💸 The Tape

Pennsylvania State Senator Dawn Keefer circulated a cosponsorship memo Friday for the Pennsylvania Hemp and Cannabinoid Act, a bill that would keep intoxicating hemp THC products legal in the Commonwealth while wrapping them in Department of Agriculture registration, independent testing, truthful labeling, 21-and-over sales with ID checks, and a ban on candy-style packaging. Existing operators who can document lawful pre-enactment sales get grandfathered in. No new agency, no change to the medical program.

The memo goes out of its way to say the bill "is not adult-use marijuana legalization." That sentence is doing a lot of work, and it's worth examining who's saying it and why.

Who Keefer is

Keefer represents the 31st District, covering York and Cumberland counties, and has been in the Senate since January 2025 after eight years in the House. She's best known as the founding chair of the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus, the State Freedom Caucus Network affiliate she launched in 2022 as the hard-right backstop against anything that "grows government or siphons freedoms." She ran a PR and grassroots consulting firm before politics, her husband is a retired state trooper who owns a custom motorcycle shop, and she was among the lawmakers who called for an investigation into the 2020 election results. She sits on the Law & Justice Committee, which is where every cannabis bill in the Senate lives or dies.

That committee seat is where her record on this issue was built, and it's more consistent than the memo's disclaimer suggests.

Her voting record

Keefer has been the lone Republican dissent on the Senate's cannabis regulatory push at every step. When Dan Laughlin's SB 49 — the bill creating a Cannabis Control Board to take over the medical program — cleared Law & Justice in October 2025 by a 10-1 vote, Keefer was the one. When Laughlin amended it in March to ban intoxicating hemp products including delta-8, delta-10 and THCA, the amendment passed 10-1; Keefer was the one again. In May, when the amended bill was reported out 6-5, she joined every Democrat on the panel against it. On the Senate floor in June, SB 49 failed 23-27 before being revived on a motion to reconsider.

Her stated objections were about creating a new bureaucracy and shutting down a lawful industry. But notice the pattern: the Freedom Caucus founder has voted, repeatedly, against a bill that would restrict access to THC products, and against a bill that the state's licensed cannabis incumbents — organized as Responsible PA — publicly supported. Her new memo is the affirmative version of those no votes. And the timing isn't incidental: SB 49 is listed for final passage on the Senate calendar today. Keefer put her alternative on the record the Friday before the revote.

Why the bill actually makes sense

Strip out the politics and Keefer's framework is what a functioning hemp market needs. Pennsylvania currently has no age gate, no testing standard, no labeling rule and no retail accountability for consumable hemp — products sit next to gum at the gas station, and nobody with a state badge checks who's buying. Her bill fixes the four things every serious regulator, and most of the industry, agrees on: 21+, tested, labeled, registered. It keeps the Department of Agriculture as the regulator, which is where hemp already sits, rather than standing up a seven-member board with rulemaking authority and a new fee fund. It grandfathers operators who can prove they were compliant, which protects the farmers and manufacturers who built the market under the 2018 Farm Bill.

Compare that to SB 49, which would ban most of the products outright and hand the survivors to a board that doesn't exist yet. If the goal is keeping intoxicating THC away from kids, Keefer's approach does more, faster, with less. And it's structured to survive both federal outcomes: her memo explicitly says that if Congress lets the December 11 cap take effect, Pennsylvania still needs age limits and a registry, and if Congress replaces the cap with a regulated market, the state still needs its own retail rules. That's more forward planning than most hemp bills contain.

The semantic problem

Now the disclaimer. Keefer's bill is "not adult-use marijuana legalization." Legally, in the narrowest sense, that's true — it doesn't amend the Medical Marijuana Act, doesn't license dispensaries and doesn't touch Title 35's marijuana provisions. But look at what it does: it establishes a state-sanctioned, age-gated, tested, labeled retail market for intoxicating THC products sold to any adult 21 and over, with no medical card, no physician certification, no purchase limits tied to a patient registry, and no dispensary license required.

That is adult-use cannabis. The molecule is delta-9 THC, or its close isomers; the consumer is an adult buying it to get high; the point of sale is a convenience store. The only difference between Keefer's market and SB 120's market is the plant the THC was extracted from and the tax rate — and after December 11, even the plant distinction disappears, because the federal definition reclassifies these products as marijuana. Keefer would be building a state framework for a product Congress has just defined as a Schedule I substance, which is the same legal posture every adult-use state already occupies. The Freedom Caucus chair has written the first Republican adult-use bill in Pennsylvania history and called it a hemp bill.

Why it matters

Three groups should read this closely. Licensed operators — the Cresco, Trulieve, Jushi and TerrAscend footprints that just paid up for Pennsylvania permits — face a regulated competitor selling THC without their compliance costs or their 18-store cap. Democrats pushing SB 120 now have a Republican on record supporting adult access to intoxicating cannabinoids, which makes the "not while I'm chair" position harder for Laughlin to hold. And the Senate Republican caucus has to decide, possibly today, whether it's the party of Laughlin's ban or Keefer's market.

Keefer can call it whatever she likes. If it passes, Pennsylvania adults will be legally buying THC over the counter — and the only people who won't call that legalization are the ones who wrote the bill.

(NOTE: The bill most likely has ZERO legs.)

Source: Marijuana Moment

📈 Dog Walkers

$TRLV ( ▲ 1.07% ) Licenses Alien Labs & Connected Brands Royalty-Free, Forever

Trulieve (NYSE: TRLV) signed an exclusive master licensing agreement Monday with California's Connected Cannabis for the rights to cultivate, manufacture and sell Alien Labs and Connected products in Florida and Texas. The two have worked together in Florida since 2022; this formalizes and extends the relationship, adds new categories and form factors in Florida, and puts both brands on the launch roster for Texas once Trulieve's conditional license is finalized. Trulieve also gets first crack at negotiating rights in future expansion markets.

The subhead is the part worth reading twice: "Perpetual Royalty-Free License."

In a normal brand deal, the operator pays the brand owner a percentage of sales — typically 5% to 15% for premium California names — for a fixed term, after which the license expires or renegotiates. Trulieve pays nothing ongoing, and the deal never ends. That means one of three things happened. Either Trulieve paid a lump sum up front large enough that Connected was willing to trade its future royalty stream for cash now; or the consideration is embedded somewhere else — equity, a supply arrangement, co-marketing commitments; or Connected concluded that Florida distribution through 169 Trulieve stores is itself worth more to the brand's national value than a royalty check. The release doesn't disclose terms, so it's likely some combination.

What it implies for Trulieve is straightforward: 100% of the margin on a premium SKU set, in perpetuity, in the two states it cares most about, with no renewal risk and no partner who can walk. For Connected, it's a bet that Alien Labs' national brand equity compounds faster with Trulieve's footprint behind it than with a per-gram royalty attached. Caleb Counts called it one of the most successful brand licensing relationships in cannabis; giving up the royalty says he believes it.

It also tells you how Trulieve thinks about Texas. You don't secure perpetual rights to a premium brand in a market that hasn't opened unless you expect it to matter.

📺 Trade To Black

States Are Pressuring the DEA for Answers | TTB Presented by Flowhub

• Trulieve locks up Alien Labs and Connected: A perpetual, royalty-free master license covers Florida and Texas, with new categories coming in Florida, both brands launching in Texas pending licensure, and first rights to negotiate additional markets.

• A relationship since 2022: Connected founder Caleb Counts calls the Trulieve partnership one of the most successful brand licensing deals in cannabis, built on the company's proprietary genetics.

• Pennsylvania's three-seat math: ATACH President Michael Bronstein breaks down House Speaker McClinton's claim that legalization could pass next year if Democrats flip three State Senate seats, with the governor's race as a second variable.

• States want answers from DEA: Regulators say federal guidance on the Schedule III medical framework is missing — open questions on dual-license registration, caregivers, and inconsistent answers from regional DEA offices.