NEWSLETTERS
https://revenue.mt.gov/news/recent-news/cannabis-control-division-june-2025-newsletter
Cannabis : Law360 : Legal News & Analysis
ARTICLES
Independent cannabis operators versus MSOs? Consumers don’t walk the talk
By Margaret Jackson, Reporter
June 30, 2025
https://mjbizdaily.com/independent-cannabis-operators-versus-msos-consumers-dont-walk-the-talk/
As cannabis businesses strive to establish brand loyalty, they’re learning that consumer purchasing habits don’t always align with stated preferences.
A recent survey by California-based medical marijuana telehealth platform NuggMD reveals that although consumers indicate a desire to support independent cannabis businesses – even if it means paying a premium – price and potency often win the battle for their dollars.
The survey of 602 marijuana consumers asked: Would you pay a premium for cannabis that’s cultivated, distributed and sold by small, independent businesses as opposed to large multistate operators?
More than half (51%) of respondents to NuggMD’s Cannabis Consumer Poll said they would pay a premium, and 41% said they would consider it. Only 6% of those surveyed said they would not pay a premium.
Although consumers indicated they would pay a premium for products produced by smaller, independent companies, when asked what’s important to them while shopping for marijuana products, 29% said price and 37% said price selection, according to NuggMD.
Andrew Graham, head of communications for NuggMD, said the company’s survey shows that independent marijuana operators have an edge in competitive markets if their branding is strong.
Big marijuana can learn from the little guys
But the poll also is instructive for MSOs.
“Cannabis consumers are willing to pay a premium for products that are local and independent of too much corporate influence, similar to the farm-to-table restaurant model that works so well in so many places,” Graham said.
“If MSOs can convince consumers that they’re ‘farms,’ too, then they can give customers what they want while also potentially capturing larger margins.”
Consumers want products that offer a sense of identity and purpose beyond mere functionality.
“I think (the survey responses speak) to overall consumer desire that you don’t want to get this homogenized commodity – they want some branding behind it,” said attorney Oren Bitan, co-chair of the marijuana and hemp industry group at Los Angeles-based law firm Buchalter.
“No one has necessarily developed deep loyalty to a brand.”
While there’s a clear desire for brands that resonate on a deeper level, achieving lasting customer loyalty is an elusive goal for many companies.
“Overall, what I’ve seen is price and potency have been the driving forces,” Bitan said.
“Anecdotally, people are loyal to brands, but overall, it’s who’s the cheapest and who’s the strongest.
“There’s been a push to change to low-dose products and targeting consumers who are willing to pay a little bit more and don’t want the strongest thing out there – like beverages.”
Convenience and value reign supreme
Avis Bulbulyan, CEO of California-based cannabis consulting firm Siva, said that while consumers say they would pay a premium for marijuana from independent businesses, the reality is that they purchase products at more affordable price points.
“People would choose to support a smaller business, but convenience and self-interest always overrides it,” he said.
Bulbulyan also notes that consumers don’t know the difference between MSOs and mom-and-pop marijuana businesses like people in the industry do.
“If you’re looking at general cannabis consumers, they’re going to be more interested in what they’re getting for their money versus who they’re supporting,” Bulbulyan said.
Consumers might be price conscious, but they’re also more educated than they’ve been in the past and demanding higher-quality marijuana, said Caleb Counts, CEO and co-founder of Connected Cannabis Co., a California-based commercial cultivator.
“What they care about is the highest quality for the best value – people are willing to pay a premium for the highest quality,” said Counts, who spoke at MJBizCon last December.
MSOs secured most of the licenses in states that limited business permits, so they didn’t have to grow the highest-quality cannabis, he said.
But that’s starting to change, and now they’re partnering with smaller operators to grow the cannabis they sell or license genetics from those operators, Counts noted.
His company grows cannabis independently in California and Arizona.
But Connected Cannabis partners with MSO Trulieve Cannabis Corp. in Florida, where the cost of a license is prohibitively high.
“They either have to drop prices or raise the quality, and that’s why they’re partnering with brands like ourselves,” Counts said.
“Market by market, it’s starting to break down. People are producing a higher-quality product more efficiently than what’s there.”
Rand Paul Says GOP Congressman’s Hemp Ban Bill Would ‘Completely Destroy’ The Industry
By Kyle Jaeger
June 30th, 2025
A GOP senator says that an effort to ban THC hemp products that’s advancing in the Republican-controlled House would “completely destroy” the industry.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Marijuana Moment on Thursday that he’s opposed to cannabis language included in a House agriculture spending bill that’s being championed by noted prohibitionist Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD).
Asked for his thoughts on the proposal, the senator said “they have an appropriations bill that I think would completely destroy the American hemp industry.”
Marijuana Is Linked To An Enhanced ‘Runner’s High’ And Lower Pain During Exercise
“I don’t know how you’d be able to sell CBD oil with that,” he said, echoing arguments from certain hemp stakeholders who say the legislation as currently drafted would ban not only synthetic intoxicating cannabinoids like delta-8 THC but also most hemp-derived non-intoxicating cannabidiol products.
While Harris amended report language attached to the bill that clarifies it’s not the intent of the committee to stop people from accessing “industrial or nonintoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoid products with trace or insignificant amounts of THC,” the bill itself still says that products containing any “quantifiable” amounts of THC couldn’t be marketed. And it’s rare to find CBD items without any natural traces of THC.
Paul recently filed a bill that would go in the opposite direction of Harris’s ban, proposing to triple the concentration of THC that the crop could legally contain, while addressing multiple other concerns the industry has expressed about federal regulations.
The senator introduced the legislation, titled the Hemp Economic Mobilization Plan (HEMP) Act, last week. It mirrors versions he’s sponsored over the last several sessions.
Hemp and its derivatives were legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill, but the industry has experienced multiple setbacks in the years since—and the proliferation of intoxicating cannabinoid products has led to pushes in Congress and state legislatures across the country to reign in the largely unregulated market.
Harris, for his part, told Marijuana Moment last week that he’s not concerned about any potential opposition in the Senate—and he also disputed reports about the scope of what his legislation would do to the industry.
The 2026 spending legislation that contains provisions to ban consumable hemp products with any quantifiable amount of THC advanced out of the House Appropriations Committee on Monday and is now headed to the floor before potentially getting taken up by the Senate.
Harris—who serves as chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies—also noted in the interview with Marijuana Moment that there “was no opposition [to the hemp provisions] that came up in committee, that’s for sure.”
He also briefly weighed in on the Texas governor’s recent veto of a bill to recriminalize hemp products with any THC—simply stating that he’s “not paying attention to what a single state is doing” while he focuses on enacting the proposed federal ban.
The language in the congressional bill, meanwhile, would still effectively eliminate the most commonly marketed hemp products within the industry, as even non-intoxicating CBD items that are sold across the country typically contain trace amounts of THC. Under current law, those products are allowed if they contain no more than 0.3 percent THC by dry weight.
The proposed policy championed by Harris would drastically change that. It would instead maintain the legal status of “industrial hemp” under a revised definition that allows for the cultivation and sale of hemp grown for fiber, whole grain, oil, cake, nut, hull, microgreens or “other edible hemp leaf products intended for human consumption.”
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report this month stating that the legislation would “effectively” prohibit hemp-derived cannabinoid products. Initially it said that such a ban would prevent the sale of CBD as well, but the CRS report was updated to exclude that language for reasons that are unclear.
The hemp language is largely consistent with appropriations and agriculture legislation that was introduced, but not ultimately enacted, under the last Congress.
Hemp industry stakeholders rallied against that proposal, an earlier version of which was also included in the base bill from the subcommittee last year. It’s virtually identical to a provision of the 2024 Farm Bill that was attached by a separate committee last May via an amendment from Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL), which was also not enacted into law.
There are some differences between the prior spending bill and this latest version for 2026, including a redefining of what constitutes a “quantifiable” amount of THC that’d be prohibited for hemp products.
It now says that a quantifiable amount is “based on substance, form, manufacture, or article (as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture),” whereas it was previously defined as an amount simply “determined by the Secretary in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services.”
The proposed legislation also now specifies that the term hemp does not include “a drug that is the subject of an application approved under subsection (c) or (j) of section 505 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 355),” which seems to carve out an exception for Food and Drug Administration- (FDA) approved drugs such Epidiolex, which is synthesized from CBD.
A leading alcohol industry association, meanwhile, has called on Congress to dial back language in the House spending bill that would ban most consumable hemp products, instead proposing to maintain the legalization of naturally derived cannabinoids from the crop and only prohibit synthetic items.
Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) President and CEO Francis Creighton said in a press release that “proponents and opponents alike have agreed that this language amounts to a ban.”
“By pushing a rapidly evolving industry back into the shadows, Congress is creating even more chaos in the marketplace, undermining state initiatives and punishing responsible actors,” he said. “We urge the full House to reconsider this approach. States can regulate intoxicating products safely and effectively through systems that preserve consumer trust and public safety. It’s time for Congress to follow their lead, not override their authority.”
Members of WSWA also met with lawmakers and staffers in April to advocate for three key policy priorities that the group says is based on “sound principles of alcohol distribution.” They include banning synthetic THC, setting up a federal system for testing and labeling products and establishing state-level power to regulate retail sales.
Separately, key GOP congressional lawmakers—including one member who supports marijuana legalization—don’t seem especially concerned about provisions in the bill despite concern from stakeholders that it would put much of the hemp industry in jeopardy by banning most consumable products derived from the plant.
Jonathan Miller, general counsel of the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, told congressional lawmakers in April that the market is “begging” for federal regulations around cannabis products.
At the hearing, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) also inquired about FDA inaction around regulations, sarcastically asking if it’d require “a gazillion bureaucrats that work from home” to regulate cannabinoids such as CBD.
A report from Bloomberg Intelligence (BI) last year called cannabis a “significant threat” to the alcohol industry, citing survey data that suggests more people are using cannabis as a substitute for alcoholic beverages such a beer and wine.
Last November, meanwhile, a beer industry trade group put out a statement of guiding principles to address what it called “the proliferation of largely unregulated intoxicating hemp and cannabis products,” warning of risks to consumers and communities resulting from THC consumption.
Marijuana Industry Lawsuit Has ‘Zero Chance’ Of Being Heard By Supreme Court, Former DOJ Lawyer Says (Op-Ed)
By James B. Mann, former U.S. Department of Justice Tax Division deputy assistant attorney general
June 30th, 2025
A much-hyped lawsuit meant to challenge federal cannabis law has officially flamed out. The First Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued a unanimous opinion rejecting Canna Provisions v. Garland (also known as Canna Provisions v. Bondi), a case widely seen as the cannabis industry’s best shot at attacking federal prohibition through the courts.
Psilocybin Eases Psychological Distress In People Who Experienced Childhood Trauma
The case was intended to strike down cannabis’s Schedule I classification under the Controlled Substances Act and eliminate the crushing tax burden imposed by Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code. Instead, it ended in a resounding defeat—with precisely zero chance of being heard by the Supreme Court.
Section 280E is one of the most punishing burdens facing the legal cannabis industry. Originally enacted in the 1980s to prevent drug traffickers from deducting business expenses, 280E blocks cannabis operators—even fully legal ones under state law—from writing off ordinary costs like rent, payroll or equipment. The result is that cannabis businesses often pay two to three times more in federal income tax than they would if they sold any other legal product.
The cannabis industry’s battle against 280E is now being waged across all three branches of government. Congress is being lobbied for legislative relief. The executive branch is being pressured to reschedule cannabis so 280E no longer applies. And the judiciary has been pulled in through legal challenges like Canna Provisions.
The lawsuit was filed with much fanfare in October 2023—it was funded by many of the large cannabis companies and used a big-name law firm, Boies Schiller. The goal was to overturn a 2005 Supreme Court decision, Gonzales v. Raich. In Raich, the Court upheld the Controlled Substances Act as applied to cannabis grown solely for personal medical use within one state.
Boies Schiller essentially made two arguments—first, that the realities of the cannabis market had changed so much since 2005 that Raich was outdated and wrong, and second, that Congress had passed legislation proving cannabis no longer belongs in Schedule I. The First Circuit wasn’t having any of it. The 3-0 opinion pointed out that even though the facts had changed, they had not changed enough to make Congress’s classification irrational as part of a comprehensive regime of drug regulation (the relevant test).
The court also dismissed the claim that federal legislation proved cannabis should be removed from Schedule I. The opinion noted that the funding restrictions were limited in their effect and applied only to medical cannabis (Canna Provisions and the other plaintiffs are adult-use sellers).
Interestingly, the opinion repeatedly criticizes the lack of logical development of Canna Provisions’s arguments, going so far as to dismiss one of the most important arguments for “lack of development.”
Supreme Court justices vote on what cases to hear, and it takes four votes to put a matter on the docket. In a lawsuit like Canna Provisions, there is no split among the circuit courts for the Supreme Court to resolve. That means the only real path to a hearing was to convince the justices that the case presented an urgent federal legal question.
There is one justice still on the bench from Raich—Justice Clarence Thomas. His dissent in that case, and his opinions in other Commerce Clause cases, emphasize his belief that federal power has stretched far beyond the Framers’ intent. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s dissent also argued that the federal law intruded on core state powers.
Bizarrely, Boies Schiller never raised the arguments made by either Thomas or O’Connor. It’s unclear who they thought would vote to hear the case based on the strategy they pursued.
And while oral argument isn’t usually a decisive factor in appellate decisions, it didn’t help that David Boies was completely shredded by the three-judge panel. (The First Circuit has publicly available recordings of oral arguments.) Boies was once one of the most prominent litigators of his generation—there’s even a chapter in a Malcolm Gladwell book about his mind and how he overcame dyslexia. But at 84, he was unprepared for basic questions and clearly no longer at his peak.
The odds are always against the Supreme Court hearing any particular case, but the cannabis industry’s approach in this one absolutely ensures it won’t happen. More broadly, Canna Provisions underscores the complexity of using litigation to advance federal cannabis reform. While carefully crafted legal challenges may still have a role, this case failed to present the type of arguments or posture that could realistically have drawn the Supreme Court’s interest.
James B. Mann is a tax attorney whose practice centers on cannabis taxation and complex business tax planning. A Harvard Law and Columbia MBA graduate, he previously served as deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Tax Division, led tax-debt advisory at Société Générale, and represented major cannabis clients—including arguing the Harborside case in the Ninth Circuit.
MORE MONTANA NEWS
Congressman Pat Williams to lie in state at Montana State Capitol next week
Jun 27, 2025
https://billingsgazette.com/news/state-regional/government-politics/article
The body of former Congressman Pat Williams, who died on Wednesday, will lie in state for two days next week at the Montana State Capitol, and a celebration of his life will be held mid-July on the University of Montana campus, his family’s foundation announced Friday.
Williams’ body will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, July 2, and from 8-11 a.m. on Thursday, July 3. His body will then be transported to Butte for a private family burial, the foundation said.
Gov. Greg Gianforte ordered flags to be flown at half-staff at all state buildings on both days.
Williams' family will host a celebration of his life on Tuesday, July 15 at 4 p.m. at the Dennison Theater at the University of Montana, followed by an on-campus reception that begins at 5:30 p.m. Doors for the celebration of life will open at 3 p.m.
Williams, 87, was Montana’s longest-serving congressman, having served nine terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1979 to 1997. Before that, he served two terms in the Montana Legislature as a representative from Silver Bow County. He was the last Democrat elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Montana.
Following his death Wednesday, former colleagues of his, current state officials, and a host of Butte associates honored his memory.
"Tirelessly, relentlessly, in Montana and in Congress he proudly championed the rights and concerns of Montanans. It was in his blood. Always decent, always a gentleman, always honest, he was wonderful to work with," his former colleague, U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, said in a statement.
Williams’ family says memorials can be sent to the Pat Williams Artists Scholarship at the University of Montana or The Williams Family Fund.
Big boots to fill: Yellowstone County looks for new leader after the loss of John Ostlund
Jun 27, 2025
https://billingsgazette.com/news/local/government-politics/article
Yellowstone County officials slogged through business as usual this week, with the weight of the sudden loss of a long-serving leader.
Commissioner John Ostlund died on June 19 when a plane he was flying hit a power line, crashed and caught on fire in grassy hills of Blue Creek south of Billings.
A memorial service has been scheduled for 10 a.m. on July 12 at MetraPark.
The day after his untimely death, County Attorney Scott Twito said local leaders gathered and agreed to carry on as Ostlund would have expected.
“It’s been tough,” he said. “We really have lost a titan.”
The county has offered counselors to help employees cope with the unexpected news, Twito said.
Ostlund, 73, served the county for more than half a century. He started in the road and bridge department in 1972 and worked his way up to superintendent before he retired in 2002. He then challenged longtime County Commissioner James “Ziggy” Ziegler, defeating the incumbent to take office in 2003.
In recent years, Twito said, Ostlund had been speaking candidly about passing the reins to the next generation of local leaders.
“He was always mentoring and I had absolute respect for him,” Twito said. “He was such a good dude.”
Now, it’s up to his fellow Republicans to find someone to serve in his place until the Nov. 3, 2026 election.
Commissioners Mark Morse and Mike Waters will appoint Ostlund's successor from nominees selected by the county’s GOP central committee.
In the meantime, a bright bouquet of flowers marks their colleague’s place behind the dais. And for now, Morse and Waters can keep moving forward with county business, so long as they agree.
However, if the two were to vote opposite ways on an issue, Twito said, it would have to be tabled until a third commissioner is in place to break the tie.
Republican Chairwoman Pam Purinton said the central committee is accepting applications for Ostlund’s position until 5 p.m. on July 14.
Candidates are expected to be interviewed at 6 p.m. on July 16 at City Hall. Committee leaders will then vote for the top three to forward to the commission for consideration.
“We’re trying to make the process as open and fair as possible,” Purinton said.
She plans to submit the names of the party’s nominees to the county by July 17 to allow time for public notice before the commissioners interview the candidates and make a decision.
To qualify, candidates must have lived for at least two years in Ostlund’s district, which encompasses the southern part of the county, including parts of Lockwood and the South Side of Billings, and be eligible to vote.
The starting salary for a commissioner is $89,826 with longevity increases for each year of service after the first.
Applications are available at yellowstonegop.org.