The program is “designed to expand opportunities for marginalized or under-represented individuals to participate in the state’s regulated marijuana industry.”

By Rebecca Rivas, Missouri Independent

Missouri received nearly 900 applications for its final round of marijuana microbusiness licenses, with the Missouri Lottery scheduled to draw applicants on September 9 for 77 available licenses.

But unlike the entrepreneurs selected in the program’s first two rounds, this year’s applicants will enter a system reshaped by two years of growing pains and dozens of license revocations.

Jimi Poe, owner of 816 Dispensary in Platte City, was among the first microbusiness licensees selected in 2023. Two years later, he opened Missouri’s first operating microbusiness dispensary.

“It was definitely a long journey,” Poe said during the Missouri Division of Cannabis Regulation’s latest podcast episode. “It was a journey that round three people are not going to have to go.”

The microbusiness program was established through the 2022 constitutional amendment voters approved to legalize recreational marijuana. It was “designed to expand opportunities for marginalized or under-represented individuals to participate in the state’s regulated marijuana industry,” according to the state’s website.

As part of the DCR Out Loud episode, Poe spoke with Lesley Turek, the division’s chief equity officer, about the evolution of the program since its inception in 2023.

This is the third and final lottery for microbusinesses, where the state will issue at least 29 wholesale and at least 34 dispensary licenses to meet the constitutional requirement of 144 total micro licenses.

Poe was one of the “pioneers” of the microbusiness industry, Turek said, and as of August 18, there are 21 operational microbusiness licenses—five dispensaries and 16 wholesale.

These companies heavily relied on each other to learn and grow their businesses, Poe said, so it’s important for new owners to build relationships right away.

“That’s one of the great benefits of the microbusiness program,” Turek said, “is that it really is a community.”

Turek, who oversees the microbusiness program, also stressed that the winners should also develop a relationship with their compliance officers so they understand the new rules put in place in May. They’re rules cannabis regulators proposed in 2024 after they revoked numerous licenses due to unconstitutional ownership deals.

“I think it’s really important too for licensees,” she said, “both current and future applicants, to understand—any sort of arrangement or agreements that you are trying to get into, include DCR with those so that we can make sure that you’re remaining compliant.”

The new rules governing the microbusiness program provide a deeper explanation of what it means to “majority own and operate” a license, which was a requirement in the 2022 constitutional amendment.

They allow regulators to complete an extensive review of potential ownership arrangements before the licenses are issued, rather than afterwards. And they mandate that regulators communicate directly with majority owners, not consultants, and that applicants take a course on compliance before applying and after receiving the license.

Poe’s journey

When Poe was 20, he said he got slapped with a nonviolent marijuana charge.

“I had a so-called friend get in trouble,” Poe told Turek, “and he wanted to get out of that trouble, so he hooked me up with an undercover cop and told me it was his uncle.”

He ended up selling 12 pounds to the undercover cop and did 14 months in prison.

“I was dating my wife at the time, and I remember telling her that, ‘Hey, do this bit with me, and I promise I’ll never sell marijuana again,’” Poe said. “And I never did until here we are, selling marijuana together in the dispensary under a state license.”

August 4 was the 20th anniversary of the day he got busted.

Now his charge is an important part of his business’ story, and it also made him eligible to apply for a microbusiness.

“I remember when I first won the license, I was like, ‘I’m gonna be the first to open,’” he said. “That was my goal from the time I won the license, and I also wanted to make my mark within the industry. So I felt like I achieved those goals.”

While it took two years instead of the six months he anticipated to open, Poe stressed that it won’t be as hard for these new winners.

“There’s a lot more people that are coming online,” he said, “and there’s a lot more stuff out there than when I first started. There were a lot of gray areas, and people were still trying to figure it out.”

When he opened his doors, “people thought I was crazy,” he said.

He only had nine different strands of what the industry calls “flower,” or dry weed in containers.

Now he has 32 different strains of flower, disposable distillate carts, multiple different dabs and 12 different pre-rolled joints. His menu started as one page and now it’s eight pages long, so “things have grown tremendously,” in a year, he said.

“We’re still lacking on the manufacturer side,” Poe said of the microbusiness community. “The manufacturing and equipment and the know-how, people are still trying to figure that out.”

Turek said before the Missouri Lottery draws the winners, cannabis regulators will vet the applications for basic things, like making sure no one has applied twice and application fees have been paid.

“It does take a little bit of time,” she said, “because if, for example, an application fee doesn’t come through, we give that person a chance to make that payment so that they can go to the lottery.”

Then after the draw, Turek said they’ll be in “full processing mode.”

They will be conducting a full review of the top-drawn applications, making sure that all the business arrangements are compliant with state law and background checks show no disqualifying felonies.

“We’ll start by making a phone call to reach out to the owners and say, ‘Hey, it’s us, DCR. Here’s your specialist with this team,’” Turek said. “Give you specific names to contact and tell you what’s going to happen in the process.”

If that application doesn’t meet state requirements, then the next top-drawn applicant will be processed. This is part of the new rules to prevent numerous license revocations.

Lisa Cox, spokeswoman for the Missouri Department for Health and Senior Services that oversees the cannabis division, said the division plans to award microbusiness licenses from Round 3 before the end of 2026.

Currently, there are 46 microbusiness licenses from the Round 1 and 2 that are active but not yet approved to operate.

Poe said that’s partly because owners were nervous to open and unsure if the microbusiness program was going to thrive.

“I’ve been operational for over a year,” he said, “and I’ve proven that we’re going to make it.”

This story was first published by Missouri Independent.

Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.

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The government spent most of its final brief making the legal case for Schedule III. Then, in the closing pages, it took the opposition’s witnesses apart, and quoted some of those same witnesses to prove cannabis is medicine. One scientist walked away almost untouched. She works at the DEA.

The federal government’s closing argument for moving marijuana to Schedule III is in, and its lawyers did not hedge. “Marijuana can no longer remain in Schedule I,” the DEA’s attorneys wrote in a post-hearing brief filed August 17 with Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek C. Julius, asking the judge to “expeditiously recommend” the transfer.

It is the government’s last word before Julius drafts the recommendation that will frame DEA Administrator Terrance “Terry” Cole‘s final decision. And it lands where this proceeding was always going to land: not on whether cannabis has medicinal value, but on which legal test gets to answer that question, and on whose testimony the judge should be allowed to believe.

High Times has covered this hearing since before it opened: the participant roster stacked entirely with opponents, the DOJ’s argument that those opponents’ real injuries are commercial, and the stretch of days in which the opposition’s own witnesses kept helping the government. The closing brief turns that pattern into legal strategy.

Six briefs arrived by the August 17 deadline, as first reported by Marijuana Moment: the government’s, a joint filing from Smart Approaches to Marijuana and the states of Idaho, Indiana and Nebraska, separate briefs from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association, a joint brief from DUID Victim Voices and pain physician Dr. Kenneth Finn, and a pro se statement from pharmacist Dr. Phillip Drum. Julius capped each at 50 pages. The government used all 50. On Thursday morning, the judge issued the order correcting the hearing transcript, putting the full record in public hands by August 26.

Getting cannabis out of Schedule I is the easy half, and the brief treats it that way. Schedule I requires that a substance have no accepted medical use. The 2023 Health and Human Services evaluation found three: chronic pain, anorexia related to a medical condition, and nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy. One is enough. A 2024 Office of Legal Counsel opinion holds that the DEA owes those scientific findings “significant deference” and cannot redo them from scratch. Then the brief adds the arithmetic: more than 30,000 practitioners authorized to recommend cannabis to more than six million patients across 43 U.S. jurisdictions, which the government says also undercuts any claim that cannabis cannot be used safely under medical supervision.

Getting it in Schedule III specifically takes dozens more pages on abuse potential and dependence, most of it built on the HHS comparison of cannabis against heroin, fentanyl, cocaine and prescription opioids, plus government witness Dr. Corey Burchman‘s testimony that opioid withdrawal is “horrific” while cannabis withdrawal rarely sends anyone to a hospital.

A reminder of what’s actually on the table, because coverage of this saga keeps blurring it: April’s order already aimed to move FDA-approved cannabis products and state-licensed medical marijuana to Schedule III. This proceeding decides whether the rest of the plant follows. The government wants all of it moved, while keeping cannabis federally controlled either way.

The Closing Pages

Julius ruled before the hearing that all expert designations would be decided afterward, in writing. The government took him up on it. Starting on page 43, the last eight pages of the brief work through the opposition’s witnesses one at a time, sorting what it calls the “so-called expert witnesses” into different grounds for disqualification.

Some testified outside their expertise, the brief argues. Yale psychiatrist Dr. Deepak D’Souza was offered by the states as an expert in five areas and then asked about pain management, which the brief notes sits outside the boundaries D’Souza drew around his own expertise on the stand.

Some answered the wrong question entirely, per the government: workplace drug-testing witnesses describing hypothetical future hurdles, a state investigator who spoke about “deregulation” and “legalization” in a proceeding that would do neither, and Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal, whom the states never properly noticed as an expert and who, the brief says, admitted he has “no meaningful connection to Nebraska, Idaho or Indiana,” the three states that called him.

The sharpest allegation gets its own section. According to the filing, Ed Wood of DUID Victim Voices and Finn both ignored the tribunal’s sequestration instructions and admitted to reading transcripts of earlier testimony before taking the stand. Their testimony, the government argues, “has been irreparably tainted and cannot be cured other than providing it little to no weight.” The brief cites transcript pages for both admissions. Those are the government’s characterizations of a record the public still cannot read—though that changes next week.

Dr. Drum, testifying on his own behalf, painted a different picture. He told the tribunal there is no scientific indication or medical use for plant-based marijuana, and the brief notes his opinion on cachexia and cancer pain rests on personal experience with two patients. It also notes what he said next: that Schedule II “would be potentially more appropriate level for marijuana,” because of how fast it absorbs. Schedule II is stricter than Schedule III. It is still not Schedule I. A designated party who came to oppose rescheduling told the judge, under oath, that cannabis belongs somewhere other than where it is.

The filing allows itself one moment of grace. Of Laura Stack, who testified about losing her son, the government writes that it “acknowledges the personal impact of Ms. Stack’s testimony and commends her testimony.” Then it goes back to work.

Because the same brief that asks Julius to discount these witnesses also quotes them making the government’s case. “Testimony from both Government and Opposed Parties alike support the Government’s position,” it argues, and the receipts follow. Harvard’s Dr. Bertha Madras, SAM’s marquee expert, “testified that there is scientific evidence of marijuana’s efficacy for neuropathic pain patients, although she believes that the science is weak,” per the brief, and her own demonstrative exhibit noted benefits for wasting syndrome, appetite and pain in cancer patients and severe nausea. D’Souza described a study in which a standardized cannabis extract beat placebo for pain.

Finn gets perhaps the most lawyerly treatment in the document. A footnote sets up the fallback in advance: the government believes his testimony should get no weight because of the sequestration problem, but “should the Tribunal choose to give any consideration” to it, the brief highlights the parts where he admits he recommended marijuana to his own pain patients and believes there is likely a therapeutic benefit. Throw him out. If you won’t throw him out, he’s ours.

“The evidence proffered by the Opposed Parties boils down simply to the fact that Schedule III marijuana poses employment and enforcement difficulties, the same as any other controlled substance in Schedules II – V.”

The Witness They Didn’t Touch

Dr. Luli Akinfiresoye is a pharmacologist in the DEA’s Drug and Chemical Evaluation Section and an author of the agency’s own scientific review. SAM called her, and she delivered. The SAM and states brief cites her 25 times, using her testimony to argue that cannabis fails the five-part medical-use test the DEA applied for decades, including her line that there was no clear data supporting cannabis for chronic pain.

Cannabis Business Times, which first reported the brief’s credibility strategy, described her as the lone witness the government didn’t pick apart. The document is a shade stranger than that. Akinfiresoye appears in the government’s 50 pages exactly once, cited in support of the government’s own finding that marijuana has no consistent, reproducible chemical profile. The eight pages devoted to picking apart everyone else never name her.

Her actual conclusion does get answered, but on a different level. The government’s response is that the OLC found the five-part test “impermissibly narrow” and the newer two-part inquiry legally sufficient, so a witness applying the old test is applying a standard that no longer controls. That is not a rebuttal of her science. It is a request for a ruling about which science counts.

Which is the tell: against the sheriff, the pharmacist, the drugged-driving advocate and the Harvard addiction expert, the government litigates credibility and relevance. Against its own scientist, it shifts ground and argues that the question she answered is beside the point.

One more small detail, from the order Julius signed Thursday morning. On the tenth hearing day, when her surname came up, the official transcript rendered it “Akinfire-Soye.” The tribunal corrected it this week.

The Opposition’s Case

The other briefs are worth reading too, starting with the signature block. The SAM and states filing is signed by Patrick Philbin, former deputy White House counsel to Donald Trump, of Torridon Law, the firm founded by former Attorney General William Barr. It opens by noting the government has considered rescheduling marijuana “no fewer than nine times, most recently in 2016” and refused every time, then argues abuse and mental-health harms have worsened since. Its bluntest line comes a section header calling the two-part standard a test “That Was Made Up for This Proceeding.” Its conclusion: the government “has not carried its burden,” and marijuana should stay in Schedule I.

Tennessee’s investigators barely engage with the science. Their brief leads with a procedural knife: the attorney general long ago delegated scheduling authority to the DEA administrator, yet the attorney general issued the rescheduling proposal himself. “That alone is enough to hold the NPRM deficient and keep marijuana in Schedule I,” TBI writes.

NDASA’s brief traces the history of federal drug testing, from Reagan’s 1986 executive order through the 1987 Conrail crash, and builds toward one warning: because the federal testing framework defines illegal drugs by reference to Schedules I and II, moving marijuana to Schedule III could pull the legal floor out from under the Department of Transportation’s testing program, which its witness called the largest in the world. The DUID Victim Voices and Finn brief closes on the human register, invoking a “memorial roll of young people” and accusing the agency of institutional inaction. And Drum, filing alone, opens by declaring marijuana “not a medicine” and numbering the industry’s claims as fraudulent statements one and two.

What Happens Now

The record is nearly closed. On Thursday morning, Julius issued a 13-page order correcting the hearing transcript across all eleven days, and set August 26 as the deadline for the fully corrected version to go up on DEA’s website, with the fixes marked in red. Six parties filed proposed corrections; NDASA did not. Most of the list is housekeeping: misspelled names, misattributed speakers, dozens of lines on day four assigned to the wrong government attorney. Some of it is not. On day one, “there’s adulterants” becomes “there’s no adulterants.” On day eight, “illegal” becomes “legal.” On day ten, “increase” becomes “decrease.” The court reporter also spent a stretch of day one transcribing “Touhy,” the rule governing testimony by federal employees, as “DUID.”

After that, federal regulations direct Julius to prepare his recommended decision “as soon as practicable,” with no deadline attached. Parties then get 20 days after service to file exceptions, and the record is certified to Cole no earlier than 25 days after service. Cole faces no clock either. And the D.C. Circuit is still sitting on a motion to stay April’s order, a ruling that could scramble all of this in a week.

One footnote in the government’s brief points at the real fight: Julius separately asked the parties to brief the binding effect of the OLC opinion, the document that blessed the two-part test and shelved the five-part one. The judge flagged the exact question this case turns on. If the two-part test governs, the government’s arithmetic wins. If the five-part test survives, the strongest evidence against rescheduling came from a DEA pharmacologist.

The government spent its last eight pages taking witnesses apart. Its own scientist got one citation and a change of subject. She works down the hall.

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“We just want a fair shot. We’re not asking for anything special, no special privileges, but what they promised from the very beginning.”

By Hannah Meisel, Capitol News Illinois

Nearly seven years after Illinois lawmakers approved recreational cannabis legalization, applicants who lost out on coveted business licenses are still battling the state in court, alleging the law’s rollout undermined its purported equity goals.

At the time of its passage in 2019, supporters of Illinois’s landmark law touted it as the most equity-centric legalized cannabis program in the nation. But one of the centerpieces of that legislation—setting aside the majority of cannabis business licenses for “social equity” applicants disproportionately affected by the War on Drugs—proved more complicated than the law’s authors had imagined, setting off years of litigation over the process.

The final lawsuit of dozens filed following the first cannabis licensing lottery in 2020 finally got its day in court last week, marking the conclusion of a yearslong legal saga testing the state’s legalization policy. But it’s also the last chance for the plaintiff, Well-Being Holistic Group, to have an opportunity for a dispensary license after all four of its applications lost in three lotteries.

“We just want a fair shot,” the Rev. Otis Davis, said after a hearing in the case. “We’re not asking for anything special, no special privileges, but what they promised from the very beginning… So we just saying, ‘Hey, that the system is broken, then they should redo it, and they should give everybody a chance.’”

Davis preaches at Repairers of the Breach Ministries in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood and unsuccessfully ran for Chicago City Council in 2019. He was part of the team that applied for dispensary licenses as Well-Being Holistic Group in 2020. Chris Harris, an attorney who’d represented Davis, teamed up with his client along with Harris’ friend and business partner David Roberts to submit the applications.

Harris was blunt in his assessment of Davis’s value to the team: “Otis being a veteran, Otis being a practicing minister on the South Side of Chicago coming from a disproportionately impacted area—we had what we thought was a perfect team, and a team that was designed to win this type of license.”

In fact, Well-Being Holistic Group’s applications received perfect scores, but still didn’t win a license. While most lawsuits filed against the state after the lottery process were from applicants who disputed their scores for a chance to be included in the lottery, Well-Being’s case argues a different legal theory, which attorney Chris Carmichael of Henderson Parks said is the “most difficult path” of all the lawsuits.

Plaintiff alleges lotteries were rigged

Well-Being argues that the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which operated the lotteries, improperly allowed roughly 450 ineligible entries into a lottery of 901 applicants for dispensary licenses in the Chicago region. That, Well-Being argues, nearly doubled the size of the pool and reduced others’ chances of winning.

Well-Being alleges the entries should have been flagged as ineligible because corporate dispensaries that already had a footprint in Illinois’s medical cannabis market had their fingerprints on applications for social equity dispensary licenses.

In one case, Carmichael said a company paid for roughly $500,000 in application fees—something IDFPR and the consultants hired to vet applicants and conduct the lotteries should have caught, as the “remitter” line on those cashier’s checks contained the name of the company.

IDFPR maintains it did its due diligence by checking out the individuals named as principal officers on the license applications, which the agency argues would have caught any attempts to flout application limits or hide true ownership of the entity behind an application.

But Well-Being argues vetting only individuals missed the forest for the trees, causing IDFPR to overlook dozens of applications having the same corporate sponsorship.

Alex Moe, a lawyer from the Illinois Attorney General’s office, told Cook County Judge Patrick Stanton that Well-Being was “missing that consultants were expected” to take part in the application process. There were no rules against those consultants paying for application fees either, he said, unless consultants had undisclosed financial interest in the entity applying for licenses.

Further, Moe said Well-Being’s theory of mathematical unfairness in the lotteries is fundamentally incorrect.

“Even if Well-Being is correct and half the applicants should not have been in there, it doesn’t change the outcome,” he said.

By following the “paper trail” created by the lottery, Moe said IDFPR recalculated what would have happened if the applications Well-Being allege should’ve been marked ineligible weren’t in the pool. Well-Being would have placed 126th out of 450, he said.

“That’s something we know with mathematical certainty—that Well-Being would not have received a winning drawing,” Moe said.

Corrective lottery?

But Carmichael pointed out that since the state has social equity cannabis dispensary licenses going unused, “the only possible meaningful thing to do is to run a corrective lottery.”

The state already ran corrective lotteries after initial litigation held up the license awarding process for a year. The first dispensaries owned by social equity license holders didn’t open until November 2022—nearly three years after the application process opened. As of January, only 64 percent of licensed social equity dispensaries were operational, according to an analysis by The Chicago Reporter.

Stanton, who pointed out multiple times during the hearing that IDFPR had wide latitude over interpreting state statute, said he understood Well-Being’s claims but seemed skeptical of its arguments that a court should step in and tell a state agency how to do its job.

“It sounds to me like…there was some vetting done before the lottery. Maybe not the level of vetting you think should’ve been done,” he told Carmichael. “You’re saying they didn’t do enough. And I feel like, ‘Okay, that’s sort of the decision of the department.’”

The judge said he would need more proof that IDFPR “didn’t follow statute” in order for judicial review to be warranted.

“They did something,” Stanton said of IDFPR. “Perhaps not enough. Applying the standards they did, it seems to me they caught what they should’ve caught.”

The judge is set to rule at a May 21 hearing.

This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Photo elements courtesy of rawpixel and Philip Steffan.

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The UK’s long-running project to regulate CBD (cannabidiol) products has taken another major step forward, seeing thousands of products make it to the final phase of the novel foods approval process. 

Yesterday, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) announced that its 12-week public consultation to discuss the authorisation of three applications, which represent nearly 3000 CBD isolate products. 

After almost a decade, this marks the final step towards the UK becoming the first country to officially regulate the non-intoxicating cannabis extract, in what the European Industrial Hemp Association (EIHA) called ‘a crucial milestone confirming the safety profile of hemp-derived CBD’. 

It comes just six weeks after the new board of the FSA met with industry stakeholders to discuss its plan of action to move the process forward, a promise that, so far, it appears to be delivering on. 

First products reach the final stage of the novel foods approval process

Three applications have now passed the ‘risk management’ phase, meaning that the FSA is preparing to make recommendations to government ministers to officially authorise these products for sale, becoming the first regulatory body in the world to do so. 

These three dossiers, RP07, RP350, and RP427, were the first to pass through the risk assessment phase last year. The former two received their first positive safety assessments in April, and RP427 followed in August. 

Chanelle McCoy, the producer of Pureis, said in a press release: “This progress comes after a decade of time and significant investment in a comprehensive suite of Safety Clinical and toxicology studies to support its Novel Food application since its initial submission in January 2020.  

The company’s namesake, founder and CEO said she ‘commends the FSA’ and that this work has set a ‘new global standard’ for CBD regulation, which she hopes can be replicated across the world.  

Daniel Kruse, President of EIHA and CEO of EIHA projects GmbH, commented: “Years of coordinated investment and research have brought us here. Achieving the safety assessment and now advancing into the risk management phase shows that cooperation works. At the same time, the coming months will be crucial: the details matter, and we must make sure this framework can truly support both industry and consumers.” 

• Chanelle McCoy / Pureis
• RP07
• 11 products

• Cannaray
• RP350
• 43 products

• EIHA Consortium
• RP427
• 2718 products

Public consultation phase: ‘The details matter’

On August 28, 2025, the FSA announced the launch of a 12-week public consultation, which will shape the key elements of the request to government ministers for approval. 

This is perhaps the most critical phase of the process to date, as it will inform the regulatory pathway for CBD products for years to come, and potentially influence models elsewhere in the world. 

With many of the stipulations for approval remaining highly controversial this will represent a last-ditch effort to iron out some of these issues with the regulator. 

Each of the three application holders has now received a draft risk management recommendation from the FSA. 

Over the course of the next three months, the consultation will seek to establish the terms of authorisation, such as permitted food categories, the 10 mg/day acceptable daily intake (ADI), and the required safety labelling

As Francesco Mirizzi, Managing Director of EIHA, noted: “It is… important to underline that the consultation period will be key: we will raise a number of points to ensure that the final authorisation, definition and conditions for CBD novel foods are fit for purpose, viable for businesses, and safe and transparent for consumers.”

The FSA’s consultation, launched on 28 August 2025 and open until 20 November 2025, invites feedback on the three applications, targeted at food businesses, trade associations, enforcement authorities, consumer groups and the wider public across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with Food Standards Scotland (FSS) running a parallel process later in the summer.

The consultation seeks views on the proposed terms of authorisation, including permitted uses, labelling and safety conditions, alongside any evidence on the economic or consumer impacts of authorising CBD foods. 

Under the Windsor Framework, authorised CBD products placed on the GB market would also be eligible for sale in Northern Ireland through the Northern Ireland Retail Movement Scheme, although NI-based firms would not be permitted to manufacture their own CBD foods.

Responses can be submitted via the FSA’s online survey or email. Once closed, the FSA and FSS will publish a summary of responses within three months and use this input to inform final recommendations to ministers before any authorisations are granted.

According to the Cannabis Trades Association (CTA), which has played a key role in engaging with the regulator on behalf of industry stakeholders, alongside EIHA, a number of key issues are set to form the bulk of discussion over the coming months. 

• Daily intake: The fixed 10 mg/day limit does not reflect body-weight differences; a mg/kg model could provide more accurate guidance.
• Product scope: Restricting approvals to isolates and synthetic CBD risks excluding broad-spectrum hemp products favoured by consumers, potentially driving demand to the unregulated market.
• Labelling: Full warning statements may be impractical for small packs; a tiered model with core on-pack messages and extended information via QR code or leaflet is suggested.
• THC limits: The proposed 0.00001% w/w threshold is unrealistic given testing variability and inconsistent with the Home Office’s 1 mg/container exemption; harmonisation is needed.
• Data protection: Five-year exclusivity could disadvantage SMEs relying on the Public List; an equivalence route would help balance innovation and fair access.
• Enforcement: Divided responsibilities between local authorities (Novel Foods) and police (controlled substances) create complexity; stakeholders argue for a joint FSA–Home Office protocol.

Once the consultation comes to a close, and the terms of authorisation have been established, Ministers in England, Wales and Scotland will then decide whether to approve the applications. 

Since regulatory reforms came into force in April 2025, ministerial decisions now take effect immediately and are published on the official registers of authorised products, rather than being delayed by secondary legislation.

While there is a meaningful change in both the transparency and proaction from the FSA, many questions remain surrounding how companies currently on the public list move ahead or choose to reformulate, an option only announced last month. 

Looking further ahead, should a regulatory pathway be formally established, it remains unclear how new players can enter the market. 

This article was originally published by Business of Cannabis and is reprinted here with permission.

New analysis has found that NHS access to medical cannabis could boost the UK’s economy by £13.3 billion over the next decade by returning thousands back to work.

Widening NHS access to medical cannabis could add £4.5 billion to the economy over five years, and £13.3 billion over a decade, according to an economic analysis by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr).

The research, commissioned by Curaleaf Clinic, also suggests NHS access could help thousands of people with long-term health conditions return to work, while reducing hospital admissions for those eligible by 28% a year.

Since its legalisation in 2018, private prescriptions for cannabis-based medicines have already contributed around £283 million in Gross Value Added (GVA) by helping people get well and back to work.

Roughly 2.8 million people in the UK are currently locked out of employment due to long-term illness2. Polling3 conducted alongside the Cebr study, found 62% of those who have been out of work and prescribed medication believe they have exhausted all traditional treatment options.

Those behind the research say the findings reveal a missed opportunity to improve lives, relieve pressure on the NHS, and support the government’s five-year plan to get more people working.

“Our analysis shows that appropriately prescribed medical cannabis can help people with chronic conditions return to work,” commented Pushpin Singh, Managing Economist at the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

“Expanding NHS access would benefit patients while delivering significant productivity gains and cost savings to the UK economy.”

READ MORE: Economic analysis finds medical cannabis could save NHS £4 billion each year

Out of work and out of options

Many people who have experienced unemployment due to long-term illness are frustrated with traditional medications. In total, 55% who have been prescribed medication report they provide little relief and 48% say they negatively affect their quality of life.

Being excluded from the workforce also takes a heavy emotional toll. Over half report a loss of self-esteem (56%) and declining confidence (52%), while 46% feel helpless. Mental health is also affected, with 47% saying unemployment has harmed their wellbeing and 39% experiencing feelings of embarrassment.

Fatma Mehmet, a patient at Curaleaf Clinic, says medical cannabis has helped her regain her independence.

“Living with chronic pain took a huge toll on my physical and mental health. As someone independent and career-driven, not being able to get out of bed and go to work made me feel as if my identity was being stripped away,” she says.

“When I felt like I was at rock bottom and out of options, I discovered medical cannabis. I now have the ability to work, lead a team, and regain my independence. Expanding medical cannabis via the NHS would mean greater choice for more people, which can only be a good thing.”

A roadmap towards improving access 

However, there is interest in medical cannabis as an alternative therapy with nearly half (44%) who have not previously been prescribed it saying they would consider trying it if it were more widely available on the NHS.

Nearly two-thirds of UK adults (64%) believe people with chronic ill-health should have more treatment options to get back to work, while 71% of those directly affected say medical cannabis should be made more widely available if it can help.

But 40% of those who have struggled with employment due to a diagnosed long-term health condition are still unaware that medical cannabis is a legally available treatment in the UK, and 33% describe the current system as confusing, inaccessible or unclear.

“As a doctor, I see daily how chronic illness doesn’t just affect someone’s health – it removes them from the workforce, creates economic hardship, and leads to a cascade of social and psychological problems that can worsen the cycle of ill health,” says Dr Simon Erridge, Director of Research at Curaleaf Clinic.

“This analysis shows that medical cannabis isn’t just a health issue – it’s an economic one too. Our goal is to give people affected by poor health more choice and control in their treatment, helping them build independence and, where appropriate, re-enter the workplace. This report highlights a way forward.

“We urgently need a roadmap towards improving access to medical cannabis via the NHS for suitable patients,  with the required investment in essential research to deliver this.”

Cannabis Health Symposium 2025 – advancing clinical practice in CBMPs

As patient access grows and prescribing frameworks evolve, health professionals need up-to-date, evidence-based guidance. The Cannabis Health Symposium 2025 brings together clinicians, prescribers, pharmacists, and researchers to explore the latest clinical evidence, policy updates, and real-world applications of cannabis-based medicines.

What to expect:

• Evidence-led sessions on prescribing, safety, and efficacy
• Policy and regulatory updates for UK healthcare settings
• Practical insights from frontline clinicians and researchers
• Networking with peers, prescribers, and industry leaders

Join us in London for a day of clinical education and discussion on the future of cannabis in healthcare.

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