Policy, Decoded

An eighth of cannabis costs $15 in Washington and $52 in Kentucky, where every buyer is a patient. A bottle of bourbon costs about the same in all fifty states. We run the experiment the other way and ask what happens if bourbon can't cross a state line, then follow four states that never traded a gram to the same $18 price. We look at who pays in an open market and who pays under a cap. The forme...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded steps back from the churn to unpack one policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week: on the drive to a dispensary you pass plate readers at the pharmacy, the bank, and the hardware store, and the only one any government required is the one pointed at people buying cannabis. We say plainly where we land, and it implicates...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded steps back from the churn to unpack one policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week: the Senate tabled the hemp amendment at two in the morning, an entire market got a crash course in civics on the way out, and fire drills only reward the people who practiced. We say plainly where we land, and it costs us something to say...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group, Policy, Decoded steps back from the churn to unpack one policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week: the DEA's rescheduling hearing is over, the evidence is in, and the file it produced will matter longer than the headlines about it. For two and a half weeks, in a sealed hearing room with no cameras and a handful of public seats, the gove...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded steps back from the churn to unpack one policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week: after fifty years of calling cannabis dangerous and useless, the federal government has to stand up in a courtroom and argue the opposite, and the reform is overdue, right, and far easier to lose than anyone wants to admit. For fifty year...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded steps back from the churn to unpack one policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week: after fifty years of calling cannabis dangerous and useless, the federal government has to stand up in a courtroom and argue the opposite, and the reform is overdue, right, and far easier to lose than anyone wants to admit. For fifty year...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded steps back from the churn to unpack one policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week: the cannabis industry just graduated to Schedule III, and the commencement address it is not going to get anywhere else. Every spring a famous stranger in rented robes tells a graduating class that the world needs them and the future is t...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded steps back from the churn to unpack one policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week: the cannabis industry just graduated to Schedule III, and the commencement address it is not going to get anywhere else. Every spring a famous stranger in rented robes tells a graduating class that the world needs them and the future is t...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded steps back from the churn to unpack one policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week: the campaign to repeal cannabis legalization in Massachusetts, and how the argument against legal weed quietly changed. Six kids went to a Detroit hospital this spring after getting into edibles at their elementary school. They are fine....

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded steps back from the churn to unpack one policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week: the campaign to repeal cannabis legalization in Massachusetts, and how the argument against legal weed quietly changed. Six kids went to a Detroit hospital this spring after getting into edibles at their elementary school. They are fine....

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded is the Sunday briefing that steps back from the churn and unpacks one consequential policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we sit with a complaint a former cannabis commissioner used to make: we regulate cannabis like uranium. She did not mean it as a compliment. The framework is heavy, and the industry has not buil...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded is the Sunday briefing that steps back from the churn and unpacks one consequential policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we sit with a complaint a former cannabis commissioner used to make: we regulate cannabis like uranium. She did not mean it as a compliment. The framework is heavy, and the industry has not buil...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded steps back from the churn to unpack one policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we sit with the institutional paradox at the center of federal cannabis policy. In the most polarized era in modern American history, cannabis is one of the few national issues where the country has already formed a stable cross-partisan...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded is the Sunday briefing that steps back from the churn and unpacks one consequential policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we sit with the institutional paradox at the center of federal cannabis policy. In the most polarized era in modern American history, cannabis is one of the few national issues where the country...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group, Policy, Decoded is the Sunday briefing that steps back from the churn and unpacks one consequential policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we look at federal cannabis rescheduling, and where the United States actually sits in a conversation the rest of the world has been having for decades. The April 22nd federal cannabis order arri...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group, Policy, Decoded is the Sunday briefing that steps back from the churn and unpacks one consequential policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we look at federal cannabis rescheduling, and where the United States actually sits in a conversation the rest of the world has been having for decades. The April 22nd federal cannabis order arri...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded is the Sunday briefing that steps back from the churn and unpacks one consequential policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we look at what 4/20 has become in 2026, and what the holiday reveals about an industry that is still growing up. 4/20 is now loud enough to reach you whether you are looking for it or not. In y...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded is the Sunday briefing that steps back from the churn and unpacks one consequential policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we look at what 4/20 has become in 2026, and what the holiday reveals about an industry that is still growing up. 4/20 is now loud enough to reach you whether you are looking for it or not. In y...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded is the Sunday briefing that steps back from the churn and unpacks one consequential policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we examine what coherent federal cannabis policy would actually require, and why rescheduling is not it. Rescheduling is closer than it has ever been, and it matters. It opens research pathways,...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded is the Sunday briefing that steps back from the churn and unpacks one consequential policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we examine what coherent federal cannabis policy would actually require, and why rescheduling is not it. Rescheduling is closer than it has ever been, and it matters. It opens research pathways,...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded is the Sunday briefing that steps back from the churn and unpacks one consequential policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we examine the structural failure underneath the legal cannabis market's most important promise. Everyone agrees that testing matters. Legislators say it. Regulators build their frameworks aroun...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded is the Sunday briefing that steps back from the churn and unpacks one consequential policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we examine the structural failure underneath the legal cannabis market's most important promise. Everyone agrees that testing matters. Legislators say it. Regulators build their frameworks a...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded is the Sunday briefing that steps back from the churn and unpacks one consequential policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we examine a shift the industry can no longer ignore. Cannabis is starting to fail like a real industry. In Massachusetts, regulators reported roughly 30 licensed businesses in receivership as o...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded is the Sunday briefing that steps back from the churn and unpacks one consequential policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we examine a shift the industry can no longer ignore. Cannabis is starting to fail like a real industry. In Massachusetts, regulators reported roughly 30 licensed businesses in receivership as o...

🎙️ Powered by THC Group , Policy, Decoded is the Sunday briefing that steps back from the churn and unpacks one consequential policy story shaping cannabis, hemp, alcohol, and regulated markets. This week, we examine the fight most of the cannabis industry is still misreading. Inside licensed dispensaries, THC beverages barely register. In Q1 2025 they represented about 1 percent of cannabis sales...