Drugs are bad, m’kay. But what if they’re not? Psilocybin continues to be in the limelight for its potential medicinal uses, including most particularly its potential to combat the nation’s growing mental health crisis. Last...more
Are cannabis beverages poised to take over the market for intoxicating beverages from alcoholic beverages, or are they simply the latest fad set to give way to alcoholic beverages’ century of dominance? A decade ago, the...more
It’s funny how things work out – sometimes you find yourself living in a sort of butterfly effect where the tail seems to wag the dog. In 2023, when we first started writing about the traction psychedelics were gaining as...more
A few weeks ago, someone at a holiday party asked “Whitt, why doesn’t Budding Trends take on the weighty legal issues of the day and instead resort to cheap pop culture references and puns?” I thought about responding with a...more
1/14/2025
/ Banking Sector ,
Compliance ,
Controlled Substances ,
DEA ,
Dispensaries ,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Interstate Commerce ,
Investment ,
Investors ,
Marijuana ,
Marijuana Related Businesses ,
Medical Marijuana ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Pharmacies ,
Private Equity ,
Regulatory Agenda ,
Regulatory Reform ,
Schedule I Drugs ,
State and Local Government ,
State Taxes ,
Tax Liability ,
Tax Reform
No, it’s not (just) a cruel play on words. Last week, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced a much-anticipated public hearing on the proposal to reschedule marijuana from early December until the first quarter of...more
11/15/2024
/ Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) ,
Cannabis Products ,
Controlled Substances Act ,
DEA ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ,
Government Agencies ,
Marijuana ,
Public Comment ,
Regulatory Agenda ,
Schedule I Drugs ,
Trump Administration
During this time of great tension and competition between the marijuana and hemp industries, it is refreshing to see efforts at compromise. The initial draft of the Cannabinoid Safety and Regulation Act, proposed last week by...more
10/7/2024
/ Cannabidiol (CBD) oil ,
Cannabis Products ,
Cannabis-Related Businesses (CRBs) ,
Dispensaries ,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ,
Hemp ,
Hemp Cultivation ,
Hemp Related Businesses ,
Legislative Agendas ,
Marijuana ,
Marijuana Related Businesses ,
State and Local Government
We at Budding Trends have been optimistic, and then cautiously optimistic, that the legalization of psychedelics was close. This month, however, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration dealt a blow to our predictions. FDA...more
Avid readers know we have speculated that the legalization of psychedelics as a prescription medicine was “closer than ever.” Unfortunately, for proponents of the legalization of psychedelics like MDMA, progress is rarely a...more
Supporters of hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD) who hoped the Food and Drug Administration would adopt a more progressive view of CBD were disappointed when FDA Chief Robert Califf recently testified that FDA does not consider...more
4/23/2024
/ Cannabidiol (CBD) oil ,
Cannabis Products ,
Decriminalization of Marijuana ,
Dietary Supplements ,
Farm Bill ,
FDA Approval ,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ,
Health and Safety ,
Hemp ,
Legislative Agendas ,
Marijuana ,
Regulatory Oversight ,
Regulatory Requirements
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission, on behalf of the Texas Department of State Health Services, recently announced that it was accepting public comments to the current rules governing consumer hemp products in the...more
If you know either of us, you know neither of us would pass up a chance to say, “I told you so.” As we looked ahead to 2024 in January, we speculated that psychedelics could be legalized as a prescription medicine. Now, not...more
2023 was a momentous year for psychedelics, and it’s not just because we at Budding Trends started writing about them. There were wins for the psychedelic industry at the local, state, and federal levels, as well as in the...more
A few weeks ago, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Aggarwal v. U.S. DEA directed the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to reconsider its decision not to transfer psilocybin from Schedule I to Schedule II....more
Now that the dust is starting to settle on the recent news that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has recommended to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) that marijuana be moved from Schedule I to...more
9/20/2023
/ Advertising ,
Banking Sector ,
Cannabis Products ,
Cannabis-Related Businesses (CRBs) ,
Decriminalization of Marijuana ,
Dispensaries ,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ,
Legislative Agendas ,
Marijuana ,
Marijuana Related Businesses ,
Medical Marijuana ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
State and Local Government
Just as we did, the Food and Drug Administration has recognized the growing enthusiasm for exploring opportunities to use psychedelic medications to treat mental health disorders. In June, FDA issued for the first time draft...more
For years, the cannabis industry has been the purview of entrepreneurs and those willing to operate in gray areas — those willing to take some measure of risk to recover the premium on that risk. As cannabis has become legal...more
Last week in a small hearing room in a House office building, the House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services held a hearing titled “Hemp in the Modern World: The Years long Wait for...more
Welcome to the latest installment of the Editors’ Roundtable, in which our editors – Whitt Steineker, Jay Wright, Hunter Robinson, and Slates Veazey – discuss cannabis issues in the news and take a stab at where the cannabis...more
4/4/2023
/ Amended Legislation ,
Cannabidiol (CBD) oil ,
Cannabis Products ,
Cannabis-Related Businesses (CRBs) ,
DEA ,
Farm Bill ,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ,
Hemp ,
Hemp Cultivation ,
Hemp Related Businesses ,
THC
Just before the midterms last year, President Biden made two historic announcements that he described as steps to “end” the federal government’s “failed approach” to marijuana. First, he issued mass pardons for federal...more
In the waning days of 2022, FDA issued an updated Food Code with several important updates. FDA is responsible for more than a quarter of the U.S. economy, and the Food Code impacts virtually every American.
Originally...more
There is a moment in the movie Wall Street, just before a fresh-faced Charlie Sheen as Bud Fox interviews for a coveted position with a peak-of-his-fame Michael Douglas playing the iconic Gordon Gecko, where Sheen looks in...more
In the pilot episode of NBC’s Parks and Recreation, Leslie Knope, deputy director of the Pawnee Parks and Recreation Department, promises her constituents she will fill in “the pit” that has become a hazard to her community...more
Welcome to the third installment of the Editors’ Roundtable, in which our editors – Whitt Steineker, Jay Wright, Hunter Robinson, and Slates Veazey – discuss cannabis issues in the news and take a stab at where the cannabis...more
Cannabis operators (from marijuana to hemp-derived products such as CBD) often get the sense they are one of the central targets of the federal government’s reach. But they are not in the same league lately as the COVID-19...more
4/25/2022
/ Cannabis Products ,
Cannabis-Related Businesses (CRBs) ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
False Advertising ,
Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ,
Healthcare ,
Hemp ,
Marijuana ,
Marijuana Related Businesses ,
Marketing ,
Warning Labels
There is a scene in The Hunt for Red October when Captain Marko Ramius, played wonderfully by the late, great Sean Connery, says of a pending nuclear standoff: “Once more, we play our dangerous game, a game of chess against...more