned the Cartel of the Suns 32 times and presented Maduro as its leader, while the 2026 version sharply reduced those references and instead described the term as a system of corruption and patronage.

The Anti-Drug Allegations Also Had Economic Consequences

U.S. sanctions policy toward Venezuela was never based exclusively on drug-trafficking allegations. For years, Washington built a broader framework that brought together allegations of corruption, human rights violations, institutional deterioration, political repression, and links between senior officials and drug-trafficking networks.

Those different justifications ultimately translated into increasingly broad financial restrictions against officials, state-owned companies, and eventually entire sectors of the Venezuelan economy.

The anti-drug component was part of that framework. In 2017, for example, the Treasury designated then-Vice President Tareck El Aissami as an international drug trafficker under the Kingpin Act. The following year, it also sanctioned Pedro Luis Martín Olivares, a former senior Venezuelan intelligence official, and a network of individuals and companies that Washington said were involved in drug trafficking and money laundering.

A major escalation came in January 2019, when the Treasury directly sanctioned PDVSA (Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A.), the country’s main source of foreign currency. But the U.S. statement itself makes clear that the measure did not serve solely as punishment for alleged acts of corruption. The Treasury presented the sanction as a way to ‘ramp up pressure’ on Maduro and support a political transition. It also said that the path to lifting sanctions on PDVSA involved transferring control of the company to the then-interim president recognized by Washington, Juan Guaidó, or to a subsequent, democratically elected government.

The political purpose of the sanctions regime was not implicit, either. The Treasury said these measures were intended to “change behavior” and could be lifted for those who took concrete actions to restore democratic order, rejected human rights abuses, or fought corruption. In another statement that same year, it reiterated that rationale, describing the sanctions as intended to bring about a “positive change of behavior.”

The pressure also extended to third parties that helped Venezuela maintain its oil revenues. In June 2020, the Treasury sanctioned a network of intermediaries that it said had helped PDVSA evade U.S. restrictions and resell more than 30 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil.

Just three months earlier, Maduro and other Venezuelan officials had been charged with narcoterrorism, corruption, and cocaine trafficking. Prosecutors alleged that Maduro and his associates had used Venezuelan political and military institutions to protect those activities. These were U.S. criminal allegations, not judicial convictions.

Thus, oil, sanctions, corruption, drug trafficking, and political pressure all operated together within the U.S. strategy toward Venezuela. Official documents themselves intertwined them over time: a figure sanctioned for drug trafficking could also appear as a central player in schemes designed to maintain PDVSA exports; a narcoterrorism indictment against Maduro coexisted with restrictions aimed at cutting off his government’s oil revenues; and sanctions relief was explicitly linked to political changes Washington sought to promote.

Washington used access to oil, the financial system, and the U.S. market as tools of pressure against the Venezuelan government, while criminal and anti-drug allegations formed part of the stated rationale for those restrictions. Today, that isolation appears to be starting to ease.

How the U.S. Position on Oil and Drug Trafficking in Venezuela Changed

This economic isolation began to be dismantled rapidly after January 2026. Since then, the U.S. Treasury has issued a series of licenses that progressively reopened activities that had been restricted for years: the purchase and sale of Venezuelan oil, the sale of U.S. diluents, the provision of equipment and services for oil operations, new investments, and certain transactions directly involving PDVSA.

In March, OFAC (the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control) expressly authorized certain companies to make new investments, expand existing operations, and explore, produce, and develop oil and gas projects in Venezuela.

The easing continued throughout the year. On August 27, OFAC again modified several of those licenses, including those related to Venezuelan oil, the sale of diluents, the supply of goods and services, oil-company operations, and transactions with PDVSA. The Treasury itself explained that some of those changes were in response to “investment-related reforms” implemented by the Venezuelan government since January and said the U.S. sought to support American companies looking to “reinvest in Venezuela.”

The reopening is already having material effects. In January, Venezuelan oil exports jumped to around 800,000 barrels per day, up from about 498,000 in December, while companies such as Trafigura and Vitol began operating under new U.S. authorizations. Chevron was exporting around 220,000 barrels per day to the United States, making the U.S. market the leading destination for Venezuelan crude oil once again.

U.S. buyers also returned. In February, Reuters reported that Valero planned to import as much as 6.5 million barrels of Venezuelan crude during March for its Gulf Coast refineries, the company’s largest volume since the 2019 oil sanctions. Chevron, meanwhile, expected to increase its Venezuelan exports to around 300,000 barrels per day.

The shift reached a new level on September 16, the exact same day it became known that Venezuela would no longer be listed among countries that had “failed demonstrably” to meet their anti-drug obligations. That day, U.S.-based Continental Resources signed a memorandum of understanding with PDVSA to develop Ayacucho 2, a block in the Orinoco Belt with estimated resources of 30 billion barrels. The company expects to turn the preliminary agreement into a production-sharing contract and said extraction could begin in about 18 months.

The U.S.’s Longstanding Interest in Venezuelan Oil—and Why It Matters Now

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves: around 303 billion barrels—approximately 17% of global reserves, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Most of those reserves consist of extra-heavy crude oil from the Orinoco Belt. That gives the country extraordinary economic and geopolitical potential, although having enormous reserves does not guarantee prosperity on its own: turning them into revenue requires investment, infrastructure, technical capacity, markets, and the conditions needed to produce and export.

For much of Nicolás Maduro’s government, Venezuela was willing to sell that oil to the U.S. In fact, before the 2019 sanctions, the United States was the largest buyer of Venezuelan crude. In 2018, it imported around 505,000 barrels per day; Gulf Coast refineries had historically processed even larger volumes of heavy Venezuelan crude and are particularly well equipped to handle that type of oil.

The rupture, therefore, did not happen because Venezuelan oil had stopped being useful to the United States or because Caracas refused to sell it. Instead, it reflected a U.S. policy decision to restrict that relationship.

When the Treasury directly sanctioned PDVSA on January 28, 2019, it described the company as one of the country’s main sources of revenue and foreign currency. The title of the statement itself said the measure sought to “ramp up pressure” on Maduro, and the U.S. government explained that it was using its economic power to support a political transition it recognized as democratic (in contrast to Maduro’s government).

The United States did not control Venezuela’s oil reserves or determine how Caracas used resources within its territory. PDVSA and the reserves remained Venezuelan. What Washington could do—and did—was leverage the weight of its market, its currency, and its financial system to make that oil significantly more difficult to sell: blocking assets under U.S. jurisdiction, preventing certain transactions with PDVSA, and sanctioning companies, intermediaries, and vessels involved in transactions Washington had decided to restrict.

That pressure was not even limited to bilateral trade. The United States also acted against third parties transporting Venezuelan oil to other countries. Cuba is one of the clearest examples: in April 2019, the Treasury sanctioned shipping companies and identified dozens of vessels as blocked property, including ships used to transport Venezuelan crude oil to the island. Washington described the oil industry at the time as a “lifeline” for Maduro’s government and also targeted Cuban support for Caracas.

In other words: for years, Washington used its financial and commercial power not only to restrict U.S. purchases of Venezuelan oil, but also to raise the costs and risks for other actors participating in that trade. Meanwhile, much of the oil Venezuela managed to sell shifted toward markets such as China. The EIA notes that, following the 2019 sanctions, a significant proportion of Venezuelan exports went to China, including some under debt-repayment arrangements.

After the U.S. operation that ended with Maduro’s capture in January 2026, oil appeared almost immediately at the center of Washington’s plans for the new phase.

On January 3—the same day Nicolás Maduro was captured and imprisoned in the U.S.—Trump said U.S. oil companies would invest billions of dollars to restore Venezuela’s deteriorated infrastructure and increase its production. Reuters noted at the time that the country’s heavy crude oil is particularly useful for U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.

The following day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was even more explicit about the geopolitical component. “No more using the oil industry to enrich all of our adversaries around the world,” he said, after stating that Washington would not allow the Western Hemisphere to become a base of operations for U.S. “adversaries, competitors, and rivals.” He also specifically mentioned Iran and Hezbollah among the actors whose influence Washington intended to eliminate from Venezuela.

A few days later, the U.S. and the new Venezuelan government agreed to redirect up to $2 billion in sanctioned Venezuelan oil to the U.S. market, in an operation that also sought to divert some of the shipments that had previously gone to China.

Thus, U.S. oil interests did not emerge months later as a consequence of the current price crisis: they were on the table from the first days after Maduro’s removal. What happened afterward was that the international situation considerably increased the strategic value of that access.

Since late February, the war involving the United States and Israel against Iran and the subsequent disruptions in the Middle East have hit some of the world’s main energy supply routes and sources. By September, Brent and WTI had surpassed $100 per barrel, while the inventories that had initially cushioned the impact of the conflict were shrinking. Chevron CEO Mike Wirth warned that those buffers were being depleted and that upward pressure on prices could persist.

The situation is particularly sensitive for the United States when it comes to refined fuels. In September, diesel surpassed $6 per gallon, reaching record levels amid global refining and supply constraints.

Venezuela occupies a particular place in this equation. Its heavy crude oil is not simply “more oil”: it is a type of feedstock that U.S. Gulf Coast refineries are familiar with and are equipped to process.

For years, the United States used its economic power to limit the Venezuelan government’s oil revenues, restricted PDVSA’s operations, and even sanctioned third parties for transporting the country’s crude. Washington’s sanctions were explicitly designed to constrain the revenues available to Maduro’s government from Venezuela’s oil sector; U.S. officials described those measures at the time as instruments of pressure intended to change the government’s behavior.

Now, following Maduro’s removal, the Trump administration is promoting U.S. investment to increase production of that same oil, redirecting Venezuelan barrels from China to the United States, and presenting control over those flows as part of its national security interests. And it is doing so just as an international energy crisis makes the heavy crude oil Venezuela can provide especially valuable.

This does not prove that oil alone explains the U.S. operation in January or that the recent decision to remove Venezuela from the category of countries that “failed demonstrably” to meet their anti-drug commitments was made in exchange for access to its reserves. But the timing makes it reasonable to examine both processes as part of the same broader transformation in Washington’s policy toward Caracas.

Venezuela’s oil reserves have not changed, and the underlying drug-trafficking concerns have not disappeared. What has changed is who governs Venezuela, that government’s relationship with Washington, and the role Venezuelan resources now play within U.S. energy and geopolitical strategy.

How Does Trump’s Pardon of Silk Road’s Founder Fit With His Administration’s Anti-Drug Policy?

The two cases show markedly different uses of executive power in drug-related contexts.

While his government presented drug trafficking as a national security issue and cited it to justify fatal attacks on vessels in the Caribbean, economic sanctions, and ultimately a military operation inside Venezuela in which Maduro was captured, Trump used his pardon power to free Ross Ulbricht, the founder and operator of one of the largest dark web drug markets of its time.

On January 21, 2025, just one day after returning to the White House, Trump granted a full and unconditional pardon to Ross Ulbricht, founder and operator of Silk Road. Ulbricht had spent more than a decade in prison and was serving two life sentences plus 40 years after a federal jury convicted him on seven counts, including narcotics distribution, narcotics distribution over the internet, conspiracy to distribute drugs, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, and money laundering.

Silk Road was hardly a marginal platform either. According to the Department of Justice, between 2011 and 2013 it was used by thousands of vendors to distribute hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs to more than 100,000 buyers, in addition to other illicit goods and services. Transactions conducted through the site exceeded $200 million, while Ulbricht earned more than $13 million in commissions.

Trump publicly justified the pardon in terms very different from those he later used regarding Venezuela. In announcing it, he called the people who had worked to secure Ulbricht’s conviction “scum” and linked his case to what he considers the “political weaponization” of the U.S. justice system. Reuters also noted that the pardon fulfilled a campaign promise made to libertarian groups that considered the life sentence excessive.

Ulbricht spoke at the Republican Midterm Convention in September 2026 and returned to that same argument during his speech. According to The Economic Times, he said Trump had empathized with him because “both had been victims” of state institutions allegedly used politically against them.

In Ulbricht’s case, Trump overturned a final conviction for crimes connected to a marketplace that facilitated hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal drug sales, arguing that the defendant had been the victim of a politicized justice system. In Venezuela’s case, his administration used drug-trafficking allegations that were still being litigated as part of the justification for a military operation inside a foreign state.

What Objective Facts Does Washington Cite to Justify Venezuela No Longer Being on the List?

So far, Washington’s public explanation for the change has focused primarily on growing cooperation with Delcy Rodríguez’s interim government. Trump attributed the decision to that cooperation and highlighted as a concrete result the operation that ended with the death of Niño Guerrero, leader of Tren de Aragua. The determination does not, however, detail a quantified reduction in drug trafficking, increased seizures, or other indicators that would make it possible to measure how much the situation has actually changed since 2025. In fact, Trump himself said he expects to see “continued and measurable” progress in the future.

If the publicly available evidence specifically related to drug enforcement is relatively limited, it is worth looking at what other dimensions of the bilateral relationship changed over exactly the same period.

That makes the simultaneous transformation in the U.S.-Venezuela oil relationship particularly relevant to the question.

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North Carolinians strongly support legalizing medical marijuana, and a majority wants to go even further by legalizing cannabis for recreational use, according to a new poll.

The survey published on Thursday by Elon University also found that North Carolina adults support keeping THC-infused hemp products like seltzers and gummies legal in the state, although with age limits.

Medical cannabis legalization is supported by 75 percent of respondents, with only 11 percent in opposition.

While there is bipartisan support for the patient-focused reform, Democrats are much more likely to support it, at 89 percent, as compared to Republicans, only 57 percent of whom are on board.

Broader recreational marijuana legalization comes in at 55 percent in support overall and 30 percent opposed. While 74 percent of Democrats favor the reform, just 33 percent of Republicans do.

Meanwhile, as North Carolina lawmakers continue to debate how to handle the issue of hemp-derived THC products, the poll shows that most state residents want to keep them legal.

When asked whether North Carolina should “allow or prohibit the sale of hemp-derived products like seltzers and gummies with THC levels that can cause intoxication or a ‘high,’” 53 percent said they back keeping them legal, while 28 percent said they should be banned.

As with broader cannabis legalization, a majority of Democrats (62 percent) were on board with legal hemp THC products, and only a minority (35 percent) of Republicans were.

In a separate question, 82 percent of all respondents said they back banning sales of hemp-derived consumable products to people under the age of 21, including majorities across party lines.

Jason Husser, director of the Elon University Poll and professor of political science and public policy, noted that support for marijuana legalization has remained stable in the state in recent years.

“We found a significant increase in support for legalization between 2017 and 2021 as North Carolinians saw legalization occurring in other states,” he said in a press release. “Over the last five years, support for legalization has largely been stable with a large majority supporting medical legalization and a small majority favoring recreational legalization.”

“In turn, support for allowing hemp-based THC has similar levels of support and high correlation with support for recreational marijuana,” he said. “However, North Carolinians are largely unified in wanting hemp consumables restricted to those 21 or older.”

The poll involved interviews with 1,121 North Carolina adults between August 21-31 and has a margin of error of +/-5.09 percentage points.

The results come as Gov. Josh Stein (D) is continuing to pressure the GOP-controlled legislature for marijuana reform.

Last month, the governor called on lawmakers to legalize and regulate cannabis in a way that “protects kids” while lawmakers this week are considering a bill to restrict hemp THC products.

In a social media post he noted that lawmakers are considering legislation that “aims to eliminate the Wild West that is North Carolina’s THC market.”

The governor has repeatedly called on lawmakers to broadly legalize and regulate cannabis, though GOP legislative leaders have been more interested in focusing on the narrower hemp issue.

A bill to restrict hemp and kratom products that was recently approved by the Senate now awaits potential action in the House.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in North Carolina have been considering legislation to legalize medical cannabis for the last several sessions—with the Senate approving several proposals and the House refusing to follow suit.

North Carolina’s Senate president pro tempore recently said that lawmakers will take a more serious look at legalizing medical marijuana following the Trump administration’s move to reschedule cannabis at the federal level.

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The governor-appointed cannabis commission in North Carolina issued a report in April recommending that the state move away from a criminalization-based approach to the plant and toward a system of “robust” regulations that provide for adults’ legal access to THC products.

The North Carolina Advisory Council on Cannabis, which Stein convened last year, says in the new document approved in April that the current “absence of regulation for North Carolina’s intoxicating cannabis market raises numerous concerns,” noting that hemp products are readily available yet largely unregulated and that marijuana remains prohibited altogether in the state, even for medical use.

“Compared to regulated marijuana frameworks in other states, this environment presents identifiable risks,” the interim report says. “While some operators voluntarily implement consumer protection protocols, these safeguards are not required under state law.”

Stein, for his part, thanked the group for its “expertise, hard work, and thoughtful deliberation” in a press release and reiterated his support for legalizing marijuana.

Members are tasked with developing and submitting initial recommendations on a “comprehensive cannabis policy, including any proposed legislation,” with a final report due by December 31 of this year.

During his time as the state’s attorney general, Stein led a separate task force under then-Gov. Roy Cooper (D) that examined racial injustice issues and ultimately recommended decriminalizing marijuana and studying broader legalization in response to racially disparate enforcement trends.

A tribe in North Carolina, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, launched the state’s first marijuana dispensary in 2024—despite the protests of certain Republican congressional lawmakers.

Democratic lawmakers recently filed legislation to allow voters to decide whether to legalize marijuana for personal or medical use at the ballot box this November—though Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger (R) said the bill is unlikely to advance.

Meanwhile, bipartisan North Carolina lawmakers have been stepping up the push for psychedelics reform legislation.

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Ecuador’s hemp sector is projected to approach or surpass $20 million in 2026 as companies move beyond raw biomass into chocolates, cosmetics, supplements, veterinary products and other finished goods. With more than 700 companies operating across the supply chain, the industry is now looking to capture more value domestically while expanding finished-product exports into international markets.

When people talk about the hemp industry, it can be hard to picture what that actually means beyond a field of crops. In Ecuador, the answer is starting to show up in very tangible products: chocolates, gummies, herbal infusions, craft beer, kombucha, creams, serums, oils and pet products are all part of an increasingly diverse market for non-psychoactive cannabis—meaning cannabis that does not get you high and contains very low levels of THC.

That shift from raw plant material to finished goods is at the heart of a sector that, according to figures provided by industry representatives, grew from roughly $10 million in revenue in 2024 to $15 million in 2025 and is projected to approach or surpass $20 million in 2026, according to El Universo.

The ecosystem now includes more than 700 companies involved in everything from seeds and cultivation to processing, laboratories, retail and finished-product manufacturing.

But that number tells only part of the story. One of the industry’s biggest bets is moving beyond hemp as biomass or raw material and capturing more value by turning it into finished products inside Ecuador.

From Hemp to Chocolate: The Money’s in Finished Products

Ecuador’s Cannabis, Industrial and Medicinal Hemp Industries Cluster brings together roughly 30 small and midsize companies, with goals that include strengthening the production chain and developing finished goods rather than biomass alone.

That strategy is already visible on store shelves and in product catalogs. Forbes Ecuador identified chocolates, gummies, teas, herbal infusions, craft beer, kombucha, ointments, creams, oils, flower, anti-aging products, balms, lubricants, probiotics, prebiotics and oils for pets already on the market.

One company that helps illustrate that range is CBD Solutions, a family business that began taking shape in 2020 and later developed its own small lab as it moved from artisanal production toward manufacturing under more formal standards. Its portfolio includes sublingual oils, creams, ointments, lip balms, chocolates, craft beer, kombucha, herbal infusions, gummies, coffee with CBD kief, extract cartridges and flower.

Hemp Ecuador Labs represents another part of the production chain: research and formulation. The company has operated since 2021 and, according to Forbes, has developed close to 200 products across its own projects and work for third parties, while offering around 45 products under its own brands. Its manager, Eduardo Monge, said bringing a cosmetic or supplement to market can take roughly six months of research, formulation, testing and analysis.

Mayu Ecuador, meanwhile, sells supplements, oils, infusions, chocolates, gummies, creams and a cosmetic serum, along with products for the veterinary market. The company distributes its lines through more than 100 locations nationwide and also works with two compounding pharmacies in Quito and Cuenca.

As far back as 2021, data from Ecuador’s National Agency for Health Regulation, Control and Surveillance, known as ARCSA, showed that 144 CBD products had been authorized for sale in the country, with 95 of them in the cosmetics category.

Among the examples at the time was Laboratorios Beautik, which had developed a CBD hair-care line including shampoo, conditioner, leave-in cream and a hair mask.

What has changed is the scale. Industry sources now point to more than 2,000 products with health notifications or registrations, while other recent counts cite more than 2,500 products registered with ARCSA and more than 50 types of veterinary products registered with Agrocalidad.

Ecuador Has Drawn a Clear Line Between Psychoactive and Non-Psychoactive Cannabis

Ecuador’s growth is taking place within a defined regulatory boundary separating this industry from debates over psychoactive cannabis and adult use. In the country, non-psychoactive cannabis—containing less than 1% THC by dry weight—was removed from the country’s controlled-substances framework and placed under agricultural regulation.

For processed foods and supplements, the rules are even more specific. Resolution ARCSA-DE-2022-014-AKRG allows parts of non-psychoactive cannabis, hemp, or their derivatives to be used as ingredients, but requires the finished product to contain less than 0.3% THC.

Companies seeking health notification must submit testing showing that concentration, along with analyses for heavy metals and pesticides. The same regulation prohibits the use of psychoactive cannabis or its derivatives in those foods and supplements, as well as THC concentrations of 0.3% or higher.

That framework helps explain why the recent shelving of a broader cannabis proposal did not halt this industry. The bill shelved in August addressed issues including adult use, home cultivation and THC-containing products, while the non-psychoactive segment has been operating under its own regulations since 2020.

This also puts another figure highlighted by the industry Cluster into context. According to its president, Lizbeth Fajardo, no health alerts have been reported in connection with the sale of registered products in this market.

The Next Step Is About Much More Than Exporting Biomass

Ecuador’s industry already exports raw material and biomass to other markets, including the United States, Switzerland and Germany, according to sector representatives. The next challenge is increasing exports of finished products, allowing more of the formulation work, technical know-how, intellectual property and commercial value to remain in Ecuador.

Hemp Ecuador Labs, for example, has already tested products in Colombia, Paraguay and the United States and is now working toward meeting the volumes required by those markets. 

Mayu, meanwhile, is working to enter the markets of the United States, Spain, Iceland, France and Costa Rica. One of its CBD chocolates was selected as a semifinalist in the II Ecuadorian Cacao Innovation Award, earning the company the opportunity to present it at the Salon du Chocolat in Paris.

That example captures where the industry wants to go. Ecuador can produce flower and biomass, but the business strategy behind that projected $20 million market goes much further: turning raw material into something recognizable, regulated, and marketable, whether that means a gummy, a cosmetic, or a veterinary product.

In that sense, the clearest way to understand what Ecuador’s “hemp industry” looks like today may be to stop looking only at the plant and start looking at everything companies are making from it.

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Bipartisan congressional lawmakers have filed a bill to provide a safe harbor to insurance companies that work with state-legal marijuana businesses.

The Clarifying Law Around Insurance of Marijuana (CLAIM) Act was filed by Reps. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-NY) and Warren Davidson (R-OH) on Wednesday.

The legislation would protect insurers, brokers and agents from being penalized by federal regulators for providing insurance services to state-licensed marijuana companies.

“Because of the conflict between federal and state law, insurers are still hesitant to write policies for cannabis businesses,” Velázquez said in a press release. “That means thousands of legal small businesses are operating without a safety net. One fire or one storm could wipe out everything an owner has built, with no way to recover. The CLAIM Act fixes this by giving these entrepreneurs access to the same basic insurance protections every other legal business takes for granted.”

Davidson said that “businesses operating legally under state law should be free to purchase insurance, and insurers should be free to serve them.”

“The federal government should not use regulation to interfere with lawful commerce or override decisions made by the states,” he said. “The CLAIM Act removes that federal interference and protects the freedom of insurers and their customers to do business.”

Earlier this year, Sens. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) filed similar legislation in the Senate.

This is the fourth Congress in a row that the cannabis business insurance measure has been introduced, and the text of the current bill, H.R.10471, remains largely the same as prior versions.

Earlier this year, bipartisan House and Senate lawmakers filed related legislation to provide safeguards for banks that work with the cannabis industry.

As it stands, cannabis firms are limited in their ability to gain property, casualty and title insurance coverage. The CLAIM Act would prohibit federal agencies from penalizing insurance providers for simply covering those businesses, and it would bar insurers from terminating or limiting policies for marijuana companies or ancillary businesses due to the nature of their enterprise.

The legislation also includes a requirement that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) study and issue a report on “barriers to marketplace entry, including in the licensing process, and the access to financial services for potential and existing minority-owned and women-owned cannabis-related legitimate businesses.”

It additionally provides protections for employees of insurers, affirming that they could not be held liable just because they work with a cannabis company.

Supporters of the legislation have argued that providing insurance access to these businesses would mitigate safety risks and prevent the companies from being denied bank financing, which can occur when the businesses lack insurance coverage.

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Marijuana Moment is tracking hundreds of cannabis, psychedelics and drug policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps, charts and hearing calendar so they don’t miss any developments.

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Meanwhile, the Trump administration is moving forward with the process of rescheduling marijuana under federal law.

Attorney General Todd Blanche in April issued an order that immediately reclassified state-licensed medical cannabis, as well as marijuana products approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to Schedule III.

Under a separate order the attorney general signed, a hearing is considering more comprehensively moving marijuana to Schedule III.

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Medical cannabis use is associated with improvements in several common cancer-related symptoms, according to a new large-scale observational study.

Researchers at the Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) analysed data from 6,621 people with cancer who purchased medical cannabis through the state programme between July 2015 and December 2023. The findings, published in the OCM report Impact of Medical Cannabis on Minnesota Cancer Patients, showed reductions in pain, nausea, vomiting, anxiety and depression. Improvements were also reported in sleep.

Patients completed self-assessments before purchasing cannabis, rating eight symptoms – anxiety, lack of appetite, depression, disturbed sleep, fatigue, nausea, pain and vomiting – on a scale of zero to ten. Researchers considered a reduction of at least 30% from a patient’s starting score to be a clinically meaningful improvement.

The strongest result was seen among patients experiencing vomiting. Of those who reported moderate to severe vomiting when they entered the programme, almost half (47.2%) recorded a clinically meaningful reduction in symptoms within four months of their first medical cannabis purchase.

Nausea also improved for 39.9% of patients who initially reported moderate to severe symptoms, while 38.2% experienced a meaningful improvement in lack of appetite.

Pain was the most common symptom among the group, with 82% of patients reporting moderate to severe pain when they joined the programme. Within four months of starting medical cannabis, 29.9% of those patients recorded a meaningful reduction in pain.

Among patients who experienced that initial improvement and remained in the programme long enough for further assessment, 53.1% maintained the reduction for at least another four months.

Around 40% of patients with moderate to severe anxiety reported improvement within four months, alongside 44% of those experiencing moderate to severe depression.

“Cannabis treatment appears relatively safe, and we now have strong observational evidence that many patients report better control of several cancer-related symptoms,” said Dr Dylan Zylla, oncologist and medical director of the HealthPartners Cancer Research Center.

The data also show that patients were using a wide variety of cannabis products rather than a single standardised medicine. Inhaled products, including flower and vapes, accounted for 48% of purchases, while orally consumed products such as capsules and gummies accounted for 42.5%. Products containing high proportions of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) relative to cannabidiol (CBD) were common in both groups.

Around 15% of patients reported at least one side effect during the study period. Of the side effects recorded, 60% were classed as mild, 34% as moderate and 6.2% as severe.

Dry mouth was most frequently reported, followed by drowsiness or sedation, mental clouding and fatigue.

The findings add to a growing body of research examining cannabis as supportive care for people with cancer. In 2025, a large analysis of cannabis and cancer research found substantial support in the scientific literature for cannabinoids in managing treatment-related symptoms including nausea, appetite loss and pain.

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New Jersey’s THC beverage market is heading into the most consequential stretch of its short life. A federal change to the definition of hemp takes effect in November 2026, and the state has set November 13 as the last day licensed liquor stores can sell hemp-derived THC drinks. After that date, any beverage carrying a meaningful dose of THC moves into the same regulated system as flower, vapes, and edibles, sold only through licensed dispensaries. 

For the brands that built their followings in liquor-store aisles and grocery coolers, the deadline marks a real turning point. One New Jersey company has spent the past year preparing for it in an unusual way, by making the same drink twice.

High Tide, a seltzer brand based in southern New Jersey, produces four flavors in two separate formulations. There is a 10-milligram hemp-derived version that has lived in the liquor-store and direct-to-consumer world, and a 5-milligram cannabis version, made with what the company describes as real marijuana, that is sold only in licensed dispensaries. 

The flavors are identical on both sides: Citrus Surge, Lemon Lime Splash, Island Punch, and Riptide Cola. The drinks are vegan and made without artificial dyes, added sugar, or alcohol. The two-track approach looks, at first glance, like a careful hedge against a shifting regulatory map. 

According to the company, it started as something much smaller.

A Taste Test That Outgrew Its Purpose

High Tide’s hemp line was not originally conceived as a product. It began as a way for the team to taste what they were building. Because the flavor emulsion tastes nearly the same in either formulation, the company wanted to sample the profiles before committing to a full production run on the cannabis side. At the time, no one else in the state was producing real marijuana-derived drinks, and the priority was making sure the finished product would be as pleasant to drink as it was to look at.

Taste came first. The goal was to find flavors that worked so naturally with the earthy character of the cannabis emulsion that a drinker would not register it as a separate note. “We were absolutely not trying to hide the flavor of the emulsion but instead wanted to find flavors that worked so well with it that you don’t even recognize it,” the company says. The hemp version was the test kitchen for that work. 

In the company’s own words, “it was never actually supposed to stick around. It was just so we could really taste it. The people had other plans.”

Those plans became clear when High Tide brought the drinks to MJUnpacked, an industry trade event. The response to the hemp beverages was immediate and large, both as a preview of the cannabis line and as a product in their own right. With manufacturing on the marijuana side still a few months from being fully ready, the company made a decision that reshaped its business: it kept the hemp drinks in production to meet the demand. 

What had been a temporary sampling tool became half of the catalog, and the reaction to the flavors and the effect convinced the team that they had found something worth keeping on both sides of the aisle.

The Insight Hiding in the Demand

The more revealing part of that early response was not the enthusiasm for a new drink. It was what the enthusiasm seemed to be about. As the company describes it, the market was not short on beverages. It was short on something the beverage represented. “The market was not missing a category, a ‘drink,’ but the market was missing the social element that came with that product,” High Tide says. “Not a drink but the social acceptance and inclusion that ‘drinking’ brings.”

That framing lines up with where the broader THC beverage category has been heading, positioned less as liquid cannabis and more as an alternative to alcohol for people who still want a cold drink in hand at a gathering. High Tide leans into that idea directly, with packaging that promises a lifted mood and a clean finish, and a tagline that warns the drinks are smooth enough to make a person forget there is THC in them. The company’s stated goal is to bring the fun back to social consumption without the next-morning cost of alcohol.

The customer base has turned out to be broad. According to the company, buyers include people replacing alcohol entirely, people adding the drinks to other forms of cannabis consumption, and experienced consumers who use the low dose as a social option rather than a strong one. 

“For those that have a higher tolerance this is not going to blast you to the moon,” the company says. The team has watched customers treat the seltzers as a mixer and even as the base for an ice cream float. The through-line is flexibility. The drink is designed to slot into whatever social moment a person is already in.

Two Shelves, Two Shoppers

If the demand told High Tide what people wanted, selling on both sides of New Jersey’s split market has taught the company something about who those people are. The two channels do not attract the same shopper, and the difference is not only about product. It is about comfort.

“Some hemp drinkers have never been in a dispensary, while most cannabis consumers have seen the inside of a liquor store,” the company observes. That single asymmetry explains a great deal about why the coming shift is more complicated than a simple change of address. The liquor store is familiar ground for nearly everyone. The dispensary, with its ID scan, its regulations, and its association with cannabis specifically, still carries friction for a segment of the beverage audience that found these drinks precisely because they did not require a trip to one. 

Both groups, the company notes, are ultimately after the same thing. They are just arriving from different directions.

That overlap points to a possibility the company is careful not to overstate. If the hemp drinks reach people who have never set foot in a dispensary, they may end up serving as an on-ramp, a low-stakes introduction that makes the licensed cannabis market feel less foreign. “Will hemp be a bridge for some consumers to find a path to cannabis and break down a barrier?” the company asks. “Maybe. And if so we welcome being able to contribute to that progress for the plant.” Whether or not that proves true at scale, High Tide’s presence on both shelves has given it something rarer than a single loyal audience: recognition from shoppers on either side of a divide that the state is about to make permanent.

The looming deadline has added a layer of urgency to how those shoppers behave. High Tide reports that some hemp drinkers are stocking up, setting aside higher-dose products and familiar brands from liquor-store shelves while they still can. Retailers are reacting unevenly. Some are pulling in whatever inventory they can find, while others have paused new orders entirely. Visits to stores, the company says, have not turned up empty shelves so far.

All of this is playing out inside a state market that was already under pressure. New Jersey’s legal cannabis industry has grown quickly to more than 250 licensed dispensaries, with tight margins and stiff competition, and operators have watched the hemp market draw consumers away from the regulated one. The November deadline is, in part, an attempt to pull those consumers back inside the licensed system.

What Changes on November 13

The mechanics of the shift are set in state law. Since late May 2026, an intoxicating hemp beverage sold in New Jersey has been capped at 5 milligrams of THC per serving and 10 milligrams per container. Licensed liquor stores and cannabis retailers have been permitted to sell within those limits during a transition window. That window closes on November 13, 2026. 

After it, a beverage containing more than a trace amount of THC is treated as cannabis rather than hemp, which means it can be produced and sold only through the licensed cannabis supply chain. Lawmakers have revisited the rules several times, including proposals to change container sizes and potency ceilings, but the November cutoff for liquor-store sales has remained in place through each revision. Anyone planning around it should confirm the current status close to the date, since the timeline has moved once already.

For most hemp beverage brands, that cutoff is a hard problem. For High Tide, it is a decision the company has been positioned to make. Its cannabis line is already inside the system that survives the deadline, and the company reports that the real marijuana drinks are stocked in more than 50 New Jersey dispensaries, a number it says is still growing. The open question is what happens to the 10-milligram hemp version once liquor stores can no longer carry it.

The company frames the answer as a fork rather than a crisis. “We either move the 10mg hemp into dispensaries exclusively or we discontinue it,” High Tide says. “Either way we decided to go down both paths so we would be here for the consumers no matter what.” On the potency debate, the company expects the 5-milligram serving standard to hold, and says it has options ready if the rules change instead. That readiness is the practical payoff of an origin story that began as a taste test. 

By building both versions early, High Tide gave itself a path through the deadline that does not depend on which way the rules finally break.

Building for Whatever Comes Next

High Tide describes itself less as a cannabis company or an alcohol-alternative company than as a brand built around a feeling. The team is from just outside Philadelphia in southern New Jersey, and the reference points are local and specific: a drink worth raising at a beach gathering, a tailgate, a New Year’s toast, a quiet end to an ordinary day. The company says its founders are drinkers at heart who wanted an option for themselves, something cold and refreshing with a light lift and none of the regret.

That identity is meant to travel across whatever channel the state leaves open. “If we don’t have to pick a side, we won’t,” the company says. “If we do have to stop producing the hemp High Tides, we will. Either way, High Tide will be here.” As New Jersey’s market continues to consolidate around the licensed system, and as the state’s cannabis scene keeps drawing national attention, the brands most likely to endure are the ones that understood early what their customers were really buying. High Tide’s read is that people were never only after a drink. They were after a reason to gather, and a way to be part of it. The company intends to keep supplying both, on whichever shelf the tide leaves it standing on.

Photos courtey of High Tide

Partner Content Disclosure: This article was produced in connection with a promotional partnership with High Tide. Reporting is based on interviews with the High Tide team and information shared during those conversations about the company, its products, and its experience in New Jersey’s THC beverage market.

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Only about a third of Americans think marijuana is dangerous, and less than half still believe the “gateway theory” that using cannabis makes people significantly more likely to try more dangerous drugs, according to a new poll.

The survey, released by Rasmussen Reports on Tuesday, asked U.S. adults how dangerous they think cannabis is.

Just over one out of three indicated they think marijuana is either somewhat (24 percent) or very dangerous (13 percent).

In contrast, a majority of respondents said cannabis is either not dangerous at all (27 percent) or not very dangerous (28 percent).

When asked how likely they believe it is that “marijuana use leads to the use of more dangerous drugs,” just 18 percent said it is very likely and 27 percent believe it is somewhat likely. Nineteen percent said it is not at all likely and 27 percent think it is not very likely, while 9 percent said they aren’t sure.

When broken down by party, Republicans are more likely to believe that marijuana is either somewhat or very dangerous (50 percent) than Democrats are (33 percent).

GOP voters are also more likely to buy the gateway theory about marijuana being very or somewhat likely to be true (60 percent) than Democrats are (42 percent).

The poll involved interviews with 1,234 American adults between September 8-10 and has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.

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The results comport with other recent surveys showing that American attitudes and behaviors around cannabis are shifting.

A Gallup poll released last month, for example, found that a record-high number of U.S. adults now smoke marijuana, while cigarette smoking is at an all-time low.

Similarly, an analysis of federal National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) data published last year showed that more Americans now use marijuana than smoke cigarettes amid shifting perceptions of harm of the two substances.

A study released last month found that people who consume cannabis-infused THC beverages end up drinking less alcohol.

Last year, a separate Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans remain in favor of legalizing marijuana but that support saw a slight dip from 2024—a trend that’s been “driven by Republicans” who are turning against the reform.

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