💸 The Tape

The Florida hemp industry wants a savior. As the November 12 federal ban approaches — the "total THC standard" that would render roughly 95% of hemp-derived products federally illegal — Sunshine State hemp operators are pinning their hopes on President Trump, who has called on Congress to preserve access to full-spectrum CBD while restricting products that pose health risks.

At St. Petersburg retailer Herban Flow, where owner Michael Smith says 80% of sales come from hemp-derived THC products, the anxiety is palpable. "So many people are now just discovering it and they don't believe me when I tell them in three months that all of this is going away," Smith told the Florida Phoenix. Treadwell Farms CEO Jammie Treadwell says farmers aren't planting this season, license renewals are in doubt, and the ban "could very well put us out of business." David Shiffman of Amigos insists "the category's too big to fail."

Their fear is genuine, and some of these operators — the ones who paid fees, passed inspections, and played by Florida's rules — deserve sympathy. But before the industry writes its collective hardship letter to Washington, a moment of honesty is required about how Florida hemp arrived at this cliff.

Because two years ago, when Florida's hemp industry had the chance to stand with cannabis reform, it did the opposite. It bankrolled the campaign to kill it.

The Amendment 3 Betrayal

In 2024, Amendment 3 — the adult-use legalization initiative funded overwhelmingly by Trulieve to the tune of well over $140 million — reached the ballot needing 60% to pass. It earned 56%: a supermajority of Florida voters, and more votes than either presidential candidate received in the state, but short of the threshold.

Standing against it, alongside Governor Ron DeSantis and his political apparatus, was a coalition that included a striking bloc of donors: Florida hemp companies. Campaign finance records showed hemp operators pouring millions into the DeSantis-aligned committees fighting the measure — contributions that flowed, conspicuously, in the months after DeSantis vetoed SB 1698, the 2024 bill that would have crushed intoxicating hemp with Delta-8 bans and THC caps. The governor's veto message decried "debilitating regulatory burdens on small businesses." The hemp money against Amendment 3 arrived shortly thereafter. Draw your own conclusions; most observers drew the obvious one.

The strategic logic was cynical but transparent: a regulated adult-use marijuana market was the hemp industry's competitive nightmare. Every gas-station gummy and smoke-shop THCA jar in Florida existed in the arbitrage gap between prohibition and legalization — intoxicating products sold without dispensary licensing costs, without seed-to-sale tracking, without the 60,000-square-foot cultivation requirements, without the taxes. Legal recreational cannabis would have collapsed that arbitrage. So the hemp industry linked arms with prohibitionists to preserve it.

It worked. Amendment 3 died. And now, twenty months later, the same industry that spent millions to keep regulated cannabis out of Florida is begging the federal government to save its unregulated products from a ban — invoking small business, farmers, and consumer access with no apparent sense of irony.

You cannot fund prohibition for your competitors and then demand deregulation for yourself. That's not a policy position. That's a protection racket that lost its protector.

Florida's Clampdown — And Why the Status Quo Had to Die

To its credit, Florida has been tightening the screws within its own authority. The 2023 legislation imposed 21+ age restrictions, banned packaging attractive to children, and required food-establishment permitting for hemp retailers. The Department of Agriculture has conducted sweeps pulling non-compliant products. Repeated legislative attempts at comprehensive restriction — including the 2025 session's dueling House and Senate bills — collapsed over chamber differences, but House Speaker Daniel Perez's hemp workgroup reached the conclusion everyone serious already knew: the industry shouldn't be destroyed, but "the status quo had to change."

The status quo, let's be clear, was indefensible. Intoxicating products chemically indistinguishable from dispensary cannabis, sold beside energy drinks with no purchase limits, no pharmacist consultation, no METRC tracking, inconsistent testing, and — until recently — packaging that would make a candy company blush. More than a dozen states have already banned or heavily restricted these products. Florida's medical operators spent years and hundreds of millions complying with one of the strictest regulatory regimes in the country while an unregulated parallel market sold the same molecules across the street. No coherent policy framework tolerates that asymmetry forever. The November ban is a blunt instrument — and Trump's push for a carve-out protecting genuine full-spectrum CBD is the right refinement — but the era of unregulated intoxicating hemp needed to end. The only question was whether it ended through regulation or recriminalization. The industry's political choices helped ensure it got the worse of the two.

The Regulated Market Waiting to Absorb It

The bitter twist for hemp operators: the regulated market they fought to contain is now positioned to inherit their customers.

Florida's medical program — roughly 890,000 registered patients, approximately $2.25 billion in annual sales, and nearly 700 dispensaries statewide — remains the second-largest cannabis market in America. Trulieve dominates with over 160 Florida locations and roughly half of statewide flower sales, now amplified by its NYSE listing, DEA registrations, and 280E relief flowing through its medical-only structure. Verano's MÜV banner, Curaleaf, Surterra, Green Thumb's RISE stores, the creditor-owned Ayr Wellness footprint, Sunburn, and the FLUENT assets now under Vireo's umbrella round out a fiercely competitive field that has endured price compression by getting operationally leaner.

When hemp-derived THC disappears from Florida shelves in November, the demand doesn't vanish — Smith's own customers prove it. It migrates: some to the illicit market, yes, but much of it to the medical program, where a card is now easier to obtain than ever and where the Supreme Court's recent gun-rights ruling just removed the single biggest enrollment deterrent for Florida's firearm-owning demographic. Every top operator in the state is quietly modeling the Q4 patient bump.

The Bottom Line

The Florida hemp industry is asking Trump for mercy it refused to extend to its cannabis competitors. Perhaps it gets a partial reprieve — the CBD carve-out is genuinely warranted, and the Barr framework of taxation and regulation is where this ends eventually. Shiffman is right that the category is too big to disappear.

But if the lifeline comes, it should come with the condition the industry has dodged since 2019: full regulation — testing, tracking, age-gating, taxation, and licensing on par with the operators who built compliant businesses. The hemp industry bet millions that prohibition would protect its arbitrage. The bet failed, the arbitrage is closing, and the market it tried to strangle will be there to collect.

In Florida cannabis, karma keeps a ledger. November 12, it comes due.

📈 Dog Walkers

$OGI ( ▲ 3.27% ) Highlights Sanity Group

Organigram just gave investors their first look at the Sanity Group acquisition in action — and the early returns suggest the company paid for exactly what it's getting.

The business update revealed that since the acquisition closed April 15, Sanity has maintained approximately 10% market share in Germany and performed in line with revenue expectations established at the time of the deal. Critically, the recently announced German regulatory changes on reimbursement eligibility for medical cannabis won't materially impact the business — reimbursement-based sales represent just 1% of Sanity's total revenue, insulating Organigram from the policy shift that rattled parts of the German market.

On the home front, Organigram continues to hold the crown as Canada's #1 cannabis company by market share, with category leadership across the segments that matter most: #1 in flower (12.5%), #1 in vapes (14.5%), and #2 in pre-rolls (7.3%) — categories that together represent more than 86% of Canadian recreational retail sales. The company also posted meaningful year-over-year gains in beverages (+3.1 points) and concentrates (+3.3 points).

The June trend data addresses the quarter's soft spot. After vape share declines earlier in Q2, Organigram stabilized and improved all-in-one vape share by roughly a point month-over-month, with sequential improvements in pre-rolls and infused pre-rolls as well. Total Canadian share ended June at 11.1% — down 0.4 points year-over-year but up 100 basis points versus May, an early signal that Q2's operational fixes are taking hold.

CEO James Yamanaka confirmed the milestone ahead: Q3 results on or about August 11 will mark the first consolidated quarter including Sanity's international contribution, followed by a comprehensive Digital Investor Session in late September covering global strategy and capital allocation.

Canada's market leader is now a transatlantic platform. August is when the numbers start proving it.

$VREOF ( ▲ 0.2% ) Completes PA Acquistion

Vireo Growth doesn't announce deals and let them linger — it closes them. Pennsylvania is now officially on the map.

The company announced the completion of its PhytoNatural acquisition, executed jointly with Vive Penn, LLC — its joint venture with Hive Holdings — securing a Pennsylvania medical cannabis retail permit that authorizes up to six dispensaries in the Commonwealth, subject to regulatory approvals. Total consideration was $20 million: $8 million in cash paid by Vive at closing, plus approximately $12 million in 645,161 Vireo subordinate voting shares at a deemed price of $18.60 per share, to be issued two years post-closing.

The deferred equity structure is worth noting — it's become Vireo's signature deal architecture. Pushing share issuance out two years preserves near-term float, aligns sellers with long-term performance, and lets the company keep deploying its $137.8 million cash position across multiple simultaneous transactions without excessive immediate dilution.

Pennsylvania is a prize worth the structure. The state's medical program serves nearly 450,000 registered patients with $1.7 billion in annual sales under a limited-license framework — and looming adult-use legislation, whenever Harrisburg finally moves, would transform the value of any retail footprint overnight. CEO John Mazarakis has called it entry into "one of the country's leading limited-license cannabis markets."

The tally keeps growing: Schwazze, Eaze, Hawthorne, FLUENT, C21, Bridgewell, HA-MD, the Glass House JV, the Johnstown buyback — and now Pennsylvania closed. Site selection for the Vive dispensaries is underway.

Eleven states and counting. The Vireo machine doesn't idle.

📺 Trade To Black

The Political Fight for Cannabis Just Exploded | TTB Weekly Recap

• CAOA as Midterm Play: Senate Democrats revived full federal legalization the day after the ALJ hearing concluded — timing that appears aimed as much at the midterm elections as at passage, with political competition potentially pressuring the Trump administration to finalize Schedule III faster.

• Hearing Record Favors Rescheduling: The federal government strongly defended rescheduling throughout the ALJ proceeding, while several opposition witnesses struggled to challenge the scientific and legal case for moving marijuana to Schedule III.

• Big Pharma Enters Psychedelics: Eli Lilly agreed to acquire AtaiBeckley for approximately $2.8 billion — a landmark validation of the sector that puts a spotlight on Compass Pathways and Definium Therapeutics as the major remaining independent psychedelic developers.

• Hemp Deadline & Deal Flow: The November 12 hemp ban looms with carriers and payment processors expected to restrict businesses early, while Curaleaf-Cannara's supply agreement, MariMed's new Betty's Bite-A-Mins wellness chew, and Tilray's £1 million BrewDog bar tab rounded out the week's company news.