💸 The Tape

For a process that has been accused of moving at the speed of continental drift, the DEA just did something unusual: it asked for the brakes to come off.

In a brief filed Friday and surfaced this week, the agency told Administrative Law Judge Derek Julius that it has no objection to adding the GAO report to the rescheduling hearing record. What it does object to is everything opponents want to hang on that report: more briefing, more discovery, more witnesses, and more months of delay before Julius issues the recommendation that’s been pending since he closed the record in late August. The DEA’s position is as direct as a government filing gets: “When a document’s meaning is clear, the court need not allow additional argument to interpret the document.”

What the GAO report actually says

The report, which prompted Julius to grant a stay in late September, found that DEA has no written policies or procedures governing how its staff conduct scheduling evaluations, and that FDA similarly lacks documented procedures for developing scheduling recommendations. GAO recommended both agencies fill those gaps.

That’s it. That’s the finding. The report does not evaluate the science. It does not touch HHS’s eight-factor analysis. It does not question FDA’s conclusion that marijuana has a currently accepted medical use. It does not say the two-part CAMU test was wrong, only that nobody wrote down a policy explaining when to use it. And critically, GAO offers no opinion on whether marijuana belongs in Schedule III.

The DEA’s brief draws that line with precision. The report, it argues, identified “gaps in the memorialization of rescheduling process, not any flaws in the rescheduling process itself.” GAO’s recommendation to document procedures is “immaterial to the actual scientific processes and analysis.” In plain English: the agencies need better paperwork, not a different answer.

What opponents are asking for

Smart Approaches to Marijuana, joined by Idaho, Indiana and Nebraska, wants supplemental briefing on whether HHS’s lack of written policy caused it to deviate from past practice. The more aggressive filing comes from the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association, DUID Victim Voices and Dr. Kenneth Finn, who want a “narrow reopening” of the hearing with document discovery and live testimony on five subjects: who designed the 2023 two-part CAMU test and why; who drafted and revised its language across DEA, FDA, HHS, NIH and OLC; why the 2023 HHS evaluation didn’t address mental health, pregnancy, pediatric use and diversion the way earlier evaluations did; what criteria FDA used for “potential for abuse”; and which internal documents GAO reviewed.

Read that list again. None of it is about the GAO report. All of it is a do-over of the merits case that opponents already argued across three weeks of hearings in June and July, in front of the same judge, with the same government witnesses on the stand. The DEA’s brief says exactly that: opponents have “mischaracterized the GAO Report and its impact” and are using a procedural audit as a pretext to relitigate science they lost on.

The tell is the discovery request itself. Asking who “selected or drafted” the CAMU test is not a question GAO raised or answered. It’s a fishing expedition into HHS’s internal deliberations, dressed up as a response to a report that explicitly declined to evaluate those deliberations. The DEA, which spent the hearing conceding that marijuana is dangerous and arguing only that it “no longer fits the statutory requirements for Schedule I,” has no incentive to defend sloppy science. Its willingness to put the GAO report in the record and move on tells you how little it thinks the report changes.

Why the agency is in a hurry

Context matters here. Since April, Attorney General Blanche’s order has already moved state-licensed medical cannabis to Schedule III, with the 280E relief that implies. Adult-use remains in Schedule I pending Julius’s recommendation and Administrator Cole’s final decision. The D.C. Circuit has consolidated the challenges and declined to block the medical move. The administrative hearing is the last open question, and it’s been fully briefed since August.

Every month of delay leaves the industry split down the middle: medical operators paying normal corporate tax rates while adult-use operators in the same buildings still absorb 280E. The DEA’s brief doesn’t say that, of course. But an agency that fought this hearing for two years is now the party asking the judge not to “further delay” his ruling. That’s not neutrality. That’s an agency that has reached a conclusion and wants to deliver it.

What happens next

Julius has three paths. He can admit the report, deny further proceedings and issue his recommendation, which is what the DEA asked for and what the record supports. He can order limited supplemental briefing, which adds weeks but not months. Or he can grant the reopening motion, which would restart discovery, trigger new testimony and likely push a recommendation into 2027.

The third option would be extraordinary. The GAO report’s own scope defines its relevance, and nothing in it goes to the eight factors, the medical-use finding or the abuse-potential analysis that the hearing was convened to test. Opponents are asking Julius to treat a management audit as new scientific evidence. The DEA, which has every institutional reason to be cautious, is telling him it isn’t.

For investors, the signal is cleaner than it’s been since the stay was issued. The government’s own litigators have read the GAO report, concluded it changes nothing, and asked the court to rule. If Julius agrees, the last procedural obstacle between adult-use cannabis and Schedule III is a recommendation that has been sitting on his desk, finished, since the record closed.

The opponents’ strategy was never to win on the science. It was to run out the clock. The DEA just told the judge the clock is already out.

📈 Dog Walkers

$CURLF ( ▼ 4.65% ) Debuts In Wellington

Curaleaf opened its 79th Florida dispensary in Wellington this week, pushing the company’s national footprint to 189 stores and reinforcing a point that’s easy to lose amid the Aurora takeover drama: the Florida medical market remains Curaleaf’s most reliable domestic growth engine.

The Palm Beach County location sits in the Wellington Green commercial district off State Road 7, serving a catchment that includes Royal Palm Beach, Greenacres and Lake Worth. The shelves carry the full brand stack, including Florida-exclusive Reef flower, Dark Heart ultra-premium, FIND, Anthem pre-rolls and the Select Briq 2 all-in-one vape. Grand opening runs October 16 and 17 with free eighths for the first 25 qualifying patients each day, free 510 cartridges with purchase and the usual activation theatrics.

Boris Jordan’s framing is telling: “Florida is one of the most important medical cannabis markets in the country, and its patient community keeps growing.” That’s the thesis in one sentence. Florida has no store cap, a patient registry that keeps setting records post-Schedule III, and a medical-only structure that now sits outside 280E. Every store Curaleaf adds here is a 280E-clean asset in a market where Trulieve has already proven the model.

It also sharpens the contrast with Curaleaf’s international pivot. While management spends its energy chasing Aurora’s European assets, the Florida business keeps compounding quietly in the background. If Curaleaf ever decides to carve out a US medical vehicle, this 79-store base is where the story starts.

📺 Trade To Black

Ex-DEA Agent Speaks Out on Chinese Illicit Grows | TTB Presented by Flowhub

• NuggMD CEO Charlie Russell joins Trade To Black to break down two state medical programs at inflection points, with hosts Shadd Dales and Anthony Varrell.

• Georgia approves mail-order medical cannabis: licensed producers can ship to registered patients and long-term care facilities via USPS or private carrier as early as October 28, with the registry near 57,000 patients and growing weekly since SB 220 scrapped the 5% THC cap.

• Texas TCUP passes 135,000 patients but still covers under half a percent of the state. With new dispensary licenses approved but not open and the hemp THC crackdown now live, the question is whether patients migrate into the medical program despite limits on price, products and physician participation.

• Former DEA ASAC Chris Urben, now at Nardello & Co., details what Project Sleeping Giant uncovered about Chinese money laundering networks funding illicit grows in Oklahoma, Maine and California, and why he’s pushing Congress to make it a federal priority.