Culture
After RFK: The Cannabis Festival Trail Still Has Three Big Stops Left
8 min read
Cover Story — Market Intelligence, Unfiltered
The Commonwealth in Limbo: How Virginia Built a Cannabis Market for Everyone Except Cannabis Companies
Five years after becoming the first Southern state to legalize, Virginia still has no legal way to buy weed. On May 19, 2026, Gov. Abigail Spanberger — who campaigned on signing exactly this bill — became the third Virginia governor in a row to veto retail cannabis, this time against her own party's trifecta. The story runs through Total Wine's hemp-THC lobby, an FBI raid on Sen. Louise Lucas's dispensary, $700M in forgone tax revenue bleeding to Maryland, and a regulator built to regulate nothing. The earliest plausible adult-use retail launch in Virginia is now 2028.
Daily
Published each morning
6:00 AM ET
Delivered to your inbox
Independent
No ads. No strings.
No sales
Just information
The Latest
View all →
From the Desks
The Federal Policy Desk
The White House's Cannabis Contradiction: Rescheduling with One Hand, Criminalizing with the Other
On May 4, ONDCP released the 2026 National Drug Control Strategy — and lumped state-legal marijuana alongside fentanyl and gas station heroin, eleven days after DOJ moved medical cannabis to Schedule III. The contradiction is statutory, but it lands hard on hemp-derived THC operators staring down a November deadline and adult-use companies awaiting the June 29 DEA hearing.
The Federal Policy Desk
The MSOS Black Box: How a Cannabis ETF Actually Works
More than 60% of MSOS isn't stock — it's a stack of total return swaps written by five broker-dealers, collateralized by money-market cash, referencing securities listed in Canada and hedged through positions you can't see. A deep dive into the strangest ETF on the NYSE: who the five counterparties actually are, why your buy order at Schwab moves the price of CSE-listed shares, and what April's Schedule III order does (and doesn't) change about the structure.
The Federal Policy Desk
Green Thumb Is Paying $70 Million a Year to License Its Own Brands
Green Thumb's Q1 looks clean by cannabis standards: $300M revenue up 7.4% YoY, $76M operating cash flow, $54.6M net cash, an aggressive buyback. But starting Q2, GTI begins paying $70 million a year in fixed brand-licensing fees to RYTHM, Inc. — a separately Nasdaq-listed holding company chaired by GTI's own CEO. The $15.4M net income was flattered by a $17M Ascend arbitration win and $6.5M RYTHM equity income; strip those out and operating income actually declined year-over-year. The DEA registration filing, the Texas TCUP license, and the dual-entity architecture all telegraph one thing: Green Thumb is engineering itself into something that isn't quite a cannabis operator anymore.
The Culture Desk
The Quiet Substitution: Why the People Who Actually Switched From Beer to THC Are Switching All the Way
Gallup's 2025 poll says only 54% of Americans drink alcohol — the lowest in 90 years of tracking. But the analysts buried the substitution story: at the population level, cannabis isn't the reason. At the cohort level, it absolutely is. People who started drinking THC seltzers cut their alcohol intake from 7.02 to 3.35 drinks per week. Inside the averages, a generational substitution is happening — and wine, craft beer, and bars are losing.
Schedule Watch
The road to Schedule III
Tracking every step of the federal rescheduling process — from Biden's 2022 review order through Trump's executive action and the April 23 DOJ order moving medical cannabis to Schedule III, to the June 29 Phase Two hearing on full rescheduling.
Oct 2022
Biden orders scheduling review
Aug 2023
HHS recommends Schedule III
May 2024
DEA proposes rescheduling rule
Aug 2024
42,000+ public comments received
Dec 2025
Trump signs executive order
Jan–Apr 2026
Biden-era ALJ proceeding withdrawn
Apr 23, 2026
DOJ orders medical cannabis to Schedule III
Jun 29 – Jul 15, 2026
Phase Two hearing on full reschedulingIn progress
Late 2026
Final rule on full rescheduling
The Daily Brief
Six a.m. Eastern. Before the market opens.
One email. The night's moves, the morning's agenda, and three things every operator needs to know before 9:30.
Free · No spam · Unsubscribe anytime