💸 The Tape

When Pete Buttigieg — Navy Reserve veteran, former cabinet secretary, and likely 2028 presidential contender — told a Nebraska audience last week that medical marijuana has "made a difference to people I've served with, to people in my extended family," he wasn't making a novel political argument. He was stating what has quietly become one of the most bipartisan truths in American policy: no population stands to benefit more from changing cannabis and psychedelics laws than the nation's veterans — and for the first time, the laws are actually changing to meet them.

"I think the American majority recognizes that people should have access to this," Buttigieg said while campaigning in Nebraska, where Republican officials continue trying to roll back the medical cannabis initiative that voters approved in 2024 — a fight the former mayor called out directly. "I hope common sense prevails."

The comments carry extra weight coming from a veteran who has spent years advocating that VA doctors should be able to recommend medical cannabis — a position he first articulated to Marijuana Moment during a 2019 dispensary visit in Las Vegas.

Why Veterans, Specifically

The math of veteran suffering is brutal and well-documented. Veterans experience PTSD at rates far exceeding the civilian population — as many as 20-30% of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Chronic pain affects a majority of older veterans. Traumatic brain injury became the signature wound of two decades of war. And the consequences cascade: veteran suicide claims more than 6,000 lives annually — roughly 17 per day — while opioid prescribing through the VA system helped fuel dependency in exactly the population least served by it.

The conventional pharmaceutical toolkit — SSRIs, benzodiazepines, opioids, antipsychotics — has failed too many of these patients for too long. That's precisely why the evidence emerging around cannabis and psychedelics resonates so powerfully in the veteran community. The 2024 Stanford-led study published in Nature Medicine found that a single ibogaine treatment protocol produced dramatic reductions in PTSD, depression, anxiety, and functional disability among U.S. Special Operations veterans. Cannabis research consistently shows opioid-sparing effects — including the recent five-year Israeli study documenting 95% opioid elimination among chronic pain patients. And veterans themselves have voted with their feet: organizations like VETS (Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions), Heroic Hearts Project, and TARA Mind have sent thousands of veterans abroad for psychedelic treatment that remains restricted at home.

What's Changing at the VA

For decades, the VA's position was simple: federal prohibition meant VA clinicians couldn't recommend cannabis, VA benefits couldn't touch it, and veterans feared losing benefits for disclosing use. That wall is now cracking on multiple fronts.

The Schedule III rescheduling of medical cannabis in April fundamentally altered the legal foundation. With state-licensed medical marijuana now recognized federally as medicine, the categorical bar on VA clinician engagement is eroding — the Congressional Research Service has noted that patients possessing medical cannabis from licensed dispensaries now have federal protections that simply didn't exist a year ago. Bipartisan legislation to explicitly authorize VA doctors to recommend medical cannabis in legal states — a proposal that has passed committee votes repeatedly over the years — now faces a dramatically friendlier legal landscape.

On psychedelics, the VA has moved from resistance to active participation. The agency began funding psychedelic-assisted therapy research in 2024 — its first such funding since the 1960s — studying MDMA and psilocybin for PTSD and depression. Under the current administration, VA Secretary Doug Collins has publicly championed psychedelic research, and the VA has expanded clinical trials across its medical centers. The April 2026 Trump executive order on psychedelic therapeutics explicitly prioritized veteran access, directing federal funding to match state investments and instructing agencies to expand Right to Try pathways — a framework tailor-made for terminally struggling veterans.

The Federal Cascade

Beyond the VA itself, the federal reforms of 2025-2026 keep landing disproportionately in veterans' favor. The Supreme Court's unanimous ruling that cannabis use alone cannot strip firearm rights removed the single biggest deterrent keeping veterans — among the most heavily armed demographics in America — out of state medical programs. The ATF's updated gun purchase forms acknowledging medical marijuana's legal status codified the same principle. The DOD's proposed NDAA amendments would extend psychedelic research for active-duty service members for six years, and separate legislation would require the Pentagon to formally evaluate psilocybin's benefits. Even the FDA's September hearing on psychedelic therapeutics — covering provider training and patient access — is substantially a veterans' access conversation, given that veteran cohorts anchor much of the clinical evidence.

And the state-level treatment infrastructure is being built with veterans at the center: Texas's $50 million ibogaine research program, Arizona's psilocybin research grants, Oregon and Colorado's regulated psilocybin programs — all feature veteran access provisions or veteran-focused research cohorts. Companies like Helus Pharma have formalized veteran recruitment collaborations with TARA Mind and VETS for Phase 3 trials, while Trulieve builds its philanthropy around veteran organizations like DAV and Paralyzed Veterans of America — the only cannabis company partnered with either.

The Political Convergence

What makes this moment singular is that veteran access has become the rare drug policy argument that works in both parties. Buttigieg makes the Democratic case in Nebraska. Rick Perry champions ibogaine in Texas. Dan Crenshaw pushes psychedelic research through the NDAA. Trump's executive order and the VA's Collins push access from the right. When SAM and prohibitionist attorneys general testified against rescheduling at the ALJ hearing, it was a VA psychiatrist they called — and it was veterans' clinical stories, like Dr. Burchman's opioid-reduction testimony, that carried the government's case.

The reason is obvious: the veteran suffering statistics are unanswerable, the conventional treatment failures are undeniable, and the moral debt is universally acknowledged. "Support the troops" was always a bipartisan slogan. Letting them access the medicines that demonstrably help them is finally becoming bipartisan policy.

The Bottom Line

Buttigieg's Nebraska remarks will be read through a 2028 lens, and fairly so — cannabis access is now a proven majority issue. But strip away the politics and his statement stands on its own: the people he served with found relief in a plant the federal government classified alongside heroin for fifty years, and the American majority knows it.

The laws are catching up — at the VA, in Congress, in the courts, and in the states. For the veterans who fought two wars and came home to fight their own nervous systems, the change can't come fast enough. Common sense, as Buttigieg put it, is finally prevailing. The only question left is how many veterans had to wait — and how many didn't make it — while Washington took its time.

📈 Dog Walkers

$VREOF ( ▼ 0.16% ) Picks Up Planet 13

Vireo Growth just made it a dozen — and this one brings the most famous dispensary in the world.

The industry's most relentless consolidator announced an all-stock merger to acquire Planet 13 Holdings, with each Planet 13 share converting into 0.015383618 Vireo subordinate voting shares — an exchange ratio implying a 16.6% premium to Planet 13's 20-day VWAP and a 24% premium to Friday's close.

The strategic haul is substantial: 36 dispensaries, three cultivation and production assets, up to 2.3 million square feet of potential cultivation capacity in Nevada, plus a distribution and consumption lounge license. The crown jewel is Planet 13's Las Vegas SuperStore — the largest dispensary on the planet and arguably cannabis retail's most recognizable destination, sitting steps off the Strip. Combined with the pending C21/Silver State Relief acquisition in northern Nevada, Vireo is assembling outright dominance of the Silver State — and inheriting Planet 13's Florida operations, including its recently approved BHO extraction facility, to stack atop the FLUENT footprint.

Pro forma, Vireo expects to operate approximately 265 dispensaries across 15 states — closing the gap on Trulieve's national retail lead deal by deal. The 2026 acquisition tally now reads: Schwazze, Eaze, Hawthorne, FLUENT, C21, Bridgewell, HA-MD, PhytoNatural, the Cannabist five-state package, the Johnstown buyback — and now Planet 13. Eleven transactions in under eight months.

Closing requires Planet 13 stockholder approval with MI 61-101 minority protections, SEC effectiveness of a Form S-4, CSE listing of the new shares, and cannabis regulatory sign-offs. A US$1.8 million termination fee applies in specified circumstances, and Planet 13 shares will be delisted after closing.

The integration risk question grows louder with every deal. But so does the platform. Vegas's biggest cannabis landmark is about to fly the Vireo flag — and the machine shows no signs of stopping.

📺 Trade To Black

A Lifeline For Hemp, But Is It Right? | TTB Weekly Recap

• Hemp's Lifeline: The Barr-Craig Lawful Hemp Protection Act offers a real alternative to the November THC cliff — raising the limit to 1% total THC by dry weight while adding federal permits, labeling standards, and a three-tier beverage system modeled on alcohol.

• Three Bills, One Question: Senate Democrats revived the CAOA, joining the MORE Act and STATES 2.0 as competing federal legalization frameworks — with growing speculation that meaningful reform may ultimately come from Republicans rather than the bills' original champions.

• Beverages Go Mainstream: Señorita became the official THC beverage partner of Lollapalooza — the latest proof that hemp-derived drinks are conquering festivals, arenas, and entertainment venues rather than staying confined to dispensaries.

• Deals & Data: Vireo added Cannabist assets across five states (pushing toward 230 dispensaries), Cannara launched a buyback, Auxly executed a 14-for-1 consolidation, while in psychedelics Helus Pharma finished Phase 3 enrollment early and Incannex began screening for its sleep apnea trial.