Two Laws, One Plant

On April 23, 2026, the United States federal government did two things that do not belong in the same sentence.

The Department of Justice, acting under a December 2025 executive order from President Donald Trump, issued a final order rescheduling FDA-approved marijuana products and state-licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. It was the most significant shift in federal drug policy in more than 50 years. Hours later, on the same day, the same president posted to Truth, urging Congress to act quickly to preserve Americans’ access to full-spectrum CBD products.

“I am calling on Congress to update the Law to ensure that Americans can continue to access the full-spectrum CBD products they have come to rely on,” Trump wrote. “We must get this one RIGHT and FAST.”

I read that post from my facility in Biddeford, Maine, where we manufacture hemp-derived CBD products and export them to regulated markets on three continents. And I had one immediate thought: the president just called on Congress to fix a law he signed five months ago, while his party holds a supermajority in the same Congress he is asking to act, and while not a single one of the multiple legislative remedies already introduced has received so much as an invitation to the House floor.

That is not political commentary. That is the documented timeline of the current moment in U.S. cannabis policy, and it is the subject of this article.

We are operating inside a federal regulatory framework that is pulling the cannabis plant in two directions at once. One set of federal actions is moving to legitimize intoxicating marijuana under Schedule III, opening pathways for medical research, physician access and, eventually, fairer tax treatment for state-licensed operators. 

Another set of federal law, already signed and already on the clock, is on track to criminalize the vast majority of non-intoxicating hemp products, eliminate the supply chain that produces them and make it federally illegal to process hemp flower into crude oil. Those two trajectories are not the product of opposing parties. They are the product of one administration, one Congress and one extraordinary failure of legislative coherence.

I am going to walk through both, starting with what happened April 23 and working 

back to what was signed in November, because the only way to understand the contradiction is to understand each half of it.

The Rescheduling: Historic, Bounded and Not What You Think

The April 23 order is real, it matters and it has been overstated in almost every headline I have seen. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order placing two specific categories of marijuana into Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. The first category is drug products containing marijuana that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. 

In practice, this currently means a short list: Epidiolex, the CBD-based medication approved for treatment-resistant epilepsy, and Marinol and Syndros, which contain synthetic delta-9 THC and are prescribed for chemotherapy-related nausea and AIDS-related appetite loss. That is the full universe of FDA-approved marijuana products. The second category is marijuana that is subject to a qualifying state-issued license authorizing manufacture, distribution or dispensing for medical purposes only. 

A licensed medical dispensary in Maine, Colorado or any other state operating under a medical-only program qualifies. An adult-use recreational retailer operating legally under state law, but without a medical-specific license, does not. Recreational marijuana in every state, regardless of how well-regulated, remains Schedule I under this order.

That is it. The order covers naturally derived delta-9 THC and marijuana extracts, but only to the extent those substances are incorporated into an FDA-approved product or covered by a qualifying state medical license. Simultaneously, the DEA announced an expedited administrative hearing beginning June 29, 2026, to evaluate broader rescheduling of all marijuana. That hearing has a mandated conclusion date of July 15, 2026. What comes out of it, and when any resulting rule takes effect, remains an open question.

I want to be precise about what this rescheduling does and does not change, because the 

confusion in the market is real and it is costly.

What it changes: State-licensed medical marijuana entities can now register with the DEA using their existing state credentials, with the agency committed to processing early applications within six months. Entities that submit applications by June 22, 2026, may continue operating under state licenses while under review. This is meaningful for medical operators who have been navigating a patchwork of state legitimacy and federal illegality for more than a decade.

What it does not change: Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code, which prohibits ordinary business deductions for companies trafficking in Schedule I or Schedule II substances, is not directly resolved by this order. The IRS has indicated guidance is forthcoming, but as of this writing, no transitional rules have been issued. State and local taxes are similarly unaffected. 

The order explicitly states that any form of marijuana other than in an FDA-approved product or under a state medical license remains Schedule I, and those handling such material remain subject to full federal criminal and civil sanctions. What it does not touch at all: hemp. Not one word of the April 23 order addresses hemp, hemp-derived cannabinoids, CBD or the November 2026 deadline that is bearing down on my industry.

Proponents of the rescheduling, and I count myself among them philosophically, have argued that moving marijuana to Schedule III will unlock domestic research on a plant that has been nearly impossible to study under federal Schedule I restrictions. That argument is accurate as far as it goes. Schedule III designation formally acknowledges accepted medical use and removes the most burdensome DEA registration requirements that have historically made clinical cannabis research an institutional obstacle course. Here is my honest reaction to that framing, as a manufacturer who exports to markets that have been conducting serious cannabis science for a decade: cannabis is one of the most extensively documented botanical substances in human pharmacological history. 

The research gap is not a knowledge problem. It is a regulatory and political problem. Rescheduling partially addresses the regulatory dimension. It does nothing to address the political conditions that produced the regulatory problem in the first place, and it leaves the question of what actually happens to the $30 billion hemp-derived cannabinoid market entirely unanswered. That market, and the law governing it, is a separate conversation. And it is where this story gets genuinely dark.

Section 781: The Law Nobody Debated

On Nov. 12, 2025, President Trump signed H.R. 5371, the Continuing Appropriations,  Agriculture, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Extensions Act, 2026. The bill ended a 42-day government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, and it ran well over a thousand pages. Buried in Division B, Section 781, was a single provision that rewrote the federal definition of hemp and set a one-year clock on the majority of hemp-derived cannabinoid products currently sold in the United States.

The provision was not publicly debated. It was not subject to committee markup. It passed because it was attached to legislation the government needed to stay open. Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, inserted the language. Sen. Mitch McConnell, who had championed hemp’s legalization under the 2018 Farm Bill, supported it, characterizing the intoxicating hemp market as the product of an exploited statutory loophole. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky moved to strip the provision by emergency amendment. The motion was tabled 76-24.

On Nov. 12, 2026, one year from enactment, the provision takes effect. Section 781 makes three principal changes to federal hemp law. First, it replaces the prior delta-9 THC threshold with a total THC standard. Hemp is now defined as cannabis with a total THC concentration, including THCA and delta-8 THC, of not more than 0.3% on a dry weight basis. The 2018 Farm Bill only measured delta-9 THC. This single change eliminates THCA flower from the legal hemp market, because THCA converts to delta-9 THC upon heating and any honest total THC test on high-THCA flower will exceed the new threshold.

Second, it imposes a ceiling of 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container for finished hemp-derived consumable products intended for ingestion, inhalation or topical use. Not per serving. Per container. A standard full-spectrum CBD tincture, a product sold in mainstream retail by responsible, tested, fully compliant manufacturers, will exceed this threshold. The U.S. Hemp Roundtable has estimated the 0.4-milligram cap alone would eliminate approximately 95% of hemp-derived cannabinoid products currently on the market, including the vast majority of nonintoxicating CBD products. A $30 billion industry, rendered federally unlawful by a single milligram figure.

Third, it excludes synthetic and converted cannabinoids from the hemp definition entirely. Delta-8 THC produced through chemical conversion of CBD, HHC, THC-O and 

similar compounds are out, regardless of THC content. I want to pause on the second provision because the public conversation about Section 781 has largely focused on intoxicating products — delta-8 gummies, hemp-derived THC beverages, high-potency products sold in convenience stores — and the legitimate concerns about unregulated access and youth exposure that animated the McConnellHarris position. Those concerns are real. The enforcement problem in the hemp market before November 2025 was real. I do not argue otherwise.

What I argue is that the 0.4-milligram container cap is not a targeted response to an intoxication problem. It is a prohibition. A 30-milliliter bottle of full-spectrum CBD oil formulated at 1,800 milligrams CBD with naturally occurring trace cannabinoids, the kind of product that our company and hundreds of others produce under cGMP standards, test at independent labs and export to regulated international markets, will be a Schedule I controlled substance on Nov. 12, 2026. Not because it gets anyone high. Because it contains trace amounts of a naturally occurring plant compound that, measured per container rather than per serving, exceeds 0.4 milligrams. That is not closing a loophole. That is closing the industry.

Where the Supply Chain Actually Breaks

I am going to explain this from the inside, because I have not seen it reported accurately 

in the general press, and it is the part of this story that my peers in manufacturing understand viscerally and that policymakers appear not to have considered at all. The discussion of Section 781’s impact has focused almost entirely on finished products. 

That framing misses the more fundamental problem. The law does not kill this industry 

at the shelf. It kills it at the extractor, at the very first step of the production process, and 

it does so not through the 0.4-milligram container limit but through a separate provision governing intermediate and work-in-progress materials. Section 781 sets a ceiling of 0.3% total THC by dry weight for intermediate hempderived cannabinoid products. That is the same threshold as the plant definition. The law draws no distinction between legal hemp biomass and the first concentrate you produce from it.

Here is the problem with that, and it is not a legal argument. It is chemistry. When you extract cannabinoids from hemp flower through supercritical CO2, ethanol or hydrocarbon extraction, you produce crude oil. Crude is the first output of the extraction process. It concentrates all cannabinoids present in the biomass, including CBD, minor cannabinoids, terpenes and THC. Industry processors have documented that extraction produces approximately a tenfold increase in cannabinoid concentration. A hemp flower biomass that enters the extractor at 0.3% total THC, the legal ceiling under Section 781, exits as crude oil at approximately 2% to 3% total THC by weight.

That crude is the mandatory, unavoidable intermediate product of any hemp extraction operation. You cannot produce CBD oil, distillate, isolate or any other downstream product without producing crude first. And under Section 781, with its 0.3% intermediate ceiling and no carve-out for materials in active processing, that crude is a federal controlled substance the moment it is created.

There is no chemistry that prevents this. There is no formulation adjustment that avoids it. Crude is crude. Its THC concentration is a function of the physics of extraction, not operator intent. A hemp processor operating in full good faith, using federally compliant biomass, following every best practice in the industry, will produce an illegal intermediate product as the first output of their process on Nov. 12, 2026. The regulatory framework that might have addressed this does not exist. Section 781 directed the FDA to publish, within 90 days of enactment, a series of clarifying documents: a list of cannabinoids naturally produced by the cannabis plant, a list of THC-class cannabinoids, a list of cannabinoids with similar effects to THC and additional specificity on the definition of “container” as it applies to intermediate and 

final products. That deadline was February 2026. The FDA missed it. As of this writing, those documents have not been published.

Without them, there is no regulatory definition of what constitutes a compliant intermediate. There is no safe harbor for a processor. There is no guidance on whether dilution of crude with ethanol, the prior industry workaround for interstate shipping under the 2018 Farm Bill framework, satisfies the 0.3% standard under a total THC measurement. Legal analysts have flagged that it may not be feasible. The consequence is not abstract. It is that CBD extraction, the foundational step in the supply chain for every hemp-derived cannabinoid product sold in the United States, becomes a federally unlawful activity in November. Not for bad actors. For every 

manufacturer who processes hemp flower.

I export to Brazil under ANVISA registration, to the United Kingdom under the Novel Foods framework and to EU markets with their own compliance requirements. My international buyers require documentation, certificates of analysis, manufacturing certifications and a legal supply chain. If my U.S. extraction operations become federally unlawful, my supply chain does not just face a domestic compliance problem. It collapses. The downstream consequences extend well beyond the American consumer market that Section 781’s architects appear to have been focused on. The CMS Pilot: What Was Promised and What Launched On Dec. 18, 2025, standing at the White House signing ceremony for Trump’s executive order on marijuana rescheduling, CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz made a sweeping announcement about what was coming next for hemp-derived CBD access. 

The program would, Oz said, “allow millions of Americans on Medicare to become eligible to receive CBD as early as April of next year — and at no charge, if their doctors recommend them.” He added that Medicare Advantage insurers CMS had contacted were “also agreeing to consider CBD to be used for the 34 million Americans that they cover.” 

Patients could be eligible for up to $500 worth of hemp-derived products per year. The president himself would later reference the initiative in his April 23 Truth Social post as evidence of action on CBD access. On April 1, 2026, a program launched. It was not the program described in December. What CMS actually launched is called the Substance Access Beneficiary Engagement Incentive, or BEI, operated through the CMS Innovation Center. It is an optional mechanism available to participants in two specific alternative payment models: the ACO REACH Model and the Enhancing Oncology Model. As of launch, five accountable care organizations had submitted implementation plans for CMS review. The broader LEAD Model, which would extend the BEI to a larger participant pool, is not scheduled to launch until Jan. 1, 2027.

Medicare does not pay for the products. CMS does not reimburse product costs, does not designate approved suppliers and does not cover hemp-derived CBD as a Medicare benefit. Participating organizations fund the $500 per beneficiary per year themselves, out of their own model participation budgets. Patients whose providers bill traditional fee-for-service Medicare and are not enrolled in one of the qualifying alternative payment models are not eligible. That describes the majority of Medicare’s 68 million beneficiaries.

The gap between the December announcement and the April reality is not a rounding 

error. “Millions of Americans” becoming eligible describes a universal Medicare benefit. 

Five ACOs with pending implementation plans describes a limited innovation pilot affecting, by outside estimates, somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 patients in its initial phase. 

“No charge, if their doctors recommend them” describes a Medicare coverage benefit. A program where the participating organization absorbs the cost and Medicare processes no claim describes something structurally different, regardless of what the patient pays out of pocket.

I am not suggesting the program is without value. As a manufacturer who has spent 

years arguing that federal clinical data on hemp-derived cannabinoids is the single most important missing element in this policy debate, I recognize what it means for the federal government to generate any outcomes data at all. One supplier participating in the  program, Cornbread Hemp co-founder Jim Higdon, described his company’s participation publicly as “an extraordinary leap of faith,” given the November deadline. That is a candid and accurate description of the position every responsible supplier in this space is currently in.

The program also carries a detail buried in CMS’s own documentation that received essentially no coverage in the December announcement cycle. The agency’s official BEI program page states explicitly that eligible hemp products are defined using 2018 Farm Bill language, not Section 781, and that if the legal limits on hemp-derived products change, as with Section 781 of the FY2026 Agriculture Appropriations Act, CMS will adjust its definition in accordance with the law.

CMS acknowledged on its own website, in the program’s governing documentation, that the law the president signed in November could shut down the pilot the president celebrated in December. That acknowledgment did not appear in any administration press release.

There is also active litigation. On March 30, 2026, Smart Approaches to Marijuana and a coalition of nine drug safety advocacy organizations filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking to vacate the BEI program on the grounds that CMS bypassed required notice-and-comment rulemaking, acted arbitrarily in adopting a program that conflicts with prior CMS rules and that the BEI conflicts with both the 2026 Agriculture Appropriations Act and the Controlled Substances Act. On April 1, the court denied the plaintiffs’ emergency motion for a temporary restraining order. A preliminary injunction hearing was scheduled for April 20, 2026. As of this writing, the outcome of that hearing has not been publicly confirmed. On the same day the BEI launched, the FDA issued its own policy shift. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary sent a letter stating the agency does not intend to enforce certain provisions of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act with respect to orally administered hemp-derived CBD products, conditional on those products being manufactured and labeled consistent with the dietary supplement framework. Two federal agencies relaxed their posture on hemp-derived CBD on April 1, 2026. The law scheduled to eliminate the supply chain for those products takes effect seven months later.

There is one more layer to the Oz framing worth noting, because it illustrates the internal incoherence of the administration’s position with particular clarity. 

In the same month he described the CBD Medicare initiative as a historic expansion of patient access, Oz warned separately that “there are going to be consequences” as more Americans choose marijuana over alcohol, citing problems caused by “high-dose hemp and CBD.” 

The same official, in the same month, celebrating low-dose CBD as a breakthrough for senior health care and warning about the dangers of hemp and CBD. There are defensible distinctions to be drawn between dose levels and product types, and I do not suggest the positions are irreconcilable on their face. But the pattern is consistent with an administration that has not resolved, internally, what it actually believes about this plant—and is making policy accordingly.

What the pilot needs to survive and scale is straightforward: Section 781 must be amended or delayed, the litigation must fail and the FDA’s relaxed enforcement posture must be formalized before November. That is three separate federal outcomes, in seven months, from a government that has so far managed to launch a pilot program built on a supply chain it is simultaneously scheduled to criminalize.

The Legislative Graveyard

Several bills have been introduced with the explicit purpose of preventing the November 

catastrophe. None of them has been scheduled for a floor vote.

H.R. 6209, the American Hemp Protection Act, was introduced Nov. 17, 2025, by Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, five days after Section 781 was signed. It would repeal Section 781 in its entirety, restoring the 2018 Farm Bill definition. Co-sponsors include Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Zoe Lofgren of California and Jim Baird of Indiana. Industry critics of the bill have noted it proposes no regulatory framework to replace what it repeals, which is a legitimate concern but an arguable improvement over prohibition.

H.R. 7024, the Hemp Planting Predictability Act, was introduced Jan. 13, 2026, by Rep. Baird with bipartisan co-sponsors including Reps. James Comer of Kentucky and Angie Craig of Minnesota. It makes one change to Section 781: it replaces “365 days” with “three years,” pushing the effective date from November 2026 to November 2028. A Senate companion was introduced Jan. 15 by Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Jeff Merkley of Oregon. This bill does not solve the problem. It buys time to solve the problem, which is a meaningful distinction given that no serious regulatory framework for hemp-derived cannabinoids currently exists.

The Cannabinoid Safety and Regulation Act, introduced in the Senate in December 2025 by Sens. Ron Wyden and Merkley, both of Oregon, takes the most comprehensive approach. The 84-page bill would replace Section 781’s prohibition with a federal regulatory structure: a 5-milligram-per-serving THC limit for edibles, a 50-milligramper-container cap, a federal minimum purchase age of 21, mandatory third-party testing, standardized labeling requirements and explicit preservation of state authority to impose stricter rules. This is legislation that the industry, consumers and regulators could actually work with. It is stalled.

The Hemp Safety Enforcement Act, introduced this month by Sen. Paul, would allow states and tribal governments to opt out of the federal ban if they have enacted their own age restrictions and prohibitions on synthetic cannabinoids. The bill had initial cosponsors, but Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa withdrew her name this week. In March 2026, the House Agriculture Committee considered hemp delay amendments in the context of Farm Bill reauthorization. Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania ruled the amendments non-germane. That door is now closed.

To be clear about the political math here: Republicans control the House and Senate. The president has publicly called for congressional action on hemp. Multiple bipartisan bills exist. The industry has documented the economic consequences in detail — more than 300,000 jobs, over $1.5 billion in aggregate state tax revenue, a supply chain that includes farmers, processors, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and ancillary service providers. None of that has been sufficient to generate a floor vote. I have been in this industry long enough to understand that the absence of a floor vote is itself a decision. It is not procedural inertia. It is a choice, made every week by the leadership of the majority party, to allow the clock to run.

The Contradiction in Chief I am going to present the timeline here without editorial commentary, because I think it speaks for itself.

November 2018: President Trump, in his first term, signs the 2018 Farm Bill, federally legalizing hemp and creating the market framework that gave rise to the CBD industry. November 12, 2025: President Trump, in his second term, signs H.R. 5371, including Section 781, which will functionally eliminate that same industry by November 2026.

December 18, 2025: President Trump issues an executive order directing the DOJ to expedite marijuana rescheduling and, separately, advocates for changes to the regulation of hemp-derived CBD products. The executive order specifically directs the White House to work with Congress to allow Americans to benefit from access to appropriate full-spectrum CBD products.

April 1, 2026: The Trump administration’s CMS launches the Substance Access BEI pilot, allowing participating ACOs and oncology practices to furnish hemp-derived CBD to Medicare patients. On the same day, the FDA relaxes its enforcement posture on hemp-derived CBD products. On the same day, a federal court denies an emergency motion to stop the pilot.

April 23, 2026: The Trump administration’s DOJ issues the marijuana rescheduling 

order. On the same day, President Trump posts to Truth Social calling on Congress to fix 

the hemp law. “Plus, I am told it will also help our GREAT FARMERS, who we love, and 

will always be there for. Please get it done, and SOON.”

April 23, 2026: Congress does not act. That is the complete timeline of executive and legislative action on hemp and marijuana under the current administration, in sequence, without embellishment. The president signed a law that will eliminate the hemp cannabinoid industry.

Within a month, he issued an executive order suggesting that was not his intent. His administration then created a federal health care initiative that depends on the industry the law will eliminate. He then publicly called on Congress to fix it, while his party’s congressional leadership has declined to bring any of the available legislative remedies to a vote.

What this is not is evidence of malice. What it is, clearly and documentably, is a failure of coordination between the executive and legislative branches of the same party, at a moment when the consequences of that failure will land directly on farmers, processors, manufacturers, retailers and the patients enrolled in the CMS pilot program.

What It Means for Operators

I am going to be direct about what this looks like from where I stand, and I suspect it 

looks the same from wherever you are standing if you are in this industry. Capital is already drying up. Insurers have begun reassessing coverage for hemp-derived cannabinoid operations in light of the November deadline. Supply chain agreements are being written with Section 781 contingencies. Extraction operators are managing inventory decisions against a date that may or may not be moved by Congress, with no reliable signal about which way the legislative wind is blowing. Farmers who committed acreage for the 2026 growing season at the time of Section 781’s enactment face the possibility of harvesting a crop that will be a Schedule I controlled substance before they can bring it to market.

If Section 781 takes effect without amendment, hemp-derived cannabinoid products that exceed the 0.4-milligram container threshold will be reclassified, by operation of law, as marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act. The 280E tax provision, which prohibits ordinary business deductions for companies trafficking in Schedule I controlled substances, may then apply to hemp-derived cannabinoid manufacturers and retailers. The legal analysis on this is not settled, but the exposure is real, and it is the kind of uncertainty that accelerates capital flight well before any enforcement action occurs.

For operators like me who have built international distribution on the basis of a legal, documented, domestically manufactured supply chain, the consequences extend to every international market we serve. Regulatory approvals in Brazil, the United Kingdom and the European Union are predicated on the legal status of the product in the country of origin. If the country of origin reclassifies our intermediate products as controlled substances, every downstream export relationship is at risk.

The June 29 DEA hearing on broader marijuana rescheduling is the next major milestone in the marijuana side of this equation. What emerges from that process will have genuine significance for state medical operators and will set the stage for whatever the 280E and insurance coverage debates look like in 2027 and beyond. But it has nothing to do with hemp. And hemp is what the clock is running on.

Which Law Blinks First

There is a version of the next seven months that ends with something resembling a 

functional outcome. Congress passes the Hemp Planting Predictability Act, pushes the deadline to 2028 and buys time for the Wyden-Merkley regulatory framework to be seriously debated. The FDA publishes its overdue cannabinoid clarification guidance, giving processors at minimum a defensible interpretation of the WIP standard. The DEA hearing concludes in July with a final rule that extends Schedule III status to all marijuana and, separately, Treasury issues 280E relief guidance for state medical operators. The CMS pilot survives litigation and generates the clinical data that makes the federal case for full-spectrum CBD access that the president has already signaled he wants to make.

That version is possible. It requires more coordinated federal action in seven months 

than we have seen in the past seven years of hemp policy, but it is possible. The version I think about more, as someone who has built a manufacturing operation around the assumption that federal law means what it says, is the one where Congress does not act, November 12 arrives and the industry absorbs the impact of a blanket prohibition while the political apparatus that created the situation debates who is to blame. In that version, the supply chain for the CMS pilot collapses before the pilot generates meaningful clinical data. The 300,000 jobs and $1.5 billion in state tax revenue cited by the Hemp Roundtable become retrospective statistics. The extraction facilities that built operations under cGMP standards, invested in third-party testing 

infrastructure and developed international regulatory relationships exit the market, because the alternative is operating inside a federal controlled substance framework with no registration pathway and no legal safe harbor.

I have been a manufacturer in this industry for eight years. I built this operation through the 2018 Farm Bill, through COVID, through the 2023 Farm Bill lapse, through every round of regulatory uncertainty that has characterized this market since the day it became legal. I have operated under cGMP standards not because the federal government required it of me but because I believed the market would eventually reward quality and I wanted to be positioned for regulated international access when it came.

The law that is scheduled to take effect in November does not distinguish between the operation I built and the worst actors the Section 781 architects were trying to address. It eliminates both, by chemistry, before a single finished product reaches a shelf. The rescheduling order signed on April 23 is a genuine and meaningful step toward a more rational federal cannabis policy. I welcome it without reservation. It just has nothing to do with my business. What my business needs, what 300,000 jobs need, what the patients enrolled in the CMS pilot need, is for Congress to act before November 12 on a problem that the president has publicly acknowledged, that bipartisan legislation already exists to address and that the clock is making less solvable with every week that passes without a floor vote.

The plant is still the same plant. Washington is the variable.