Focus Article
Pennsylvania Hemp Beverage Regulation: Why HB 2309 and SB 49 Are Two Very Different Bills
Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Senate rejected SB 49, Sen. Dan Laughlin’s Cannabis Control Board bill, on a 27-23 floor vote. Then, within the same session, lawmakers filed a motion to reconsider, and it passed 29-21. The bill lives, for now, in a kind of legislative purgatory. If you follow the hemp beverage space in Pennsylvania and […]
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 […]
You Aren’t Making a Profit Because Your Ordering Process is Jacked
Over the last several years, we have spent a lot of time studying how cannabis retailers make purchasing decisions. Not just which products they buy, or how much they buy, but the entire sequence of events that begins once a buyer decides inventory needs to be ordered. That sequence matters more than most operators realize. […]
Hemp Beverage Expo 2026: Get in the Room Where the THC Beverage Industry Is Being Built
The Hemp Beverage Expo (HBE) heads into its second show this June in Austin, Texas, and the energy is full speed ahead — even with November 12th looming over the industry. With policy updates shifting rapidly and operators scrambling to brainstorm contingency plans, getting in the room with businesses and advocates from across the beverage […]
What the Wholesale Numbers Tell Us About Where Cannabis Markets Are Headed
LeafLink’s Wholesale Cannabis Pricing Guide, drawing on over 400,000 SKUs and billions of dollars in transaction data across 18 U.S. markets throughout 2025, paints a picture of the wholesale cannabis pricing continuing its downward march as markets mature and supply expands — with each market and product category telling a slightly different story. The Big […]
The Post-280E Opportunity: Turning Cannabis Risk Into an Asset
The April 2026 Department of Justice rescheduling order landed with the weight of a decade of advocacy behind it. For an industry that has watched every other legal sector deduct its rent, payroll, and marketing costs while cannabis operators paid taxes on money they never made, the optimism is more than justified. It is earned. […]
Pre-Roll Packaging in 2026
Pre-rolls generated $4 billion in sales in 2025 and are projected to grow faster than any other top cannabis category, at a 10% compound annual growth rate, according to BDSA retail tracking data. Infused formats now account for 43% of the segment, and the category has grown by 271% since 2020. That kind of volume […]
Dispensaries Are Winning on Google and Disappearing on ChatGPT
SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index analyzed more than 350,000 business locations across 2,751 brands and found a gap every dispensary operator should take seriously. ChatGPT recommends 1.2% of those locations. Perplexity recommends 7.4%. Gemini reaches 11%. Google’s local 3-pack surfaces 35.9% of the same locations. That is not a small gap. It is a different […]