“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.

Source link

“Kuehn did not have either taxpayer standing or standing for a matter of great public concern to challenge the constitutionality of the acts.”

By Zach Wendling, Nebraska Examiner

The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday decided a longtime medical cannabis opponent will not have another day in court to try to overturn the state’s voter-approved medical cannabis laws, at least for now.

Chief Justice Jeffrey Funke, in a unanimous 29-page ruling, agreed with a lower court judge’s decision that former state Sen. John Kuehn of Heartwell did not have standing to challenge Nebraska’s medical cannabis laws.

Kuehn argues that such state laws, including Nebraska’s voter-enacted legalization of medical cannabis, are “preempted” by federal law under the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause defining marijuana as a more dangerous drug that states are precluded from regulating.

“We conclude that Kuehn did not have either taxpayer standing or standing for a matter of great public concern to challenge the constitutionality of the acts,” Funke wrote. “We therefore affirm the district court’s order dismissing Kuehn’s operative complaint without prejudice.”

“Without prejudice” means Kuehn could bring a similar case in the future if circumstances change. For instance, since June 2025, the Nebraska Legislature has appropriated more funds to the Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission and passed new legislation around cannabis.

What is ‘standing’?

For a case to proceed, a litigant must prove they’ve suffered an “injury in fact” by the time a case is filed or later amended. Kuehn filed his case in December 2024 and last amended it June 2025. Kuehn conceded he had not yet suffered the direct injury but sought to use exceptions.

“Standing refers to whether a party had, at the commencement of the litigation, a personal stake in the outcome of the litigation that would warrant a court’s exercise of its subject matter jurisdiction and remedial powers on that party’s behalf,” Funke explained in the opinion.

Lancaster County District Judge Susan Strong dismissed Kuehn’s case on June 26, 2025. She also presided over and ruled against a preelection challenge from Kuehn, filed in September 2024.

The Supreme Court last week affirmed Strong’s ruling on the validity of Nebraska’s medical cannabis laws, also in a unanimous ruling from Funke.

Shifting federal guidance

During oral arguments in April in Kuehn’s preemption appeal, no attorneys or justices asked about shifting federal guidelines on marijuana. U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche federally downgraded state-licensed medical cannabis to a Schedule III drug in April, down from a Schedule I drug.

Schedule I drugs, such as heroin, LSD, ecstasy and peyote, are drugs the federal government has classified as having a high likelihood of abuse and no currently accepted medical value. Schedule III drugs are defined as those with moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence, such as Tylenol with codeine, ketamine and testosterone.

Nebraska’s Medical Cannabis Commission is working toward implementing a state-licensed program and has licensed four cultivators. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) and Attorney General Mike Hilgers (R) signed off on a first set of regulations for the commission this summer.

The commission is rewriting its regulations to add fees before moving to license product manufacturers or dispensaries. The Legislature authorized the commission to do so this year.

Access to legally purchase medicine in Nebraska is still months, if not at least a year, away.

Standing exceptions

Kuehn tried to use two “narrow” exceptions to the standing rule: that he should be able to sue to try to prevent an “illegal expenditure” of public funds (taxpayer standing) or because the laws constitute a “matter of great public concern” (“great public concern standing”).

“It is not enough to wait for the United States government to one day come to Nebraska and challenge these acts,” Kuehn’s attorney Eddie Greim of Missouri had told the justices. “Instead, Nebraska’s courts should be open to Nebraskans who want to hold their Nebraska state government to its constitutional limitations.”

Funke wrote that other jurisdictions might find Kuehn had taxpayer standing, such as in other states, but Funke said doing so for Nebraska would be “inconsistent with our jurisprudence.” Funke also wrote that Kuehn’s claims did not present the “rare” circumstances to justify an exception for great public concern.

Unlike in other taxpayer standing cases that try to block public spending alone, Kuehn sought to go further and declare the Nebraska medical cannabis laws unconstitutional.

Had the case proceeded and later returned to the Supreme Court, it would take five justices to declare the laws unconstitutional. For standing, Kuehn needed a simple majority, or four judges.

AG’s Office: Others could sue

Zachary Pohlman, the state deputy solicitor general defending five state officials from Kuehn’s lawsuit, had argued that at least five parties would be better suited to sue than Kuehn, such as the federal government, Hilgers, a property owner, a prospective medical cannabis user or a criminal defendant charged with illegally possessing cannabis asserting the laws as a defense.

The Supreme Court ruled that its finding whether Kuehn lacked standing was not related to whether others could sue in Kuehn’s place.

Pillen was named in the suit, as were Secretary of State Bob Evnen, Department of Health and Human Services CEO Steve Corsi, former State Treasurer Tom Briese and Tax Commissioner Jim Kamm.

Kuehn had also sued the 2024 ballot sponsors behind the voter-approved laws and current and former members of the Medical Cannabis Commission.

The Nebraska Attorney General’s Office had threatened to sue the state Medical Cannabis Commission if it issued licenses. But no such challenge materialized when the commission licensed the first cultivators in October 2025. No other state lawsuits have been filed at this time.

Hilgers’s office has joined a federal lawsuit seeking to challenge the DOJ’s rescheduling of marijuana, which President Donald Trump is calling for.

In an unsigned statement Friday, Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana said another “desperate lawsuit, designed to erase the will of Nebraska voters and destroy medical cannabis, has failed.”

“For nearly two years, people with powerful political connections and deep pockets have thrown everything they can at us,” the statement said. “Lawsuits, accusations, obstruction and delay, because they refuse to accept what 71 percent of Nebraskans overwhelmingly decided.”

The group, which led the 2024 effort to legalize and regulate medical cannabis, said no matter the money, influence or political power behind the “next attack,” it won’t erase that vote.

The next Medical Cannabis Commission meeting is Monday.

This story was first published by Nebraska Examiner.

Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.

Source link

“We are not in any way convinced that we are definitely moving to be a marijuana-legal state. It could happen, but it may not.”

By Clayton Henkel, NC Newsline

When members of the North Carolina House and Senate reconvene in November, they will be faced with having to decide how to regulate intoxicating hemp products. The two chambers were at odds in July over House Bill 328, which would ban hemp with more than 0.4 milligrams of THC and prohibit the sale of any hemp consumables, including CBD, to anyone under 21.

House members opted to wait until after November’s midterm elections, not wanting to upset a $4 billion industry that employs 16,000 people in North Carolina.

In Washington, the hemp industry received a one-month reprieve this week from a national ban on intoxicating hemp products as part of a short-term funding bill. The U.S. House voted to delay the ban from taking effect until December 11, as the White House pushes to delay or somehow fix the national ban. At the same time, the Trump administration has called on the U.S. Department of Justice to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III drug, the same class as Tylenol with codeine.

While the outlook is hazy, the end of the year could bring big changes for both the hemp and cannabis industries.

Hemp consumables are largely unrestricted in our state, but North Carolina is in the unique minority of states in which marijuana is fully illegal for both recreational and medicinal purposes.

State lawmakers are trying to navigate how to best protect minors from hemp-derived cannabinoids, while also preparing for a future that could include some form of legal cannabis.

39 states, 39 approaches

The North Carolina Advisory Council on Cannabis, appointed in June 2025 by Gov. Josh Stein (D), has been meeting for months to develop a comprehensive approach to regulate cannabis sales and create a safe, legal market for adults that protects kids.

Nearly 40 states have already enacted cannabis regulations, but no two are the same.

Yasha Kahn, co-founder of MCR Labs, has been involved in cannabis testing for more than a decade. Kahn was invited to offer his expertise to the advisory council last week, as that group explores a framework for legalization.

North Carolina policymakers will have to decide on an endless number of variables in regulating cannabis, including who should handle testing and at what point in the process the product should be tested.

Kahn said each state has unique testing requirements with no real consensus. And each state may have its own approach to testing batch sizes, packaging, total THC definitions, and regulatory audits.

“Instead of looking at this as a huge mess, it really is 39 individual experiments on policy with much of the data available that we can analyze,” said Kahn. “We can see which policies have worked, which ones haven’t.”

Kahn said cannabis has the potential to be a multi-billion-dollar industry for North Carolina.

Balancing testing and oversight

The advisory committee will also have to decide whether to use private labs or state labs to test the purity and potency of cannabis if it should become legal. Either way, Kahn recommended the state should require all lab results be made public and shared with state agencies.

“How long would it take to have a testing lab to be up and running and producing results?” asked council member Pat Oglesby.

Kahn said there are hemp labs that would likely be willing to take on the testing for a slice of a booming industry, but establishing an accredited lab from scratch would take time.

“A lot of instruments have months of delays just to be delivered. You have to have capital and good talent,” said Kahn. “I’ve heard of labs opening within maybe nine months. In my experience, it’s closer to a year and a half.”

Privatizing testing, however, comes with risk, Kahn said, as consumer fraud has been documented in multiple states.

A store owner, for example, may find a low THC product is not selling well and urge the cultivator to produce a stronger product. The cultivator may then call the lab and suggest they provide higher THC results, or they will find a new lab to deliver those results.

“This happens in every market that has more than one lab,” Kahn cautioned.

Kahn said this deception becomes easier to trace when the labs are required to share data with the state and those results are made public.

In Colorado, THC potency inflation and the failure to identify mold and other contaminants has legislators considering shifting their cannabis testing to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Lawmakers there are also considering having state regulators collect the samples to be tested from dispensaries, rather than samples being provided by the producer or cultivators.

Will the industry bloom in North Carolina?

Dr. Larry Greenblatt, state health director and co-chair of the advisory council, said while it may appear that North Carolina is marching toward some form of cannabis legalization, it’s by no means a foregone conclusion.

“We are not in any way convinced that we are definitely moving to be a marijuana-legal state,” said Greenblatt. “It could happen, but it may not.”

The advisory group’s final recommendations, including a detailed look at lab testing, will be included in a report to the governor at the end of this year. It would then be up to the legislature to decide if they want to use the information as the foundation or guidance for a cannabis market in North Carolina.

Stein has said he supports legalization for adults, but Republican lawmakers are divided. Recent attempts to legalize medical marijuana have died in the state House, despite the backing of Senate leaders. And neither chamber has ever voted to legalize the drug for recreational use.

Meantime, other states are moving ahead. In neighboring Virginia, regulators will begin accepting applications for regulated recreational cannabis dispensaries in February, with a retail launch set for July 1, 2027.

This story was first published by NC Newsline.

Photo courtesy of Brian Shamblen.

Source link

The Democrat and Libertarian candidates in Ohio’s governor’s race have indicated that, if elected, they would keep the state’s voter-approved adult-use cannabis law intact, Cleveland.com reports. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee, and Don Kissick, the Libertarian, both said they would keep the reforms in place, including the 10% cannabis tax, and backed maintaining some form of legal access to intoxicating hemp products. The Republican nominee, Vivek Ramaswamy, did not respond to the questionnaire from the news outlets regarding his policy positions on the cannabis and hemp laws. 

Addie Bullock, Acton’s campaign spokeswoman, in a statement told Cleveland.com that the Democrat would “respect the clear will of the voters and ensure that Ohio adults 21 and older can safely make their own decisions” and would be “vigilant about legislative attempts to recriminalize elements of recreational marijuana use that Ohioans voted for on Issue 2.”  

Kissick told Cleveland.com that “Ohio voters made their decision in 2023, and the government should respect that decision rather than repeatedly searching for ways to override it.” He added that he would seek to change state law to allow cannabis impaired driving convictions only if prosecutors prove drivers were actually impaired, rather than allowing convictions based solely on THC levels in blood or urine tests. The Libertarian indicated he would also consider lowering the 10% tax “once the state’s legitimate administrative and regulatory costs are covered.” 

Kissick also said he backed an age limit of 21 for intoxicating hemp products, marketing rules for the products, and “reasonable serving and package limits.” 

While Ramaswamy did not respond to the questionnaire, in a 2023 statement to FOX News, Ramaswamy indicated support for ending the federal prohibition of cannabis; however, he also voted against adult-use legalization in Ohio, saying on CNN that it was “an abandonment of the rule of law” and “creates a lot of confusion.”  

According to the Cook Political Report, the race is a toss-up between Acton and Ramaswamy. 

Ganjapreneur: Offering daily insights since 2014, the leading digital business journal for cannabis industry professionals. Subscribe to the newsletter to join our community of over 40,000 ganjapreneurs.

Source link

Source link

Labour MP and long-time medical cannabis advocate, Tonia Antoniazzi, has called on the government to fund a new observational trial to support children with drug-resistant epilepsy, who are still unable to access medical cannabis on the NHS.

Antoniazzi is spearheading a new campaign launched in memory of Hannah Deacon, the mother of Alfie Dingley, who campaigned for the legalisation of medical cannabis in 2018. Hannah died of cancer last year, aged just 45. 

Her high-profile campaign led to Alfie, who has a rare and severe form of treatment-resistant epilepsy, becoming the first person to obtain a full licence for the prescription of medical cannabis through the NHS in June 2018.

Later that year, on 1 November, the government announced the rescheduling of cannabis-based medicines, making them legal to prescribe by doctors on the specialist register. 

Almost eight years on, an estimated 80,000 patients are now able to access medical cannabis through private clinics in the UK, but only four children (including Alfie) receive prescriptions through the NHS, whilst other families face costs of around £15,000 per year.

Hannah Deacon died last year after a short battle with cancer.

An “unacceptable burden”

During Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, 4th March, Antoniazzi, MP for Gower, asked Keir Starmer to commit a “modest” £2 million for an observational trial to relieve these families of this “unacceptable burden”. 

“Many families are still paying around £1,300 a month for a treatment that is already legal to prescribe,” said Antoniazzi, who has previously accompanied families travelling to the Netherlands to access medical cannabis.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVeMz8tF9Zp/?igsh=cDM5bXJoazV4YmYy

The proposed study would run alongside two previously announced NHS-funded randomised control trials (RCTs) on medical cannabis and epilepsy, which are being conducted by researchers at UCL. It would allow children who are currently prescribed the treatment privately to continue accessing it at no cost, while real-world data is collected.

The research team is said to have confirmed that an accompanying observational trial would be a viable option. However, the Prime Minister failed to commit to the additional funding, instead pointing to the £8 million already invested in RCTs. 

“Hannah Deacon’s campaign for her son, Alfie, was remarkable, and I know how much she’s missed,” Starmer told the House.

“We are investing £8 million in clinical trials on cannabis based medicines for conditions like drug-resistant epilepsy, and I want to see patients accessing safe, effective medicines and new treatments as quickly as possible.” 

The RCTs were first promised in 2019 following a review commissioned by former Health Secretary Matt Hancock. Although finally announced in 2024, they have since been delayed again.

Campaigners warn that these will take several years to complete and are not suitable for those children already prescribed medical cannabis, for whom the treatment has already significantly reduced seizures, where all other options have failed. 

“While I understand the government’s reticence to move towards any kind of drug reform… this is a titrated drug, and is widely accepted in other countries around the world,” Antoniazzi tells Cannabis Health.

“Why we are making it difficult for these families to access a prescription that makes their children’s lives so much easier baffles me.”

“We made her a promise we wouldn’t give up”

Even after Alfie secured his NHS prescription, Hannah continued campaigning to ensure other families could access the same treatment. Now, Antoniazzi and other parents say they will continue that fight in Hannah’s name.

“What drives me is Hannah, and how she fought for all families and how she fought for their children,” she adds.

“She was a really special woman, and her family wants her legacy to remain.”

In a post on her Instagram, Emma Appleby, who campaigned alongside Hannah on behalf of her daughter Teagan, said: “Although Hannah’s son had an NHS prescription, she continued to fight and stand alongside other families like mine who still had to battle… We all made a promise that we wouldn’t give up.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/DVTZce3CMr_/?igsh=ZjYzc2M3b3Z2NjZ3

Medcan Family Foundation commented: “Hannah was a tireless advocate and a driving force behind progress for families fighting for access. She refused to accept a system that left children waiting without answers… Her legacy continues in this new campaign.”

You can support the Hannah Deacon Campaign for Access to Medical Cannabis by emailing your MP and signing Hannah’s petition here.

Source link