The hemp delay is law — for most products

Last week →  The rescheduling record is closed

The President signed H.R. 6500 on Wednesday, September 2, the day it was presented, and the stopgap is now Public Law 119-103. Section 2019 is sixty words long. It delays every amendment made by Section 781 of last year's agriculture appropriations act — the total-THC definition of hemp and the 0.4 mg per-container cap — from November 12 to December 11, with one exception: products containing cannabinoids "not capable of being naturally produced" by the plant keep the November 12 date. That is a date change, not a policy change. December 11 is also the day government funding runs out again, so the hemp question rides on the next continuing resolution. What did not change is the part operators will feel first. Missouri's HB 2641 still bans non-beverage hemp products above 0.4 mg on November 12 whatever Congress does. Virginia's 2 mg cap and Ohio's SB 56 already bind harder than the federal rule. Square's October 15 catalog cutoff for CBD and hemp SKUs stands. The federal clock moved twenty-nine days. Most of the clocks that matter did not move at all. What the 0.4 mg cap requires →

Top story. The President signed H.R. 6500 on September 2 (Pub. L. 119-103), moving the total-THC hemp definition and the 0.4 mg per-container cap to December 11 while cannabinoids the plant cannot naturally produce keep November 12 — and leaving Missouri's November 12 ban, Virginia's 2 mg cap and Square's October 15 cutoff exactly where they were.

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Why it matters: Twenty-nine extra federal days apply to most hemp products, but not to all of them and not in every state. The bucket a cannabinoid falls in — plant-producible and extracted, plant-producible but synthesized, or not naturally producible — now sets its federal date, and the statute does not sort compounds by name. Classify inputs with documentation and talk to your counsel; the word "synthetic" on a label no longer answers the question.

H.R. 6500, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, was presented to the President and signed on September 2, 2026 (Pub. L. 119-103, 140 Stat. 987). The Senate passed it 90–6 on August 8 after tabling the Budd amendment 61–32; the House agreed 370–48 on September 1. Section 2019 applies Section 781 only to paragraphs (1)(C)(ii)(I) and (1)(C)(iv)(I) of the Agricultural Marketing Act until December 11, 2026, which is also the next funding deadline.

Why it matters: The notice never mentions cannabis, but the botanical pathway is the one whole-plant extracts travel — purified CBD went through as a conventional new drug application. FDA is asking how to handle batch-to-batch variability, complex-mixture trial design, real-world evidence and "well-established use." The record closes before anyone knows whether cannabis becomes Schedule III, which makes it the only open venue for shaping that pathway now.

FDA published "Advancing Development of Botanical Drug Products; Request for Information" at 91 FR 56887 on September 4 (Docket No. FDA-2026-N-9550). Comments are due November 3, 2026 at 11:59 pm ET via regulations.gov. Only four botanical drug applications have ever been approved. The notice also flags a joint FDA–EMA workshop on herbal and botanical drug products on September 25.

Why it matters: Retailers stocking kratom next to CBD have two different questions. Manufactured or concentrated MGPI, MGM-15 and MGM-16 products are Schedule I now; botanical leaf is not, and the lawsuit asks a court to say so. The separate 7-OH threshold order — 0.05 percent in plant material under the July notice — has not been published, so "DEA scheduled 7-OH" headlines overstate the law. Iowa's governor told retailers on September 1 to check their shelves anyway.

DEA's temporary order placing mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15 and MGM-16 in Schedule I was published and took effect August 26, 2026 (FR Doc. 2026-17429), running through August 26, 2028. The American Kratom Association filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on August 27 (No. 1:26-cv-02997), seeking a declaration that trace, naturally formed pseudoindoxyl does not make botanical kratom leaf a controlled substance.

Why it matters: Three circuits in two years have now rejected the argument that an applicant has no legally protected interest in a state cannabis license because marijuana is federally illegal. Residency-preference and scoring challenges in Georgia, Florida and Alabama get past the courthouse door on the merits, not on standing. States defending licensing rounds should expect to litigate the dormant Commerce Clause, not to dismiss around it.

In Georgia Atlas, Inc. v. Executive Director of the Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission, No. 22-11046 (Sept. 2, 2026, unpublished), the panel vacated the dismissal of due-process and equal-protection claims for lack of standing, holding the district court conflated the merits with standing. The Supremacy Clause count stayed dismissed. The court cited Jensen (1st Cir. 2025) and Variscite NY Four (2d Cir. 2025) and remanded.

Why it matters: The evidentiary record in Docket DEA-1362 closed August 25 and nothing has moved since; there is no deadline on the recommended decision. What has surfaced is what DEA asks a dispensary that filed the April registration form: whether it will source cannabis across state lines, order synthetic cannabinoids, grow on-site, and which suppliers hold DEA numbers. The answers go into a federal record.

DEA's rescheduling page listed no new action as of September 5. Marijuana Moment obtained the 26-question follow-up the Rocky Mountain Division sends Colorado medical dispensaries after registration, including packaging policies referencing 21 CFR 1301.13(k)(8). Mississippi operators reported different questions from the New Orleans Division in June; DEA did not explain the variance.

Why it matters: The packaging redesign clock is running — "attractive to children" now has a statutory definition operative January 1, 2028, and no safe harbor. Beverage makers should read AB 2532 now: serving-delineation lines on transparent multi-serve containers, a free measuring device at purchase, and a Poison Help line on labels from July 1, 2027, if signed. AB 1965 would let DCC pull product off retail shelves for testing and give customers a right to the COA.

Governor Newsom signed AB 2249 on August 31 (Chapter 164, Statutes of 2026). AB 1965 was presented August 27; AB 2250 — which carves CBN isolate out of the concentrate definition from 2028 and broadens the tobacco-licensee sales ban — September 3; AB 2532 September 4. The session adjourned August 31, and the Governor has until September 30 to sign or veto.

Why it matters: The last existential legal challenge to Nebraska's medical program is over. The Attorney General says he will follow the ruling; the Governor's office says the Medical Cannabis Commission will continue its work. The practical constraint now is the Commission's rulemaking — it is rewriting regulations to charge application fees before issuing licenses, and it meets September 14. Calendar the rulemaking, not the ruling.

In Kuehn v. Evnen (Sept. 4, 2026), Chief Justice Funke wrote for a unanimous court affirming the Lancaster County District Court. Improper notarization of some petition pages does not void every page that notary handled, and the trial court properly declined to draw adverse inferences from Fifth Amendment invocations. The counts stood at 89,251 and 89,030 valid signatures against an 86,499 threshold.

Why it matters: Retail applicants who advanced without a secured, municipally noticed site face a hard stop unless the state appeals and wins; the December 2024 injunction had already frozen review of those files. On the operations side, delinquent-payment and COD-list reporting moves into Metrc on September 15, and OCM began covering plant and package tags on September 1 — with no reimbursement for tags already bought.

Justice Sharon A. Graff of the Albany County Supreme Court ruled August 31 in Organic Blooms, LLC v. Cannabis Control Board that regulators may not let applicants proceed without a location and then decide 1,000- and 2,000-foot proximity waivers at the eleventh hour, as reported by Law360, which obtained the decision. OCM's seed-to-sale page sets the September 15 Metrc transition; state-paid allotments run to 24,000 plant tags for cultivators.

Why it matters: Missouri is the clearest example of a state clock that did not move. HB 2641's enumerated list — edibles, gummies, capsules, oils, smokable THCA — takes effect November 12 regardless of the federal delay; beverages are the only category thought to slide, and plaintiffs say even that is unclear. Inside the licensed market, DCR is enforcing the same natural-versus-converted line with a mandatory recall.

The Division of Cannabis Regulation issued a mandatory recall on September 2 of products from manufacturer MAN000042 (GF Extraction Lab) containing cannabinoids "produced through chemical modification, conversion, or synthetic derivation"; no adverse events were reported. The state's motion to dismiss the hemp industry's constitutional challenge to HB 2641 is pending before Judge Harpool in the Western District of Missouri, with no ruling date.

Why it matters: Rhode Island's social-equity certification portal closes Friday, September 11 at 11:59 pm ET — ten weeks before the November 23 application deadline most applicants will calendar. The interest form closed September 4; anyone who did not file it cannot start certification now. In Illinois, adult-use dispensaries can file the $5,000 Form 15-37 medical opt-in from September 10; medical-rate sales wait for the separate license to issue.

The Rhode Island Cannabis Control Commission's certification page, updated September 4, sets the SEASC deadline; the round offers up to 24 retail licenses across six zones, six of them reserved for social-equity applicants. IDFPR's Form F2636 implements Public Act 104-0463 §15-37 and requires a patient-prioritization plan, a consultation-area floor plan and disciplinary and tax-compliance disclosures.

Why it matters: Roughly 3,000 products on the CBD Public List are linked to these three dossiers. Authorisation would come with a 10 mg per day adult limit, mandatory warning labels, strict THC specifications and likely five years of data protection for each applicant — a wall for brands not linked to an authorised dossier. FSA also flags that a UK–EU SPS agreement could later push authorisation to Brussels.

The Food Standards Agency published its Board paper on September 3 recommending that ministers in England and Wales authorise applications RP 7 (synthetic CBD), RP 350 and RP 427 (CBD isolates of at least 98 percent purity) as food supplements, with beverages and confectionery additionally for RP 350. The Board meets September 16 in Swansea. FSA notes EFSA's 2 mg/day provisional figure and does not adopt it.

Why it matters: Licensed producers lose the DVA-funded flower and oil segment outside the February Framework — specialist-only prescriptions, dried herb for vaporisation, 25 percent THC and 2 grams a day. In New South Wales, every low-THC hemp licensee now has to strip leaves before plants leave the property and test each crop.

The Department of Veterans' Affairs ended grandfathering for medicinal cannabis on August 31, 2026, for patients whose prescriptions were dispensed between February 16, 2025 and February 15, 2026. The NSW Hemp Industry Regulation 2026 commenced September 1, replacing the 2016 regulation and adding two licence conditions for all low-THC hemp licensees under the Licence Manual's testing schedule.

DEA's order names three compounds, not kratom, and the 7-OH threshold order is still unpublished — which is why "DEA banned 7-OH" headlines and the American Kratom Association's lawsuit are both about the gap between the two. Our breakdown of what is actually Schedule I on the kratom shelf, what is not, and what the natural-versus-manufactured line shares with the hemp statute. Read the summary →