💸 The Tape

The hemp industry finally has its rescue vehicle. Whether it has the engine to reach the finish line by November is another question entirely.

Reps. Andy Barr (R-KY) and Angie Craig (D-MN) introduced the Lawful Hemp Protection Act on Wednesday — a 60-page bipartisan bill that would partially reverse the federal hemp ban scheduled to take effect November 12, replacing prohibition with the "tax it and regulate it" framework the industry has been begging for. It is the most serious legislative attempt yet to save a market facing extinction in less than four months.

What the Bill Does

The core fix is definitional. The current law taking effect in November caps legal hemp products at a devastating 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container — a threshold that eliminates an estimated 95% of products on the market. The Barr-Craig bill rewrites the definition to permit up to 1% total THC on a dry-weight basis, keeping most current products legal for adults 21 and over.

But this is not deregulation — it's the opposite. The bill draws a hard line against synthetics: HHC, THC-O-acetate, and THCP are explicitly banned, along with any cannabinoid produced through "chemical synthesis, hydrogenation, acetylation, alkylation, or any other artificial process." Naturally occurring cannabinoids stay; lab-converted novelties go.

The regulatory architecture is comprehensive. HHS would set potency limits within 12 months — with statutory defaults of 5 mg per serving for oral products and 50 mg for inhalables and topicals if the agency fails to act. Products must be entirely domestically sourced — cultivated, processed, finished, packaged, and labeled in the U.S. Labeling requirements include per-serving THC content, pregnancy and impaired-driving warnings, drug-test disclaimers, and QR codes linking to certificates of analysis. Manufacturers and wholesalers need federal permits.

Then comes the alcohol-style structure: hemp beverages get a three-tier system — manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, with strict separation between tiers. And the taxes: 5% on consumable hemp products, 5 cents per milligram of THC on beverages, plus a 5% tax on manufacturer annual revenue — all flowing into a new federal Trust Fund for oversight and enforcement, with a slice of beverage revenue funding impaired-driving enforcement through the Highway Trust Fund.

Notably, the bill also codifies the Medicare hemp coverage program launched by the Trump administration — insulating the CMS pilot from the litigation still seeking to kill it.

The Political Math: Brutally Difficult

Now for the honest assessment Anthony's readers deserve: getting this done between now and November 12 is a long-shot sprint through a minefield.

Start with the calendar. Congress has roughly six working weeks of legislative session between now and the ban's effective date, once August recess and campaign-season absenteeism are accounted for. A 60-page regulatory bill creating new federal taxes, a three-tier distribution system, and multiple agency mandates would normally take years to move through committee, scoring, and floor consideration. There is no committee markup scheduled. There is no Senate companion. The House Rules Committee already blocked Barr's earlier attempts to attach similar language to larger vehicles — a warning sign about where leadership stands.

The opposition coalition is uniquely awkward: Barr himself has acknowledged the bill faces resistance from segments of the alcohol industry (fighting the beverage competition), marijuana businesses (who want hemp intoxicants pushed into licensed dispensary channels), and prohibitionist groups (who want everything banned). When distributors, dispensaries, and drug warriors all oppose you, the lobbying terrain is treacherous. Add Ted Cruz predicting an "uphill path," the Marijuana Policy Project saying a full fix is unlikely this year, and a former Trump DHS secretary warning that preserving hemp THC "emboldens foreign criminal actors," and the headwinds are substantial. The House just passed a Farm Bill without any hemp ban delay — a telling omission.

What the bill has going for it is singular but potent: the White House wants it. Trump has personally and repeatedly demanded Congress act — "We must get this done RIGHT and FAST" — OMB Director Russell Vought formally requested it in a letter to Speaker Johnson specifically citing Barr's framework, and White House officials provided Barr's office with draft legislative text. This is as close to an administration-authored bill as Congress produces. And both sponsors are running for Senate in November — Barr in Kentucky, Craig in Minnesota — giving each a personal electoral incentive to deliver.

The realistic path isn't standalone passage — it's attachment. A September continuing resolution or year-end appropriations package is the likeliest vehicle, potentially paired with a short delay of the November deadline to buy implementation time. Handicapping it honestly: a full enactment by November 12 is perhaps a one-in-four proposition; some partial fix — a delay, a beverage carve-out, or a narrowed version of this framework riding a must-pass bill — is closer to a coin flip. Trump's personal engagement is the variable that could beat those odds.

Implications for the Hemp Industry — Clearly and Concisely

If this passes, here is what changes:

Survival, at a price. The $28 billion market lives, but as a federally taxed, permitted, labeled, and potency-capped industry. The gas-station free-for-all ends either way — the only question is whether it ends in regulation or prohibition.

Winners: Compliant, scaled manufacturers of naturally derived products — especially beverage brands, who gain a legitimized three-tier structure that mainstream retail and restaurant channels can embrace. American farmers, via the domestic-sourcing mandate that walls out Chinese biomass. Full-spectrum CBD companies, whose products are preserved and now Medicare-codified. Kentucky and Minnesota operators, whose regulatory models the bill nationalizes.

Losers: The synthetic cannabinoid sector — Delta-8 converted from CBD via chemical synthesis faces an existential question under the artificial-process language, and HHC/THC-O products are dead outright. Import-dependent supply chains. Margin-thin operators who can't absorb three stacked federal taxes plus compliance costs. Consolidation follows.

The strategic shift: hemp stops being an arbitrage on regulatory gaps and becomes a regulated CPG category — closer to craft beverage than to cannabis. For the licensed marijuana industry, the bill is a mixed outcome: hemp competition survives, but on a taxed, capped, and policed playing field rather than a lawless one.

The Bottom Line

Barr and Craig have given the hemp industry exactly what it asked for: a credible, White House-backed, bipartisan framework that trades chaos for legitimacy. The substance is the easy part. The calendar, the Rules Committee, and a three-front lobbying war are the hard part. Four months. Six working weeks. One presidential demand to "get it done SOON."

📈 Dog Walkers

$LOVFF ( ▼ 2.26% ) Initiates Buyback

Cannara Biotech just told the market what it thinks of its own stock price — and it's putting cash behind the opinion.

The Québec-based producer announced that the TSX has accepted its notice to launch a normal course issuer bid, authorizing the repurchase of up to 1,975,642 common shares — approximately 2% of shares outstanding — over the twelve months beginning August 4, 2026. Daily purchases are capped at 10,469 shares (25% of average daily trading volume), and all repurchased shares will be cancelled.

The board's rationale was stated plainly: "the underlying value of its common shares may not be reflected in the market price." For a company with Cannara's operating profile, the argument is credible. This is a producer holding #1 market share in Québec (14.3%), growing national share to 4.4%, posting consistent profitability, and fresh off two major strategic wins — the exclusive Canadian rights to Blue River's Ampersand™ live rosin technology and a C$21 million international supply agreement with Curaleaf that accelerated its Valleyfield expansion timeline by a full year.

The timing carries symbolic weight too. Cannara only graduated to the TSX main board in March — the NCIB arrives barely four months later, signaling a management team confident enough in cash flow to fund buybacks without impairing growth investment. The company explicitly noted it has "sufficient cash flow and financial resources" to run the bid while pursuing expansion, including the buildout toward 75,000 kg of annual production capacity.

A 2% buyback won't transform the cap table overnight. But the message matters more than the math: while scaling toward international markets, activating new cultivation zones, and launching novel product formats, Cannara believes the cheapest asset it can buy right now is itself.

An automatic share purchase plan will allow repurchases to continue through blackout periods. The bid runs through August 3, 2027.

$CBWTF ( 0.0% ) Announces Reverse Split

Auxly Cannabis Group is joining the share consolidation club — and management wants to make one thing crystal clear: this isn't what you think it is.

The Canadian cannabis CPG company announced it will complete a 14-for-1 share consolidation, reducing its outstanding count from approximately 1.42 billion shares to roughly 101.3 million. Post-consolidation trading begins on the TSX on or about July 28, with shares continuing under the "XLY" symbol. The ratio was approved by shareholders at the June 30 annual meeting.

CEO Hugo Alves went out of his way to preempt the market's reflexive skepticism about reverse splits: "This is not a precursor to a financing or any other dilution — as we have previously said and our actions under our standing NCIB program have shown, we are buyers of our shares, not issuers."

That distinction matters. Historically, Canadian cannabis consolidations have often preceded desperate capital raises from struggling operators. Auxly's situation is the opposite: the company is coming off a record 2025, posted Q1 revenue of $39.8 million (up 22%) with 55% gross margins and $12.3 million in adjusted EBITDA (up 65%), and describes its balance sheet as the strongest in years. Alves framed the move as consolidating "from a position of strength" to improve market quality and align the capital structure with the business Auxly has become.

A 1.4 billion share count was a relic of the company's dilutive past — penny-stock optics that no longer matched one of Canada's fastest-growing, most profitable operators. At ~101 million shares, the per-share metrics become legible, institutional screens stop filtering the stock out, and the active buyback does more work per dollar.

The cleanup era of Canadian cannabis continues — and Auxly just handled its own from strength, not weakness.

📺 Trade To Black

Cannabis Is Being Rebuilt From The Ground Up | TTB Presented by Flowhub

• Open vs. Closed Tech: Flowhub CEO Kyle Sherman makes the case against closed technology ecosystems — arguing dispensaries need the freedom to choose best-in-class tools across POS, payments, loyalty, and analytics rather than being locked into a single vendor's roadmap.

• What Retailers Should Own: Sherman outlines the non-negotiables operators must control — their customer relationships, data, brand, and choice of technology partners — and how surrendering them to a walled-garden vendor is a long-term strategic mistake.

• Headless Commerce: Flowhub's Open Ecommerce approach lets operators build custom websites, apps, kiosks, and new shopping channels without ripping out their core system — bringing cannabis retail tech in line with mainstream e-commerce architecture.

• Clinical CBD Realities: Dr. Paul Shields breaks down the gap between retail-dose and therapeutic-dose CBD, the real drug interaction risks cannabinoids carry with medications like blood thinners and antiepileptics, and the open research questions surrounding terpenes and the entourage effect.