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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In December 2021, Malta became the first European nation to adopt a national adult-use cannabis legalization measure. The only other countries on the planet to adopt a national legalization measure before Malta were Uruguay in 2013 and Canada in 2018. Nearly five years after Malta modernized its cannabis laws, a lawmaker is calling for an independent review.

“Labour MP Mariah Meli has called for an independent, evidence-based evaluation of Malta’s cannabis legislation, saying concerns raised by residents about the impact of the reform on communities should be heard and addressed.” Malta Today wrote in its local reporting. “Meli said issues including cannabis odours and the location of cannabis-related premises close to homes and families needed to be examined in a “balanced manner”.”

“I believe the time has come for an independent, evidence-based evaluation of the 2021 responsible cannabis-use reform and its impact on health, young people, safety, and residents,” Meli said, according to the outlet.

Malta’s adult-use cannabis legalization model involves permitting people 18 years old and older to cultivate up to four plants in their private residences and possess up to 50 grams of cannabis for personal use.

National recreational cannabis sales are not permitted in Malta due to current European Union agreements that prohibit national adult-use commerce. However, adults in Malta can join one of the nation’s licensed cultivation associations and source cannabis legally.

As of the start of 2026, Malta has experienced an over 80% reduction in cannabis court cases related to simple cannabis possession post-legalization, significantly lessening the burden on the nation’s criminal justice system. Malta is a great real-time example of what happens, and doesn’t happen, when a country adopts national cannabis legalization.

“Malta has one of the lowest rates of cannabis use among young people in Europe, according to new EU data.” Lovin Malta reported last July. “Just 1.2% of people aged between 15 and 34 in Malta reported using cannabis in the past year, placing the country among the lowest in the European Union.”

“The figure stands in stark contrast to countries like Italy, where 21.5% of young adults said they had used cannabis over the same period, meaning more than one in five people in that age group.” the outlet also reported. It is worth noting that Italy has yet to adopt a national adult-use cannabis legalization measure.

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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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Mormon Wives star Mikayla Matthews says medical cannabis was “literally life-changing” for her nerve pain and sleep, bringing weed into a show already built around the tensions between modern Utah life and Mormon expectations. But the Church’s position is more nuanced than a simple prohibition.

Mikayla Matthews, one of the stars of Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, has opened up about using medical cannabis for severe nerve pain and to help her sleep, calling the experience “literally life-changing,” according to Green State. 

In the season five premiere, Matthews visits a Utah dispensary with her husband, Jace Terry, where she speaks with a pharmacist and looks through different products. Matthews has said she suffers from Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome, or CIRS, a condition that has left her dealing with painful symptoms.

“It was mainly just for sleep at first,” Matthews says in the episode. “I had debilitating nerve pain through my whole body.”

Then came the moment that has attracted attention well beyond the reality-TV universe.

“The first time I tried it, it was literally life-changing,” she says. “It was the only thing that had ever taken away my nerve pain, and I’m finally well-rested.”

For a show with “Mormon” in its title, a dispensary trip might sound like an obvious act of religious rebellion. The reality, however, is considerably more complicated.

Actually… The Mormon Church Doesn’t Ban All Medical Cannabis

Matthews was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church, although she has said she has not been an active member for around a decade.

The Church is famously associated with the Word of Wisdom, its health code, which restricts substances like alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea. Adult-use weed also falls outside what the Church considers acceptable. But… medical cannabis is a different matter.

Current Church policy explicitly distinguishes between recreational and medicinal use. The Church opposes cannabis for non-medical purposes but permits it when administered under the direction of a competent physician.

That makes Matthews’ dispensary visit less doctrinally explosive than it may initially appear. She is using cannabis within Utah’s regulated medical system and discussing it as a way to manage physical symptoms, not simply as an intoxicant.

Matthews herself appeared uncertain about the distinction on the show. “I assume that the Church doesn’t like marijuana, but they also didn’t like soda,” she joked.

The soda comparison is particularly telling in a Mormon context. Coffee and tea remain prohibited under Church teachings, while caffeinated soda does not—a distinction worth noting when considering Utah’s celebrated “dirty soda” culture.

The Mormon Church Helped Shape Utah’s Medical Weed Laws

The Church’s acceptance of medical cannabis does not mean it embraced legalization without reservations.

Utah became a major battleground over medical cannabis in 2018, when voters considered Proposition 2, a ballot initiative that would have established a statewide medical program.

Church leaders opposed the proposal, arguing that it was too permissive and did not contain sufficient safeguards around distribution, dosage, and access. At the same time, Church officials repeatedly emphasized that they did not oppose cannabis as medicine in principle.

Instead, Church representatives, lawmakers, medical organizations and cannabis advocates eventually negotiated a more restrictive compromise.

Utah voters nevertheless approved Proposition 2 with roughly 53% of the vote. Shortly afterward, state lawmakers replaced much of the initiative with the negotiated medical cannabis framework during a special legislative session.

The debate also showed that ordinary Latter-day Saints were hardly united against medical weed. Polling before the vote showed substantial support for legalization among Church members, although opposition increased among highly observant members after Church leadership publicly campaigned against the initiative.

So, medical cannabis had already been part of the conversation within Mormon communities for years before a Mormon Wives camera entered a dispensary.

‘Mormon Wives’ Has Always Been About Where the Rules Bend

The Hulu series follows members of MomTok, a group of Utah-based mothers and influencers whose relationships with Mormonism range from active religious participation to cultural identification and outright distance from the Church.

The show became a hit largely by leaning into that contradiction. Its cast navigates sex, marriage, divorce, drinking, therapy, cosmetic procedures, and Mormon expectations while constantly debating which rules still matter to them. Now cannabis enters that conversation.

The series has previously featured medical or wellness-oriented use of substances including ketamine and nitrous oxide, creating an unusual contrast with a religious culture that strongly discourages intoxication, but Matthews’ experience may be the clearest cannabis example yet.

She even tells viewers that, amid the stress surrounding the series and MomTok drama, cannabis has been “fixing everything.”

Photo by Bailey Burton on Unsplash // Edited with AI

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Twenty patient associations from across northeastern Brazil are meeting in Fortaleza this month, inside a free three-day arts fair. The agenda item that matters: how to keep supplying patients when every step of the chain, from seed to prescription, sits on unstable ground.

Brazil’s medical cannabis system doesn’t look much like anything in the United States. There are no dispensaries. Patients get access through court authorizations and through nonprofit patient associations that cultivate and supply members, operating in a legal space that shifts with every new regulation and every judge.

From September 18 to 20, roughly twenty of those associations are gathering at the Dragão do Mar Center for Art and Culture in Fortaleza, capital of Ceará, for the second Northeastern Meeting of Cannabic Associations. It runs inside Febre de Arte, a free arts and culture fair now in its second year.

What they’re actually discussing

Two roundtables open the fair on Friday. The first covers associative governance and how associations can partner with each other under RDC 1014, the current Anvisa framework.

The second one is titled, plainly enough, “Insecurity in the routine of associations: from seed to cultivation, from prescription to logistics.” That title is the whole problem in one line. Associations in Brazil operate under constant legal uncertainty at every link, and the northeastern region gets substantially less attention than the wealthier southeast.

Confirmed participants include ABRACAM, Adapta, Verde Ouro, Pangaia, ACAFLOR, Risoflora Medicinal, Terra Livre, Ceará Saúde Livre, IRACEMA, AME-CE and Aliança Medicinal, among others.

The Argentine in the room

Saturday’s talks bring Gabriel Gimenez, former director of ARICCAME, Argentina’s hemp and medical cannabis regulatory agency, and former national federal articulation director at INASE, the country’s seed institute, where he led the creation of Argentina’s national cannabis seed registry.

His talk is on seed regulation and why a national registry matters. It’s a more interesting subject than it sounds: seed genetics and traceability are where most cannabis regulatory systems either hold together or fall apart, and Brazil doesn’t have a registry of its own.

Gimenez pointed to “the importance of articulation beyond the southeastern region of the country, especially due to the cultivation potential and its social and economic benefits for the Brazilian Northeast.”

And the rest of it

Saturday’s Febre Talks run under the theme “Science, innovation, and stories that transform.” Sunday’s shift to politics, regulation and access, with speakers including UFC medical school professor Dr. Magda Almeida, anti-prohibitionist lawyer Bianca Cardial, Marcha da Maconha Fortaleza co-founder Tamára Silva, and Luisa Cela, former Culture Secretary of Ceará.

Around all of that: short film screenings, visual art from Fortaleza-based artists, performances, and two nights of live music programmed with Auê Feira, a local fair that has drawn more than 500,000 people across 100-plus editions.

Everything is free.

Details

• When: September 18, 19 and 20, 2026
• Where: Centro Dragão do Mar de Arte e Cultura, Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil
• Hours: Friday 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.
• Admission: free
• Full program: febredearte.com

High Times is a media partner of Febre de Arte 2026.

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San Francisco officials are seeking public input on newly released draft rules for cannabis cafes in line with a California state law enacted last year that authorizes local governments to let marijuana retailers to expand their services.

In July, the city’s Board of Supervisors and mayor approved an ordinance to let marijuana dispensaries serve food and drinks inside their on-site consumption areas. On Friday, the city’s Office of Cannabis posted proposed regulations for how those cannabis cafes will operate.

The draft rules touch on operations plans, employee training, security, deliveries, inventory control and access for medical cannabis patients.

Public feedback is being accepted through September 25.

In late 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed AB 1775, allowing marijuana businesses to offer non-cannabis food and non-alcoholic beverages and host live events such as concerts in their on-site cannabis consumption areas if they get permission from their local government.

The new law officially took effect last January, but it has taken months for local officials in San Francisco and other cities to begin enacting their own ordinances to lay out the rules for how cannabis cafes can operate.

Under the San Francisco proposal, a business would need to obtain a new Cannabis Café Permit as well as a Cannabis Consumption Permit.

Businesses would need to implement written procedures “designed to discourage customers from removing cannabis products intended for on-site consumption from the designated consumption area” or the overall premises.

There would be some restrictions on the name of cannabis cafes, barring those that would be likely to “mislead members of the public into believing cannabis products may legally be sold to persons under 21 years of age” or that would entice minors to attempt to patronize the businesses.

Dispensaries would need to maintain accommodations for medical cannabis patients, which may include providing an area where the can communication confidentially with employees and maintaining an adequate supply of medical marijuana products.

Written comments on the proposed cannabis cafe rules can be sent by email to [email protected] or via mail or in person to Office of Cannabis; 49 South Van Ness; Suite 660; San Francisco, CA 94103.

City officials separately released proposed rules changes to incorporate cannabis cafes into the existing Good Neighbor Policy for marijuana businesses.

They also posted new resources for businesses to check their eligibility to open a cannabis cafe, as well as bulletin and a FAQ on the issue.

Prior to signing the current cannabis cafe law, Newsom vetoed a prior version of the bill, saying that while he appreciated that the intent was to “provide cannabis retailers with increased business opportunities and an avenue to attract new customers,” he felt “concerned this bill could undermine California’s long-standing smoke-free workplace protections.”

To that end, the measure as enacted contains changes to create separation between public consumption spaces and back rooms of businesses where food is prepared or stored in order to better protect the health of workers in line with the governor’s concerns.

The law makes explicitly clear that hemp-based food items or drinks are not considered “non-cannabis” products that could be sold at the cafes. It also says that non-cannabis items “shall be stored and displayed separately and distinctly from all cannabis and cannabis products present on the premises.”

The legislation also allows live musical or other performances on the premises of a cannabis retailer in areas where on-site consumption is allowed.

Ahead of the governor’s signing of the measure, actor Woody Harrelson—who owns a marijuana lounge in West Hollywood called The Woods, alongside co-founders comedian Bill Maher and tennis star John McEnroe—called for its enactment. Whoopi Goldberg also joined in that push, with a video encouraging the governor to sign it.

Earlier this month, Newsom announced that legal marijuana sales have generated nearly $8.4 billion in tax revenue for California communities since voters approved adult-use legalization in 2016.

He also recently signed legislation to more clearly define the types of marijuana packaging and labeling that is prohibited due to appealing to children.

The governor recently took credit for helping to lead the push for the state to legalize marijuana and discussed his own limited experience with using cannabis.

Last October, however, he vetoed a bill that would have allowed certain marijuana microbusinesses to ship medical cannabis products directly to patients via common carriers like FedEx and UPS, stating that the proposal “would be burdensome and overly complex to administer.”

Newsom did sign a bill earlier that month aimed at streamlining research on marijuana and psychedelics.

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Last September, the governor also signed a measure into law to put a pause on a recently enacted tax hike on marijuana products.

Meanwhile, a lawmaker spoke to Marijuana Moment about her decision to put her own bill to legalize cannabis dispensary drive-thru windows on hold for now.

California’s treasurer recently said the marijuana legalization law that voters approved a decade ago has been a “complete failure” and should be replaced with a new ballot initiative that prioritizes consumers and small businesses.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, who is endorsed by President Donald Trump, recently told Marijuana Moment that taxes and regulations on cannabis are “too high.”

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Twenty-three brands took home 33 medals across 11 categories in Billings. Two farms split the flower board, one farm placed in every flower category, and solventless turned up in places it didn’t use to.

The High Times Cannabis Cup Montana ran in Billings on Saturday, September 5, and the official results are in. They say something specific about where Big Sky Country’s market is right now.

Start with flower. Three categories, nine medals, and one farm in all three. Funk Farm took second in hybrid with Apples & Bananas, second in indica with Permanent Marker and first in sativa with Ancient Blue Dream. Nobody else placed across the board. Add a third in solventless vapes for The Vision and Funk Farm finished the weekend with four medals, more than any other brand in the room.

But the golds went elsewhere. Wild Sky Farms won both hybrid and indica, with Purple Push Pop and Baby Yodaz, and then took second in solventless concentrates with Rainbow Chip. Two of the three flower firsts, from one farm.

The other thing worth noticing is where the word solventless shows up. It has its own two categories, as it does at every Cup now, but in Montana it also turned up in categories that aren’t about concentrates at all. Grizzly Pine’s second-place edible is a Bevvies collaboration built on Groove Solventless material, and Groove went on to win the solventless vape category outright with Rainbow Push Pop. SensiCare medaled with Solventless Caramels. Stokes took second in gummies with a peach solventless.

That is three of the six edible and gummy medals going to products that lead with their extraction method. A few years ago, solventless was a thing hash people argued about. In Billings, it was a selling point on a drink.

Here are all the winners.

Flower

Hybrid Flower

1. Wild Sky Farms, Purple Push Pop
2. Funk Farm, Apples & Bananas
3. Soultonix, Super Buff Cherry

Indica Flower

1. Wild Sky Farms, Baby Yodaz
2. Funk Farm, Permanent Marker
3. Bloominati, Crimson Zkittles

Sativa Flower

1. Funk Farm, Ancient Blue Dream
2. Legends Cannabis, Green Crack
3. Collective Elevation, Golden Goat

Pre-Rolls

Pre-Rolls

1. Sacred Sun Farms, DJ Shorts Original Blueberry
2. High Mountain, Head Wreck
3. Holistic Releaf by Design, Donny Burger

Infused Pre-Rolls

1. Stokes, Diamond Moon Rocket Cheesecake
2. Bloom Montana – The Clear, Twax (Blueberry)
3. Fused, Strawberry Ice Cream

Concentrates

Solvent Concentrates

1. Montana Kush, Member Berry
2. Sacred Sun Farms, Blue Octane
3. Uncle Bucks, Rick Pickle

Solventless Concentrates

1. Glacier Solventless, Z Head #4 Private Reserve
2. Wild Sky Farms, Rainbow Chip
3. Cannabis Counter, Lemon Fatman

Vapes

Solvent Vape Pens & Cartridges

1. Grizzly Pine, Dime Huckleberry Jam
2. Nimbus, Kiwi Dragon
3. Viking Vapes, Asgardian Apple

Solventless Vape Pens & Cartridges

1. Groove Solventless, Rainbow Push Pop
2. Montana Kush, The Fizz
3. Funk Farm, The Vision

Edibles

Edibles

1. Holistic Releaf by Design, Dark Sea Salt Caramel Truffle
2. Grizzly Pine, Bevvies x Groove Solventless Huckle Cherry Drink
3. SensiCare, Solventless Caramels

Edibles: Gummies

1. Smokiez Edibles, Sour Watermelon
2. Stokes, Peach Solventless
3. Bloom Montana – Wana, Fast Acting-Peach Bellini

Congratulations to every winner, and thanks to everyone who came out to Billings to judge, smoke, sell and argue about it. The next Cup is Massachusetts.

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Mexico’s Supreme Court has pushed the boundaries of legal adult-use cannabis a little further. This time, the issue was not cultivation, possession or transport. It was cooking.

The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, or SCJN, ruled that authorizations for recreational cannabis self-consumption may also cover the use of cannabis or THC in prepared or semi-prepared foods, as long as those foods are made strictly for the permit holder’s personal use.

The September 10 decision hinges on a distinction that sounds simple but carries real legal weight: making cannabis-infused food for yourself at home is not the same thing as manufacturing a regulated product for sale or distribution.

In other words, Mexico did not just legalize a commercial market for THC brownies, cookies or gummies. What the Court did recognize is that putting cannabis into certain foods can fall within the broader right to personal cannabis use that Mexican courts have been building out for more than a decade.

Cooking With Cannabis Can Count as “Preparation”

The case grew out of an authorization request filed with Mexico’s Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks, better known as Cofepris.

The health regulator ultimately granted permission for activities tied to personal cannabis use, but it imposed several restrictions. One of them barred the permit holder from using cannabis in prepared or semi-prepared foods.

The dispute eventually made its way back to the Supreme Court.

In a 7-2 ruling, the full Court found that adding cannabis or tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, to food intended solely for personal consumption amounts to an ordinary culinary activity. On its own, the Court said, that does not make the food a specially regulated health product.

As a result, the SCJN ordered Cofepris to issue an authorization that also allows for that kind of preparation.

That distinction matters because “preparing” was already among the activities that could be authorized for recreational self-consumption, alongside sowing, cultivating, harvesting, possessing and transporting cannabis. 

The unanswered question was how far that idea of preparation could go.

The Court has now drawn the line a little more clearly: cooking cannabis-infused food for yourself can fall within it.

No, Mexico Did Not Just Legalize Edibles

The ruling comes with very clear limits. Cannabis-infused foods made under this framework cannot be sold, distributed, given away, supplied to other people or offered to the public. The authorization applies only to the personal use of the person who holds it.

The ruling also does not erase existing health regulations for other cannabis-related products.

The Court upheld Cofepris’ restrictions on using cannabis in products subject to specific regulatory controls, including medicines, herbal remedies, medical devices, dietary supplements, cosmetics, vapes and similar products.

So the takeaway is not that anything containing cannabis is now fair game.

The ruling is much narrower: preparing cannabis-infused food at home for strictly personal consumption can be part of legally authorized recreational cannabis use.

Mexico’s Cannabis Rules Are Still Being Built in Court

The decision is the latest chapter in Mexico’s unusually court-driven cannabis policy.

In 2015, the SCJN ruled for the first time that the country’s absolute prohibition on recreational cannabis self-consumption was unconstitutional. After reaffirming that position in subsequent cases, the full Court in June 2021 invalidated, with general effect, provisions that prevented the Health Ministry from authorizing activities related to the recreational self-consumption of cannabis and THC. At the time, the Court made clear that adults could seek authorization for activities including sowing, cultivating, harvesting, preparing, possessing and transporting cannabis.

But it also set a limit that remains firmly in place five years later: those authorizations do not permit commercialization, supply or distribution.

Congress, meanwhile, has still not completed a comprehensive legal framework for adult-use cannabis.

That has left Mexico in a strange middle ground. The constitutional right to personal cannabis use has already been recognized, but the rules governing what that right actually looks like in practice are still being filled in piece by piece.

And for now, one of those pieces extends all the way to the kitchen.

Photo by Margo Amala en Unsplash

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