compliance
Cannabis Testing Is Broken Across State Lines. State-Run Testing Is the Real Fix
State regulators are spending unnecessary time and money trying to police a private testing model that fails to protect consumers. From Maryland’s newly launched CSQ CLEAR audit pilot to New York’s shutdown of Lexachrom Analytical Laboratory, Michigan’s historic license revocations of Viridis Laboratories, and New Jersey putting out RFPs to audit its testing ecosystem, regulators […]
Maryland Targets Cannabis Lab Shopping with Multi-Lab Audit Program
Maryland regulators are taking direct aim at potency manipulation with a new state audit program designed to identify inflated THC numbers and enforce label accuracy. Starting this October, the Maryland Cannabis Administration (MCA) is launching a cross-testing pilot alongside Cannabis Safety & Quality (CSQ), an accredited third-party standards and certification body for the cannabis and […]
What Medical Cannabis Packaging Can Learn from Pharma
Medical cannabis companies developing a new product or redesigning packaging for an existing one may want to look beyond today’s cannabis packaging requirements and consider what could be required in the years ahead. Pharmaceutical packaging has spent decades addressing many of the same issues medical cannabis companies face, including child resistance, tamper evidence, and product […]
Here Is What to Expect at the Upcoming Cannabis Quality Conference
This year’s Cannabis Quality Conference is being held alongside the long-running Food Safety Consortium, bringing cannabis quality professionals into the same room as food safety experts and creating an overlap between the two industries as they work through many of the same quality, testing, traceability, and safety challenges. That overlap is particularly relevant as cannabis […]
California Court Orders DCC to Overhaul Cannabis Track-and-Trace System
An Orange County Superior Court judge has ordered California’s Department of Cannabis Control to take steps to bring the state’s cannabis track-and-trace system into compliance with California law, concluding that the system does not currently flag irregular transactions for investigation. The August 4, 2026, final judgment in HNHPC Inc. v. Department of Cannabis Control represents the latest […]
Hemp Beverage Operators Are in Fight Mode
“Everybody who came here today, and not giving up and saying that we’re going to continue to fight for this category, thank you, give yourself a round of applause, please,” were the fighting words of Christopher Lackner, President of the Hemp Beverage Alliance (HBA), as he opened the panel discussions for the Hemp Beverage Expo […]
Why California Cannabis Businesses Remain at Risk After the Schedule III Order
On April 22, 2026, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order placing state-licensed medical marijuana into Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. The cannabis industry declared it a turning point. In certain respects, it is. But turning points are not endpoints. And for California cannabis retailers who operate in the most complex, most […]
What Makes a Healthcare-Ready Cannabinoid Ingredient?
For much of the cannabinoid supply market, the model has been simple: make the molecule, test the batch, sell the material. If the product meets basic specifications, passes third-party testing, and can be produced at a competitive price, it is considered ready for market. That model has supported much of the consumer cannabinoid industry, where […]
Cannabis Labeling Workflows—Reinvented!
For years, cannabis operators have accepted labeling inefficiencies as an unavoidable cost of doing business. Yet, many facilities still rely on fragmented, manual workflows that require employees to export spreadsheets, copy cannabinoid results, and rekey intricate terpene data into static label templates. This traditional approach actively drains productivity, inflates labor costs, and introduces unnecessary opportunities […]
Why Workforce Risk is Real and What it Means
Every conversation about cannabis risk follows the same script: Regulatory uncertainty, 280E, capital access, and maybe interstate commerce, depending on the room. None of that is wrong, and operators dealing with those pressures daily don’t need me to tell them they’re real. But after more than a decade working inside this industry, watching companies scale, […]