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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.

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

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

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

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

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

A Taste Test That Outgrew Its Purpose

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

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

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

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

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

The Insight Hiding in the Demand

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

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

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

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

Two Shelves, Two Shoppers

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Changes on November 13

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

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

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

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

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

Building for Whatever Comes Next

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

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

Photos courtey of High Tide

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

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“If they make a change in the drinks, then this is something we will have to look at in January…putting a framework around specifically the drinks.”

By Rebecca Rivas, Missouri Independent

When Joshua Grigaitis founded the Mighty Kind Company in St. Louis in 2019, his team started by producing flavored sparkling water infused with CBD, a non-intoxicating compound found in cannabis.

The company has since become a major player in the market for intoxicating hemp-THC beverages. But with a federal ban looming, Grigaitis said he is prepared to return to the company’s roots.

The ban is now set to take effect December 11, after President Donald Trump signed a bill last week delaying its implementation by one month.

“Big picture is we’re gonna sell a variety of products, and we’re gonna stay diversified,” Grigaitis said. “We were originally a CBD company. We’ve never had the thought: we’re not going to have anything to do if we can’t sell THC drinks. We’ll just do something else.”

Hemp companies across Missouri and the nation are rethinking their business plans in anticipation of the ban. While Grigaitis is confident Mighty Kind can adapt through new products, companies built around low-dose, full-spectrum cannabis products—those created specifically for people seeking relief from chronic pain or health ailments—could face a far more difficult path forward.

Dr. Ethan Russo, a neurologist in Washington and founder of the medical cannabis research and drug development company Credo Science, said the medical side of the industry is in “chaos.”

“There are just many, many companies going out of business, some of whom have produced very good products that have been helpful to people with medical conditions that haven’t had relief otherwise,” Russo said. “It’s a very bad time for the industry.”

Russo said these products focus on the therapeutic compounds found in cannabis, such as CBD and CGB, and the small amount of THC, such as 3 mg or less, in them activates those non-intoxicating compounds and makes them more effective.

While Congress may end up allowing and regulating these products, particularly considering Trump’s support for them, there is no wiggle room in the legislation Missouri lawmakers passed this spring.

When Missouri’s law goes into effect on November 12, intoxicating hemp products will be “put under the purview of the department’s existing regulations for cannabis products,” said Lisa Cox, spokeswoman for the Missouri Department Health and Senior Services, which oversees the state’s cannabis program.

On November 12, everything that comes from cannabis and is intoxicating—or has more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container—will be considered marijuana and can only be sold in licensed dispensaries. The cannabis also has to be grown and manufactured in licensed Missouri facilities.

For now, beverages will stay on store shelves until December 11, and there will be no other regulation of these items except that people now must be 21 to buy them until then.

Missourians won’t be able to purchase hemp-derived THC products online after November 12, even though it’d be federally still legal. There are currently a few low-dose full-spectrum products available in dispensaries.

Dr. Patricia Hurford, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist in Chesterfield, said she anticipates she’ll hear more concern from her patients when their full-spectrum products are no longer available in November. Like Russo, Hurford commends Missouri’s legislation for protecting children and regulating the quality of cannabis products, but she worries about access to medicinal products.

“Patients require protection,” Hurford said, “and sometimes protecting those patients means we have to take dangerous products off the shelf. Sometimes it just means we’re offering and preserving access to safer and lower-dose alternatives.”

Hemp vs marijuana

This wave of complicated, confusing policymaking around cannabis is pushing a necessary conversation about having two different laws for hemp and marijuana, Russo said.

That conversation should be, “legalize it and regulate it. That’s the only way that this can work,” he said.

Hemp and marijuana are essentially terms the government uses to distinguish between the part of the cannabis plant that has high amounts of THC.

Hemp has previously been defined as any part of the plant containing 0.3 percent or less delta-9 THC by dry weight.

Last November, a provision in the federal spending bill amended the definition of hemp, changing the limit to a total THC concentration of less than .3 percent on a dry weight basis, rather than only delta-9 THC. It also prohibits products from containing more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container.

Missouri’s law was aimed at getting unregulated intoxicating cannabis products, particularly those that are attractive to children, off the shelves.

Republican state Rep. Dave Hinman of O’Fallon, who sponsored the ban, believes the state will send out communication directly to retailers to make sure they understand the nuisance of the law.

Hinman anticipates Missouri’s upcoming legislative session to be filled with much more work to be done on this issue, and he said he’s been asked by state leaders to continue taking the lead on cannabis-related legislation.

If Congress allows full-spectrum products, Missouri will have to approve that use through a bill. And if there is further delay of the federal ban, then lawmakers will have to pass regulations on beverages.

“If they make a change in the drinks, then this is something we will have to look at in January…putting a framework around specifically the drinks,” Hinman said. “If we need to make changes and adjustments, I will absolutely be involved in this.”

Panic for patients

Hurford said the marijuana industry was born out of creating medicinal, therapeutic products. However, now dispensaries are often more focused on recreational products, she said, and offer an environment that might be intimidating for patients to enter and find what they need.

“Let’s get back to promoting the medicinal aspects in those products,” she said.

Healer is an example of a company that has helped her patients, and she believes its co-founder, Dr. Dustin Sulak, is a “well-respected, knowledgeable clinician.” But its products will be banned in November, and company owners say they won’t pursue trying to work within the marijuana regulations.

Healer’s co-founder and CEO, Brad Feuer, said marijuana cultivation facilities nationwide focus on growing cannabis with high THC and low CBD content, which doesn’t work with their formula. And secondly, it wouldn’t be cost effective for the company or patients.

Katherine Golden is a nurse who seven years ago founded an independent cannabinoid health hotline called Leaf411. She said while more medicinal products with only one or two milligrams of THC were available in dispensaries when her hotline first started, many of them have been pulled off the shelves.

“That to me is the heartbreak of what’s happening with our legislation because you’re taking access away from a product that is not being abused,” Golden said. “The hemp market—those who are the responsible players—are providing this product that the retailers aren’t carrying because it doesn’t sell enough for them.”

Part of the reason is because these customers need it delivered to their homes, particularly those caring for people with dementia or those struggling with ailments, she said. Her hotline has already gotten a taste of the panic patients may feel in November after California’s ban was put in place in July.

“I can only guess when we see another state like Missouri ban on Nov. 12, we’re going to hear from Missourians calling us saying, ‘What do I do? I just found this out,’” she said. “Because a lot of patients are so involved in what they’re doing in their lives, they’re not following what’s happening.”

Andrew Mullins, executive director of the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association that represents the state’s marijuana businesses, said for patients to be protected, their medical products must be “tested, taxed, age-gated and responsibly packaged, which simply isn’t happening with intoxicating hemp.”

“Many dispensaries already carry low-dose THC products,” Mullins said, “and we expect there will be more emphasis on medicinal uses of their products and development of additional products to meet patient demand, as online and unregulated channels diminish.”

Adrian Holguin, a California-based cannabis consultant under his business CannaShark, said Missouri’s regulatory framework ties the hands and potential profits of businesses working in intoxicating hemp and low-dose, full-spectrum. Like Healer, most of these businesses will choose to not to find a place in Missouri’s market.

“They have to take their operations and either leave the state and find the last remaining states,” he said, “or they have to be ready to pivot in a direction that’s going to make sense and that follows the legislation that’s coming.”

Business owners could try to work with a licensed Missouri marijuana manufacturer or cultivator to make their products under the new law. However, even for marijuana companies, Missouri is “a tough state to crack,” he said, partly due to the consolidation of facility licenses. Other states are going to be more accommodating.

“When you decide on business,” he said, “where to play is one of the main questions you ask yourself.”

Grigaitis believes this moment is going to produce challenges, but it’s also going to push innovation. Mighty Kind is looking to launch a new seltzer with Lion’s Mane mushroom concentration, he said, which promotes relaxation, focus and brain support.

“I see it as all very positive,” Grigaitis said, “you know, evolution of moving from alcohol to something less harmful for everybody and plant magic of all kinds.”

This story was first published by Missouri Independent.

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Michigan cannabis regulators have, for the first time, issued a suspension of a hemp business license over excessive THC levels. The Cannabis Regulatory Agency (CRA) last week said it had suspended the license of Loud Labs of Michigan LLC after an investigation found the company possessed products containing delta-9 THC beyond the state’s legal hemp threshold of 0.3%. 

CRA staff conducted a compliance inspection at the business on March 25, during which the inspectors observed multiple cannabis products and reviewed certificates of analysis indicating that certain products contained delta-9 THC that exceeded hemp threshold. The agency conducted an inventory audit on May 18 and identified multiple products for which corresponding laboratory certificates of analysis reported delta-9 THC concentrations above 0.3%.  

The agency’s report points out five products in particular, including a concentrate with a reported delta-9 THC level of 92.84%; another with a concentration of 21.38%; and a third with a concentration of 20.35%. Two topical patches were also found to have THC levels in violation of state hemp laws – one tested at 0.59%, and another tested at 0.45%, according to the notice of suspension. 

The CRA alleges that Loud Labs violated parts of the state’s Industrial Hemp Research and Development Act (IHRDA), which provides for suspension of a processor-handler license when the licensee intentionally possesses cannabis containing more than 0.3% delta-9 THC on a dry-weight basis. Based on those allegations, the agency suspended Loud Labs’ hemp processor-handler license effective immediately and has also provided notice of its intent to revoke the license.  

Under the applicable provisions of the IHRDA, a license must be revoked if, following notice and an opportunity for a hearing, the CRA determines by a preponderance of the evidence that the licensee violated the relevant provision.   

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A four-person Johns Hopkins pilot study found that 25 mg of oral THC could produce altered-state profiles that qualitatively resembled those seen with 25 mg of psilocybin, particularly when consumed in a setting modeled on psychedelic research. The sample is far too small to establish cannabis as a psychedelic, but the findings add to earlier research suggesting that dose, context, and individual response can push THC experiences into unexpectedly psychedelic-like territory.

Cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms are not the same. They don’t work the same way in the brain, they don’t belong to the same pharmacological family and, generally speaking, they don’t feel the same either. But when the THC dose gets high enough, that line can start to feel a whole lot blurrier.

A new study from researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that 25 milligrams of oral THC can produce subjective experiences resembling those produced by 25 milligrams of psilocybin, the main psychoactive compound in psychedelic mushrooms, as reported by Marijuana Moment. In some cases, participants couldn’t even correctly identify which substance they had received.

Before we start declaring that weed has secretly been a psychedelic this whole time, though, there’s one very important piece of fine print: the study included just four people.

That’s it. Four.

The researchers themselves describe it as a pilot study and point out that the sample was so small that they couldn’t even run inferential statistical analyses. In other words, this is useful for spotting an interesting signal, not for making sweeping claims about how people in general respond to THC.

What makes that signal worth paying attention to is that it comes with a whole lot of scientific backstory.

Four People, THC, Psilocybin and a Room Built for Going Inward

The study, Updated August 27, 2026, in Psychopharmacology, included four healthy adults between the ages of 31 and 47. Across separate double-blind sessions, each received a placebo, 25 mg of psilocybin and 25 mg of THC. Two also received a 50 mg dose of THC.

The THC came in two formats. Two participants received dronabinol, a synthetic version containing more than 99% THC, while the other two received a botanical cannabis distillate containing 89.9% THC along with small amounts of other cannabinoids.

The study’s set and setting looked a lot like the kind of setup many users might deliberately seek out, though it’s also standard territory for psychedelic clinical research. Participants spent each session lying on a couch, wearing eye shades, listening to a music playlist and accompanied throughout by two trained facilitators. They were also encouraged to turn their attention inward and stay present with whatever arose in their consciousness.

And that’s where the line between a cannabis high and a mushroom trip started to become a little less obvious.

The two participants who received 25 mg of dronabinol rated the experience as more similar to that of a classic psychedelic—and, in one case, to a dissociative as well—than to a cannabinoid. By contrast, the two participants who received 25 mg of cannabis distillate correctly identified the experience as most similar to cannabis.

Still, when researchers used scales specifically designed to measure altered states of consciousness and mystical-type experiences, the profiles produced by 25 mg of THC, whether synthetic or in distillate form, were qualitatively similar to those seen with 25 mg of psilocybin. The distillate was also rated as producing a stronger overall subjective effect than an equivalent amount of dronabinol.

Interestingly, bumping the dose up to 50 mg didn’t simply make everything “more psychedelic.” That dose produced a different kind of profile, leaning more sedative or dissociative in some cases.

Weed versus Mushrooms: Psilocybin and THC Are Not the Same

The study does not show that THC works in the brain the same way psilocybin does.

Psilocybin is classified as a classic psychedelic, and its effects are strongly tied to serotonin signaling, especially through the 5-HT2A receptor. THC, on the other hand, produces its primary effects through the endocannabinoid system, particularly CB1 receptors.

What the researchers are comparing is not the pharmacology itself. It’s something stranger: the phenomenology of the experience.

Put less academically, two drugs can take very different roads and still end up producing parts of the journey that feel surprisingly similar.

That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to everybody, either. The sample was tiny, all four participants were white and non-Hispanic, three had postgraduate education and none necessarily represented a typical cannabis consumer. The researchers explicitly acknowledge those limitations.

And again: four people are still four people.

So why pay attention? Because this isn’t the first time researchers have seen something like this.

Cannabis Science Has Repeatedly Wandered Into Psychedelic Territory Before

Back in 2018, also at Johns Hopkins, researchers Updated a case report involving a 30-year-old man who experienced visual and auditory hallucinations after inhaling vaporized cannabis containing 25 mg of THC in a controlled experiment.

It was an unusual reaction—unusual enough to warrant a case report—but it gave researchers a chance to compare his subjective scores with those seen in experiments involving hallucinogenic substances. They found that some aspects of the experience resembled those reported with drugs like psilocybin, even if the overall picture wasn’t identical.

Then, in 2021, researchers at the University at Albany looked at whether intense cannabis experiences could produce what is known as oceanic boundlessness, a concept used to measure dimensions of mystical experiences such as unity, transcendence and the dissolution of boundaries.

Participants retrospectively described their most intense THC experience. Between 17% and 19% reached levels consistent with what the authors called “breakthrough” experiences. That was well below the 59% reported in certain psilocybin clinical trials, but it showed that this kind of experience could happen with cannabis too.

In 2022, a more controlled study pushed things another step forward. Twenty-five infrequent cannabis users received placebo, 7.5 mg or 15 mg of oral THC.

THC produced dose-dependent changes across several dimensions of altered consciousness. Among other things, it increased a measure called insightfulness, related to the feeling of gaining new understanding, and also increased language entropy, a phenomenon the researchers noted had previously been observed with LSD.

None of those studies argued that cannabis and psychedelics were interchangeable.

But they were all brushing up against the same question.

In 2023, Johns Hopkins researchers essentially pulled those pieces together. In a literature review Updated online that year and later included in the January 2024 issue of Journal of Psychopharmacology, they examined the ability of cannabis—and THC in particular—to produce perceptual changes, mystical experiences and other phenomena usually associated with classic psychedelics like psilocybin.

Their conclusion was pretty specific: high-THC cannabis may be capable of producing psychedelic effects, but modern experiments may not have picked them up very often because of the doses being used and, especially, the set and setting.

The authors proposed almost exactly what this new study eventually did: giving people high doses of THC under the same kinds of conditions used in therapeutic psychedelic research.

And they had another idea that may be even more interesting: THC could potentially serve as an active comparator in psychedelic clinical trials.

One longstanding problem in these studies is something called functional unblinding. Technically, nobody is supposed to know who got the actual drug and who got placebo. But someone in the middle of a full-blown psychedelic experience can probably make a fairly educated guess that they didn’t get the sugar pill.

And the researcher sitting across from them may be able to guess too.

The authors of the new paper point out that placebos and other comparators used so far often fail for exactly that reason: psychedelic effects are simply too distinctive to easily hide what a participant received.

A dose of THC capable of producing an intense altered state through a different pharmacological mechanism could make the control condition much harder to guess.

For now, that remains a hypothesis. The researchers themselves stress that these four cases are nowhere near enough to establish THC as an ideal active comparator, and they’re calling for systematic studies involving more people and a wider range of doses.

So this finding probably shouldn’t be read as proof that “weed is a psychedelic.”

It does, however, add another clue that the subjective experience produced by THC may be far more variable—and far more dependent on context—than we usually assume.

Change the dose, the expectations, and the setting, and the question gets pretty interesting: How much can a cannabis experience really change?

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A handful of congressional Republicans threatened this week to upend their leadership’s agenda in protest of legislation to delay the scheduled federal recriminalization of hemp THC products from taking effect.

Hemp derivatives with less than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC on a dry-weight basis were federally legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill that President Donald Trump signed during his first term in office. But late last year, the president signed new legislation containing provisions that redefined hemp to make it so only products with 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container would remain legal after November 12.

The House of Representatives on Tuesday, however, approved a Senate-passed funding bill that contains provisions to delay the effective date of most parts of the ban, with an exception for synthetics, until December 11.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) and several other members knew that they didn’t have enough votes to block that bipartisan funding bill, known as a continuing resolution, so they set out instead to block a rule for consideration of a separate package of largely partisan GOP-led legislation touching on issues such as condemning socialism, defending Israel from boycotts and the mining of mineral.

Harris, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, voted against the rule on Tuesday, as did Reps. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and Chip Roy (R-TX), each of whom cited the hemp product ban as among the issues they want to take a stand against their own party’s leadership over.

But their opposition, along with that of Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), was not enough to defeat the rule clearing the way for House leadership’s agenda for the week to advance.

Two Democrats—Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) and Jared Golden (D-ME)—voted with Republicans to approve the rule, 210-208.

Harris complained in a social media post that THC products are “being sold in convenience stores across the country,” saying that some “can contain even more THC than marijuana.”

Sessions, for his part, said he wanted House leaders to “change” the bill by removing the hemp ban delay provision.

“Let’s just make it a clean CR. I’ll vote for that,” he said.

Roy, for his part, said in a letter to leadership that he had “serious concerns” about issues in the bill that “Congress should address rather than simply extend,” including its “treatment of harmful intoxicating hemp products.”

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), for her part, criticized her colleagues for threatening to delay their party’s agenda over hemp.

“There are a few House Republicans so upset the Continuing Resolution includes a delay in the implementation of the Mitch McConnell-backed language to ban most consumable hemp-derived products from the marketplace, they are threatening to vote against this week’s rule, which has nothing to do with the CR,” she said in a Facebook post. “Make that make sense.”

Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR), who did not join other prohibitionists in voting against House leadership to protest the hemp move, said in a social media post that he opposes delaying the ban.

“Congress legalized hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill for agricultural uses like fiber, not as a backdoor for intoxicating products. Modern extraction techniques turn low THC hemp into gummies, snacks and drinks; items that can particularly cause risk to children,” he said. “Unregulated, intoxicating products should not remain on the market. The currently scheduled restrictions close this gap. A delay prolongs the harm. I sincerely hope that the ban goes into effect without further delay.”

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK), said he was “sympathetic” to concerns from Harris and others about use of the funding bill to address the hemp issue.

“This should not have been on here, CR should not be controversial, so I’m sympathetic with that,” he said, though he also criticized the handful of GOP holdouts for using the rule as “leverage” for their concerns.

“A lot of this is we’ve got a group that wants to leverage the procedural votes to extract things that the majority of us probably don’t want to do. I find that disappointing,” he said, according to The Hill. “I mean, if you’re going to be a member of the Republican conference, you ought to be able to vote for the rule. It’s just that simple, and you shouldn’t use it to leverage things against your own team. You want to vote against the bill? That’s perfectly fine, and that’s true in any bill. Your final vote on the bill is up to you, but blackmailing your colleagues is not the way to build an effective team.”

The funding bill’s provision to delay the ban, which is supported by the White House and is now headed to Trump to be signed into law, contains a carve-out to allow the immediate recriminalization on November 12 of synthetic cannabinoids “that are not capable of being naturally produced by a Cannabis sativa L. plant.”

A number of lawmakers from both chambers and both parties have filed or are circulating a growing number of bills to prevent the scheduled federal recriminalization of hemp THC drinks and other products later this year. Until now, none of those proposals have gained traction with congressional leaders.

For example, Reps. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX) and Greg Landsman (D-OH) filed a bill to keep hemp THC drinks legal while taxing and regulating them like alcohol.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is circulating legislation that would delay a planned federal ban on hemp THC products and institute some regulations—including packaging requirements, testing rules and age limits.

Separately, Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), filed a lengthier proposal to prevent the federal recriminalization of hemp THC products and put in place a number of regulations for manufacturing, labeling, sales and taxation of hemp-derived products, including an age limit of 21.

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The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is teaming up with an anti-marijuana group to promote a public service announcement contest pegged to 4/20, inviting high school students to submit videos about why the use of cannabis “is harmful for the developing brain, mental health, and your life!”

“The contest is an opportunity for high schools to demonstrate how students are working to prevent cannabis misuse at their school and to encourage their peers to abstain,” a notice about the contest organized by Johnny’s Ambassadors says.

As with past PSA initiatives from the group, it made clear that videos submitted for consideration should “NOT IMITATE THE USE OF THC/MARIJUANA OR PARAPHERNALIA OF ANY KIND, EVEN AS A JOKE.”

“Any content which suggests, depicts, imitates, or promotes the possession or consumption of any THC product is prohibited,” it says, adding that, “No swearing or defamatory language allowed.”

In general, the videos for the contest—which opened late last month and closes on April 13—are meant to be educational, aimed at informing fellow students about “why young people shouldn’t use THC products (vapes, dabs, weed, edibles, gummies).” Personal stories about people being impacted by THC use are also welcome.

The group provided samples of the kind of content they’re looking for, including PSAs on “why THC impacts athletic performance on a team,” debunking a “commonly-held but incorrect myth about THC and “startling” statistics about cannabis use.

The first place winner will receive $500, second place gets $250 and third place gets $100. The winners will be announced on Instagram on April 20, the marijuana holiday that the anti-legalization group has designated as “Anti-420 Day.”

DEA is promoting the effort through its Just Think Twice and Get Smart About Drugs projects.

Last year, DEA separately promoted an “Anti-420 Day” campaign that similarly recruited students to send short videos warning their peers about marijuana use.

The agency has developed a reputation for its awkward messaging and educational materials around youth drug use.

For example, in 2023, DEA advised young people that, rather than doing drugs, they should focus on becoming Instagram influencers. The agency promoted tips on how to get a “natural high” as an alternative to drugs, sharing what it said were “7 Better Highs” such as becoming famous on Instagram, playing video games and going to a pet store to look at animals.

DEA is also known for its attempts to decode emojis that it claims are used to buy drugs.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s first pick for attorney general in his second term, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), recent said that he’s been advised that DEA is actively drafting a rule to complete the process of rescheduling marijuana “ASAP.”

It’s been over a month since Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to expeditiously finalize that process of moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Gaetz says he has it on authority that DEA is taking steps to see that through.

However, a Justice Department spokesperson told Marijuana Moment last week that the agency has “no update or comments” on the rescheduling matter.

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Researchers gave people 5 mg of inhaled THC and rated the high at 34 out of 100. They doubled it to 10 mg. The high went to 39.

Cannabis’ most plentiful and active ingredient, the cannabinoid molecule Delta 9 THC, first isolated in 1964 by legendary Israeli chemists Raphael Mechoulam and Yehiel Gaoni, creates a beautiful, intoxicating experience for most consumers.

But as more consumers get access to it, the plant’s complicated chemistry results in human efficacy complications inside the brain where THC affects the body’s endocannabinoid system.

What that effect is to different people, why it happens the way it does, who enjoys the sensation and who doesn’t is still a moving target for researchers while cannabis product developers push their best-selling product: anything with higher potency THC.

The Cannabis Landscape Today

Amidst all the state and federal kerfuffling about cannabis that at times seems solvable, but continues nonetheless, cannabis today feels safer. It feels better understood. It’s become an accepted part of the cash crop landscape.

A handful of multi-million-square-foot grows prove it’s positioned for mass sales. One of the largest, Glass House, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in June.

And revenue streams demonstrate solid consumer demand.

In 2025 alone, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, legalized states collectively generated more than $4.57 billion in cannabis tax revenue from adult-use sales, which is the most revenue generated by cannabis sales in a single year.

But cannabis is caught in a standoff. Science is making progress but doesn’t have all the answers about cannabis because legal and societal pressures won’t clearly enable a deeper dive.

THC, the stuff that gives a consumer that positive stoner glow, and the go-to measure of a cannabis product that consumers still prefer to use, has come under more scrutiny as more products with greater levels of THC hit the market.

THC potency has become an increasingly polarizing issue: THC potency creates emergency room visits – sure, because of underage use. THC potency causes mental health problems – well, those consumers already had issues. THC potency creates addiction – but addiction is a chronic brain and behavioral disorder, you know, like the 27 million alcohol addicts in the U.S. consuming a substance that’s somehow not on the DEA controlled substance list.

So what is Delta 9 THC – a goddess, a demon, or a market blockbuster? Turns out it’s a dodgy misunderstood often overbred molecule working in an arrangement of other cannabinoids that science needs to properly figure out.

The Potency Problem

Studies and statistics show that somewhere in the range of 30-40% of cannabis consumers buy their product based on THC potency.

The concentration of THC in cannabis has increased steadily over the past 25 years in the United States and elsewhere, according to a March, 2025 article in the American Journal of Psychiatry. “Before 2000, the average potency of herbal cannabis seized in the United States was <5% THC, whereas the average potency of herbal cannabis is now ∼20% in most state-regulated nonmedical retail markets.”

Over the last ten years, there has been a significant rise in extremely high-potency cannabis products, such as infused flower with up to 60 % THC (such as moonrocks), and solvent-based concentrates that have as much as 99% THC (such as THCa diamonds).

THC is one of the more than 500 compounds in cannabis, with 125 being cannabinoids. And while many cannabinoids have been discovered over the years, beginning in the mid-1960s using various chemical and chromatography processes, with some getting more attention lately—chief among them CBD, CBG, Delta 8 THC, THCA—it’s the Delta 9 THC, the main cannabinoid constituent of the plant, that has come back into the discussion loop.

What we now know is that the effect of cannabis is not all about the Delta 9 THC chemical molecule.

According to Duncan Mackie, the director of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics at Bud & Mary’s, formerly MedPharm, a medical and adult use cannabis cultivation and research facility, a consumer just inhaling dry raw ignited flower is experiencing a whole lot of other things in that flower that are going to have effects beyond THC. “There’s terpenes, taste, flavor, the whole entire holistic view of the plant,” he told High Times. “So I think that we’ve seen at least with flower users a move away from just THC potency.”

Mackie’s recent research is about the effects of CBD and other non-psychotropic cannabinoids in potentially treating neuroinflammation-associated neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and Huntington’s disease. “We’ve seen CBG, we’ve seen CBC, we’ve seen all these minor cannabinoids become of interest for their different effects,” Mackie said.

Years ago, breeders began breeding for higher THC once the active compounds in the plant were identified, Mackie said. “Because then we could analyze it and say, oh yeah, this is at X amount, if we cross these, we get an extra increase,” he said. Doing that affected other cannabinoids. “From a genetic standpoint, we silenced a lot of these early genes that would have made really diverse cannabinoids. CBC is an example. It was a gene that was silenced at one point and then unsilenced through breeding. I think that if we started from scratch today, the smart breeders would prioritize a diverse panel of cannabinoids. But you would always have somebody chasing the highest THC.”

“From a genetic standpoint, we silenced a lot of these early genes that would have made really diverse cannabinoids.”

Duncan Mackie, director of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics, Bud & Mary’s

If a cannabis product has five times or 10 times the amount of one molecule such as THC, with only trace amounts of CBG and CBC in the plant, the brain receptors “are going to just be occupied by THC,” he said. “It’s a well-known factor that if you’re 10, 15, or 20 times one molecule versus another, that one molecule that’s 20-times is going to just obliterate the receptors in the brain. There’s not even a chance for the other compounds to interact with the receptors and give you an effect.”

Another researcher working on the chemical composition and effects of cannabis is Ryan Vandrey, an experimental psychologist at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In the process of increasing THC concentration and decreasing the concentration of CBD, it’s a little unclear where a certain percent THC is going to functionally change in a reliable and meaningful way, he said. “People usually have a target dose of THC to achieve their kind of preferred level of drug effect,” Vandrey said. “Now, as you increase the percent of THC concentration up and up and up, maybe the successive titration becomes a little more challenging and more difficult for the user. So it makes it a little more challenging to fine-tune the dose, and you might overshoot your dose a little bit and then the consequence of the reduced CBD and other phytochemicals remains a little bit unclear.”

CBD may affect how a certain concentration of THC affects the consumer. “The science on whether CBD mitigates some of the adverse effects of THC when the drug is inhaled is a little bit mixed,” Vandrey said.

For example, he said, if you get a really high dose of THC, it can induce anxiety. CBD by itself can reduce anxiety in some individuals. “There’s a thought that the higher concentrations of CBD might help reduce the anxiogenic effects of inhaled THC. So that’s one potential functional consequence of these increasing concentrations of THC – you don’t get much meaningful CBD in those products anymore.”

Current testing of retail inhalable cannabis products show that CBD concentrations are very low, he said, and that’s really a function of how THC and CBD are produced by the plant. “It’s the same mechanism in the plant that produces both THC and CBD. So when you breed these plants to overexpress THC, a reduction of CBD is a natural consequence of that process. Your THC is going to drown out the signal for other chemicals.”

THC and the Role of Other Compounds

Emerging research points to other compounds in the plant, such as esters or thiols or aldehydes, that modulate the effects of THC while providing other benefits. Esters are being studied for nausea and anxiety; aldehydes are being investigated for antibacterial and antifungal medical potential.

Russ Hudson is the director of research at the Phyto Science Research Group in Texas, and a cannabis phytochemical researcher. “A very common terpene in almost all cannabis strains is beta myrcene,” he told High Times. “This is a very potent sedative on its own. Another very common terpene is humulene. This is the number one constituent of hops. It’s what makes beer and other alcohol made from hops very sedative. There are many cannabis strains that have myrcene and humulene in high concentration, which means that it’s going to make you sleepy. And for the average smoker, that’s just going to feel like they’re really stoned. A lot of that feeling isn’t happening because of THC at all.”

A strain listed as having high THC or low THC doesn’t really tell the consumer much, he said. Take Marinol, for example. It’s a synthetic form of THC introduced and approved by the FDA in 1985. “There was nothing else but THC in it,” Hudson said. “What happened is people did not have a good time when they took that medication. They felt racy, they felt anxiety, they felt paranoia. So I view looking at THC numbers as being a very incomplete part of the picture.”

Capping the THC Level: ‘It will be folly.’

Regulators are rushing to develop better ways of controlling levels of THC. A bill in California now working through the legislative process, AB2532, would put a 10 mg cap on THC content per container on beverages. Opponents say that policy would have “severe and immediate unintended consequences” that “far outweigh any purported public health benefit,” adding that the policy would “wipe out over 93% of the legal beverage market overnight.”

Vermont and Connecticut have THC caps for flower—30 % and 35% respectively. Most other states where recreational cannabis is sold limit THC content in edibles.

Hudson said that he thinks that THC caps like this are going to continue. “But the problem is that for instance with alcohol, you’re just talking about alcohol. You’re not talking about all these secondary metabolites and all that crap like in cannabis. It’s clearly known what alcohol does. With cannabis, you have too many unknowns. While I do think regulators are going to try that at first, it will be a folly. What will inevitably happen is cannabis is going to be treated like botanical medicines.”

There are only a few botanical medicines approved by the FDA, he said, and even the FDA knows with these products you cannot talk about one molecule. “That is not how botanical products work,” Hudson said. “You have to know the chemical profile. You have to do chemical fingerprinting, and eventually we will get there. The truth is that organic chemistry is hard. It’s notoriously one of the most difficult subjects on earth. Lawmakers have a very specific skill set and method of organization of their thinking, and often they just can’t quite get it. Even talking about how to calculate THC percentage, you lose them very quickly. So lawmakers will often go with whatever the last state did.”

“Even talking about how to calculate THC percentage, you lose them very quickly. So lawmakers will often go with whatever the last state did.”

Russ Hudson, director of research, Phyto Science Research Group

Lawmakers don’t want to get into the liability of calculations that then inform consumer purchases for cannabis, such as THC percentages. “Nobody’s done this before, so it does look like the United States is going to be left with figuring this out,” Hudson said. “How do we calculate THC? What does that mean? And then how do we account for the other things?”

If a strain has 30% THC and its number one terpene constituent is myrcene, and its number one sesquiterpene constituent is humulene, that’s a potently sedative strain that could have really serious medical uses for some folks, he said. “But it could have serious liabilities for other folks. So I think there is a level of fear that lawmakers just don’t want to go to. And so far nobody has really gotten it right.”

THC Marketing and the Schedule III Question

That complicated chemical composition of the plant is something a majority of people don’t pay much attention to, Vandrey said, and that comes back to the intent of the user in consuming cannabis. “If the intent is to get intoxicated and to get high, then THC is rightfully the focus,” he said. “I believe that that’s why the market drifted in this direction. THC is unquestionably the driving force in intoxication and the reinforcing and rewarding effects of cannabis use as a recreational drug. From a marketing standpoint, having the flower with the highest THC concentration is a marketing tool, and that’s driven a lot of this.”

“If the intent is to get intoxicated and to get high, then THC is rightfully the focus.”

Ryan Vandrey, experimental psychologist, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

That marketing attracts the heavy, hardcore daily consumer, which parallels the alcohol consumption patterns of people, Vandrey said. “So the heaviest consumers tend to kind of steer towards higher alcohol concentration products. It’s really no different for cannabis in that way. Heavier consumption can result in neurobiological adaptation in the user. Your CB1 receptors in your brain get downregulated, and therefore you need to continually increase the amount of THC you consume to get your targeted drug effect. The consequence of that is that when you don’t use THC, you go through withdrawal, and it’s a perpetual cycle of chasing the desirable effects and avoiding the adverse effects of withdrawal. That can escalate in users over time.”

There’s evidence that higher potency products like concentrates with 80-90 percent THC in them can speed that process up, or can exacerbate that process. “When you look at cannabis users, the folks that are using the really high THC concentrates at higher amounts tend to have more symptoms of cannabis dependence and more severe cannabis withdrawal,” Vandrey said.

Issues about cannabis products have been a top agenda item for Jonathan Caulkins, a professor of operations research and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Caulkins says that there are two things driving the marketing and sales of higher THC products. The first is the core problem for companies in the cannabis space, which is the free fall of prices. “The product just isn’t that hard to make, and there’s a lot of competition,” he told High Times. “Prices go down, prices go up, which is actually related to the price per milligram of THC, to be clear. There’s the premium of trying to differentiate your product to get away from that intense price competition, and folks do all sorts of things to try to make their products different and worthy of a customer paying more for their product than the competitors. There’s an amazing variety of flavors we go through in the menu, and it also includes making claims about cannabinoids other than THC. So some of this broadening of the discussion to other components of the product, I think, is driven by companies attempting to differentiate and say, ‘Hey. This is what’s different about our product. Therefore, you should pay more than the minimum price for a given THC.’ And I do think that this is playing to a very willing audience.”

There is a percentage of consumers who think of their consumption of cannabis as a part of their identity, he said. “That creates sort of a willing audience for trying to make the product be a more complicated thing.”

Cannabis is already partway there. In April, the Justice Department placed FDA-approved marijuana products and cannabis sold under a state medical license into Schedule III, while leaving everything else, adult-use included, in Schedule I. Whether the rest of the market follows is still open, and the April order is under challenge in the D.C. Circuit. If it does, there are a host of issues that the complicated plant presents to researchers and regulators. “If we’re going to treat it like every other Schedule III drug, you have to sell a consistent dose that is well labeled, regardless of what that dose is,” Caulkins said. “It could be 7% THC it could be 17%. But it’s just not okay for any other seller of any other FDA-approved drug to have such terrible quality control.”

For example, when you buy an aspirin, there is a certain number of milligrams of that molecule in each pill, with quality control production following a very tight tolerance, he said. “If it does go as Schedule III, and the FDA treats it the way it does every other Schedule III substance, that will really shake up the industry because the industry does not meet the quality control standards that the FDA demands. It would totally upend the industry.”

THC and a Cannabis Addiction Explainer

Just mentioning “cannabis addiction” can cause an uproar among both cannabis proponents and opponents. In an interview Updated in the Harvard University Gazette, Kevin Hill, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Division of Addiction Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said that there is a lot known about both the benefits and the risks of cannabis use, “although I would say that the rate and scale of research has not kept pace with the interest,” he said. “But our increased knowledge pales in comparison to the intense public interest. So one of the issues we often encounter is a growing divide between what the science says and what public perception is.

“At the end of the day, a lot of what people hear about cannabis is either incomplete or flat-out wrong because both sides are promoting polar opposite views of cannabis.”

The greatest example is when you talk about the addictive nature of cannabis, he said. “You can become addicted to cannabis, though most people don’t. Yet invariably, when people hear about what I do, they say, ‘Oh, you’re an addiction psychiatrist? Well, cannabis is not physically addictive; it’s psychological.’ So there are fallacies about cannabis. And they continue because people are invested in trying to get people to vote one way or another on issues like medical cannabis or legalization of recreational cannabis. That is a major problem. Every single day we have patients come in who are interested in using cannabis as a medication or they’re using it recreationally or are interested in cannabidiol, and they have beliefs about cannabis that they’ve held for years that aren’t true. And that becomes a major barrier. It’s hard to dispel those beliefs in the office.”

That is just a taste of the far-ranging discussions about THC potency and its role in addiction. More pro-con evidence is piling up, and more data on both sides is giving researchers a better understanding of THC potency and its potential as an addictive substance.

Amir Englund is a researcher in cannabinoid psychopharmacology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London. He studied the effects some of the prevalent cannabinoids—THC, CBD and THCV—have in healthy human volunteers. He reported on the cognitive, psychological, and neurophysiological effects both in THC isolation and when combined with other cannabinoids.

His research showed that there was almost a fourfold increase in the average potency of cannabis in Denmark during a 23-year study period. “It went from near 8% all the way to north of 30,” he told High Times. “At the time of the analysis (2022), it was the strongest hash in Europe. We found that when this big increase happened, it was also followed by an increase in people showing up to hospitals with either addiction problems or cannabis-induced psychosis.”

The study tracked those increases at the population level, which cannot establish that one caused the other. “But it’s really complicated data. The interesting thing when the rates of these outcomes become less frequent, we don’t really know why. One reason can be that because of this increase in potency, people don’t really like it, and they kind of switch to other products perhaps, and the incidence of these outcomes becomes rarer.

“What we have with legal cannabis markets, as well as the illegal ones, is that the marketing is often heavily geared towards the really heavy users, the people who use a lot or the people who have a problem with it, which could potentially be an addiction. They’re the ones who are using about 80% of all the high THC products, and they make up sometimes just 10% of all the people who use cannabis.

“That’s why often you see markets geared towards that small user base as opposed to the broader whole population of cannabis users.”

Englund said that he and other colleagues did a meta-analysis of studies on cannabis consumption involving giving THC to healthy people who were mainly infrequent users. “The cannabis consumption allowed was once a week or less. So they had very little tolerance.” They wanted to see what the most common effects people experience from THC, based on the dose people got.

“What we saw was, let’s say, how high people got from inhaling THC of five milligrams compared to placebo,” Englund said. “We subtracted the placebo effect. So even when people inhale a placebo joint, you get a little bit of a high from just the belief that you’re using cannabis, although there’s no THC. We subtracted that and found that the average rating of how high people got was about 34 out of a 100-point scale. When you doubled the amount, from five to 10 milligrams, you only came up to 39 on the scale. So 100% more cannabis only gave you 15% more high. We found this sort of dose-response plateauing, where it goes up first at the low amounts, gets you high, and then it kind of stops getting you high.”

So more THC is not necessarily going to give you more bang for your buck, he said, but it’s still causing an effect on the brain and your CB1 receptors.

The more you hit the CB1 receptor with THC, the more the endocannabinoid system will respond to it. “What happens is a downregulation,” he said. “It’s where the brain withdraws the receptor, so you have fewer available to you. To compensate for that, you need to keep increasing the amount to get to where you’re going, and eventually you kind of get to a place where you’re not really getting that much from it.”

Englund said that after two days of staying off cannabis, these receptors started coming back. “The brain and the cannabinoid system is a very fluid system,” he explained. “If you put a lot of THC in there, it will respond and sort of take receptors away. Then if you give it a break, they kind of come back. So I think the whole thing about potency and stronger products, because it’s geared towards these really heavy users, creates a bit of a negative circle where people are taking more THC than they actually need. The likelihood of negative things from cannabis use, like potentially addiction and potentially psychotic experiences and psychotic syndromes, can be partially explained by the fact that people don’t have as many of their cannabinoid receptors available to them anymore.”

The End of the THC Chase

Growers are in the process of evolving their understanding of the plant and the subsequent marketing of the product.

The role of Delta 9 THC as the main active ingredient in the plant is being redefined.

In a study at Wageningen University Updated in the April 2026 issue of Plant Biotechnology Journal, researchers discovered more about the chemical profile of the plant, and how today’s cannabis is the result of an evolved ability to make compounds such as THC, CBD and CBC.

In a nutshell, researchers identified some of the molecular switches that determine what cannabinoid a plant makes from the same starting material.

The most provocative implication is that cannabis breeding might eventually become less about breeding a plant and more about engineering a metabolic factory. Today’s breeder might say: “I want a plant that produces 20% THC.” A future medicinal-cannabis breeder might instead say: “I want a plant whose flowers consistently produce this particular constellation of cannabinoids.” The relevant trait might not even be THC concentration. It could be something like CBD + CBG + CBC + a particular minor cannabinoid + very low THC.

“Nobody’s going to be chasing THC anymore,” Hudson said. “As a baseline metric, maybe they want to keep it at 10%. But what’s already happening is a lot of the growers that I consult with now want to know what chemical profiles are.”

One of the companies he consults with has built an algorithm to determine the phytochemical content of the plant—what would make it good versus just average, or what would make it bad for a particular individual user. “What’s happening already is that breeders and geneticists and cultivators are trying to figure out what chemical profiles are actually valuable and why, and then they’re going back to the drawing board to make phenotypes and do selections that express those in different ways.”

Hudson said that cannabis can be manipulated past the genetic level to get the desired phytochemical content. “That’s already happening now. Soon we’ll stop talking about stupid things like calling strains names like Dog Shit or AK 47. We’ll be talking in more chemical terms.”

Hudson thinks the future of cannabis purchases won’t be about how much THC is in a certain strain. “Consumers will be walking into a dispensary saying things like, ‘I don’t care what you call it, because that’s mostly a lie anyway. I need a chemical profile that is high in limonene and beta caryophyllene’ or what have you,” Hudson said. “That’s eventually where we’re going to go. Myself and many of the scientists and researchers that I work with are having these conversations every day. It’s going to happen like that, unless, of course, we go back to the dark ages, which I think is always a possibility.”

Hudson and colleagues are building a chemical fidelity matching engine, he said, which will give consumers the ability to go to the dispensary, search by chemical content, and learn what that chemical content is.

This plays right into their hands of being able to “dork out” on the thing that cannabis consumers already love—science and chemistry. “A lot of people have scolded me and said, ‘Hey, why can’t you just let cannabis be magic?’ My response is the science is the magic. That’s where it is. If you want to be a magician, you can be. The secret is what’s in this elixir.”

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“I’m hoping that the cannabis industry will take the lead, and they’ll decide they don’t want to be like the tobacco industry.”

By Mia Maldonado, Oregon Capital Chronicle

Karma Clarke, a Douglas County mother, thought marijuana was harmless in 2014 when she voted in favor of the ballot measure legalizing recreational cannabis in Oregon.

She believed that until six years later, when her then-20-year-old son began smoking marijuana regularly.

He had played sports and maintained good grades in college, but when he returned home after completing his associate degree, Clarke said her son began acting strangely. He stopped leaving his room, and he lost the ability to perform everyday tasks such as reading a tape measure or answering questions.

After several doctor visits, her son was admitted in two different psychiatric hospitalizations. Although his drug tests came back clean, something had switched in his brain, she said.

Clarke shared her story of witnessing her son develop a psychotic disorder at a virtual meeting Wednesday, where state Sen. Lisa Reynolds, D-Portland, invited her and public health experts to speak about policy proposals aimed at preventing youth access to cannabis.

“I’m hoping that the cannabis industry will take the lead, and they’ll decide they don’t want to be like the tobacco industry and they don’t want to keep denying that there’s a link between their products and people’s lives being ruined,” Clarke said.

Reynolds looks to THC caps again, and more warning labels

Recreational cannabis has been legal in Oregon for adults 21 and older for more than a decade, but it remains illegal for minors. Still, an estimated 13,000 youth between ages 12 and 18 use cannabis in Oregon, according to Dr. Julia Dilley, a Multnomah County epidemiologist who led a 10-year study looking at cannabis legalization and public health impact in Oregon and Washington.

Reynolds, a pediatrician who has served in the Legislature for five years, is seeking to improve cannabis prevention education in schools, cap individual edibles at 10 milligrams of THC and require manufacturers provide more warning labels on their products.

Reynolds’s efforts are inspired by her work as a pediatrician, and because she believes her brother’s habitual marijuana use in the ’70s contributed to his severe mental health problems as an adult.

Teens using cannabis are at 11 times higher risk of developing a psychotic disorder compared to teens not using cannabis, studies show.

“When we talk about the risk of psychosis, this isn’t just what we would call a bad experience while you are actually intoxicated by cannabis,” Reynolds said. “This is a long-term disability.”

Additionally, more children are turning up in hospitals after consuming edibles resembling desserts such as brownies or cookies.

She spearheaded legislation earlier this year to cap individual edibles at 10 milligrams of THC. Her bill made it past the Oregon Senate, but it died in the committee process on the House side as members received intense pushback from marijuana industry groups. Reynolds said she’ll propose the legislation again, but this time with the help of a lobbyist.

The Cannabis Industry Alliance of Oregon did not immediately respond to the Capital Chronicle’s request for comment.

Oregon is one of the most loosely regulated marijuana states

More than 800 calls since 2025 to the Oregon Poison Center were related to cannabis, said Dilley, the Multnomah County epidemiologist. One-third of those calls were for children younger than 5.

Cannabis use among youth is higher in Oregon than it is in Washington because it doesn’t have the same protective measures, she said.

Unlike Washington which requires that cannabis manufacturers individually wrap all edibles with a 10 milligram THC cap, Oregon cannabis manufacturers can sell individual edibles with more than 10 milligrams of THC, such as sodas or cookies containing 100 milligrams of THC that are meant to be split into several portions. Both states require an edible package contain no more than 100 milligrams of THC.

Unlike Oregon, it’s illegal to grow nonmedical marijuana at home in Washington. Washington also caps the number of retail cannabis outlets and applies a 37 percent sales tax. Oregon’s cannabis sales tax ranges from 17 percent to 20 percent, depending on where it’s bought.

Both states require cannabis businesses to be located at least 1,000 feet away from public schools. Washington requires this buffer also apply to private schools, playgrounds, childcare facilities, libraries and other locations, though Oregon localities can establish additional buffers under state law.

Oregon does require warning labels on cannabis products related to pregnancy. These labels are working and preventing people from using cannabis during pregnancy, Dilley said, adding that Oregon could go a step further at providing more warning labels about cannabis use contributing to worse mental health outcomes.

“These products should not be designed or marketed to appeal to children,” pediatrician Dr. Jill Pearson said. “Yet, time and time again, we are just rep

This story was first published by Oregon Capital Chronicle.

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4,516 people logged what they drank for three weeks. On the days they had a THC beverage, their odds of also drinking alcohol fell by roughly half. The finding held for 23 of the 36 products tested, and moved the same direction in every one.

The largest real-world study of hemp THC beverages has published its numbers, and the clearest thing in it has nothing to do with sleep, pain or productivity.

It’s beer.

MoreBetter, a Philadelphia research firm that has run observational studies on consumer products since 2016, tracked 4,516 people across 36 products from 23 brands, at doses between 1 and 10 milligrams of THC. Each participant logged seven days before touching any product, fourteen days on it, then answered an exit survey. Every person served as their own control, measured against their own pre-use baseline. The fieldwork ran in two waves across 2025, so the results are new rather than the research. The company published the full dataset free on its Real-World Data Exchange platform and prepared a findings summary exclusively for High Times, breaking out the numbers behind each measure.

On a participant’s ordinary day, before any of this started, the modeled probability that they would drink alcohol was 22.9%. On days they drank one of these beverages, it was 10.9%.

Two Measurements, One Direction

What gives that number weight is that it doesn’t come from asking anybody about it. It comes from what people logged, day by day, about what they actually drank, run through a model that compares each person to themselves.

The exit survey asked the question directly, and the answers point the same way. Two-thirds said they were consuming less alcohol. Fifty-six percent called the drinks a regular replacement for it. Those are people describing themselves, which is a weaker kind of evidence, but they line up with the behavioral measure instead of contradicting it.

The tightest number in that group is the health one. An 86.6% average with a floor of 80% across every single product means the belief holds no matter which drink somebody picked up. Worth being precise about what that measures: it’s what people think, not what is true. Nothing in this study tested whether these products are safer than alcohol.

The eleven-point gap between the health answer and the social one is the more interesting detail. People are more confident about what these drinks do to their body than about how showing up with one plays in a room.

Fifty Days Later

The obvious question about a two-week study is whether anything survives it. MoreBetter went back and asked.

Fifty days after the study period ended, the company surveyed participants from 18 of the 36 products about how their relationship with alcohol had changed. It got 1,420 responses. Setting aside the 249 who weren’t drinking alcohol before any of this began leaves 1,171 people who were. Those results are not on the public dashboard; MoreBetter provided them to High Times on the record.

Two things to hold onto there. A third of respondents reported no change at all, which is the honest headline alongside the 63%. And this is people recalling their own drinking seven weeks later, on a narrower base than the main dataset, which makes it softer evidence than the daily logs. It points the same direction anyway, and the gap between 63% and 2.4% is not a close call.

MoreBetter also says a portion of the original group has continued into a second and now a third cohort, the third of which is currently open, spanning 12 to 18 months between the first and the present one. The point is to see whether consumption patterns and substitution behavior hold up over that kind of stretch. Those results don’t exist yet.

What It Actually Feels Like

The experience these numbers describe is mild and short, which is the whole design premise of the category and now has some evidence under it.

Duration is the most consistent thing in the entire dataset. Thirty-six products, 23 brands, doses spanning a factor of ten, and every one of them landed between two and 2.9 hours. The standard deviation is 0.2 hours. Whatever else varies in this category, how long it lasts does not.

Feeling high is the opposite. It swings from 18.8% of use days to 81.5%, which is what a 1 to 10 milligram spread would predict, and it means the 53.3% average describes almost nobody’s actual product. Half the people buying in this category are not particularly trying to get high, and the products know it.

The onset figure needs an asterisk. Participants picked from bands rather than clocking themselves, so 26.9 minutes is a center of mass, not a stopwatch reading.

And the hangover number, which the industry will want to run with, is a share of use days rather than a share of people. There was no alcohol comparison group in this study, so it cannot be read as better or worse than a hangover from drinking. MoreBetter says so itself, in writing, which is not something most industry-funded research bothers to do.

The Productivity Number, Handled Carefully

Participants reported roughly 36 more minutes of productive time on product days than on their own non-product days, a jump from 5.64 hours to 6.24. That reached significance for 20 of the 36 products, and every significant result was positive.

The companion measure is messier and deserves the scrutiny. The probability of reporting a productive day rose 12.5 points on average, but that only held for 13 of 36 products, and one product moved 15 points in the other direction. The accurate version is that for about a third of the products tested, people were more likely to report a good day, and for one of them the reverse was true.

Both are estimates people made about their own hours, not measured output.

How to Read Any of This

This is observational, not a clinical trial. There is no placebo arm and no separate comparison group; the comparison is each participant against their own pre-use baseline, which is a real method with real limits. People chose to enroll and chose their product through what MoreBetter calls a semi-blinded process. Almost everything here is self-reported, including the alcohol logs behind the headline finding. This describes what a large group of people reported while drinking these products. It does not establish that the products caused any of it.

One caveat matters more than the rest, and it comes from MoreBetter rather than from us. When a finding is significant for 23 of 36 products, the headline average covers only those 23. Products that showed no significant change are left out of the average, not counted as zero. Quote the twelve-point drop without the coverage number and you have overstated it. That warning is printed in the company’s own summary, in bold.

Who Paid For It

MoreBetter says it funded the Infused Beverage Study primarily itself, with partial funding from the beverage brands whose products were tested, and that those brands had no influence over protocol design, data analysis or published findings.

Twenty-three brands participated: BRĒZ, Cantrip, Nowadays, Uncle Arnie’s, Willie’s Remedy+, Woodstock, Medterra, Rebel Rabbit, Snoop Dogg’s Iconic Tonics, Herbal Oasis, Cornbread Hemp, Stiiizy, 1906, Sober(ish), Wims!, Hippie Water, Squared, Hightail, Kava Haven, 23rd State, Drippy, Good Feels and Rexis Biotech.

None of that makes the data bad, and the company reports 17 peer-reviewed publications across 12 university research partnerships behind it. It does mean some of the companies that helped pay for the study sell the products the study is being used to defend, and anyone citing these numbers in a policy fight should say so. Nothing is broken out by brand, so no figure here belongs to any individual participant.

The Products in This Study Are About to Stop Being Legal

Section 781 of Public Law 119-37 caps finished hemp products at 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container, applied to the whole package rather than a serving. It takes effect November 12.

The products in this study run from 1 to 10 milligrams per serving. The weakest one carries more than twice the legal ceiling for an entire container.

None of the 36 would survive it.

That date is still moving. The Senate has passed a stopgap that would push most of the new restrictions to December 11, and the House hasn’t taken it up. Until it does, November 12 is the law. We’ve been tracking the whole fight here.

Some brands have already made their bet. Cann pulled the THC out of part of its lineup, while B-Real and Rachel Wolfson launched into the same market with full-dose product. One side is reformulating for the rule on the books. The other is betting Congress changes it first. NielsenIQ data cited by MoreBetter puts the category at $239 million in tracked retail sales over the 52 weeks ending June 27, up 135% year over year, which is what the 0.4 milligram number is aimed at and why the fight has pulled in everyone from trade groups to Rosario Dawson.

Every figure in this article, and the several dozen measures that didn’t make it in, are free at rwdexchange.com/community. Verify a phone number or email, enter the code, then open Community Insights and the Infused Beverage Performance Data dashboard. No cost, no trial period, no card. Everything is filterable by seltzer, soda, sparkling beverage, functional tonic, and spirits, shots and mixers, and MoreBetter asks that anyone using the figures credit the source.

The data arrived after the vote.

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