Many people associate cannabis with winding down, but not all strains are created equal. If you’re looking to stay sharp, focused and motivated — whether to tackle creative work, study, or just stay ahead of your to-do list — the right strain can make a difference. In fact, experts note that certain sativa-dominant strains provide […]
Washington Tried To Kill Hemp. Lawmakers Just Launched the Counterattack
Congress banned most hemp-derived products, but a new Senate bill offers a national regulatory framework with real testing, age limits and THC caps. The fight now comes down to whether lawmakers choose prohibition or standards that match how the country already consumes cannabis.
For weeks, we’ve been tracking the slow-moving car crash that began when former President Donald Trump signed a spending bill that quietly folded a national hemp ban into the fine print. It was the kind of move that hits you twice: first when you realize it actually passed, then again when you see what it could do to one of the fastest-growing sectors of the cannabis economy.
Now there’s a counterproposal. Oregon senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley introduced the Cannabinoid Safety and Regulation Act, a bill that tries to pull the country back from the edge by swapping prohibition for a structured national rulebook. The idea is simple: replace a ban with standards that actually work.
“We learned from the failed war on drugs that a one-size-fits-all approach that bans hemp products from the market outright does nothing to protect kids and consumers,” Wyden told Marijuana Moment. Merkley added that blanket prohibition “harms research and the entire industry.”
If you’ve been following High Times over the past month, this tracks. We reported how the shutdown deal created the ban. We explained how the 0.4 milligram total THC cap would erase entire categories of products, including nonintoxicating ones. We documented how states are already signaling they won’t follow the federal script. We showed how Project 2025 thinking is shaping the conversation and how alcohol and traditional cannabis interests have joined the political tug of war. This new bill sits inside that same storm.
Under Wyden and Merkley’s plan, hemp beverages wouldn’t disappear. Instead, they’d get clear limits and a national structure. Drinks could contain up to 5 milligrams of THC per serving and 10 milligrams per container. Edibles, topicals and inhalable products would have their own caps. Products would be tested by accredited labs. Labels would show cannabinoid content, testing confirmation, warnings, allergens and a universal cannabis symbol. Sales to anyone under 21 would be banned. Fully synthetic cannabinoids would be prohibited. Semi-synthetic conversions would be allowed only if safe and created through a single chemical step.
This is exactly the kind of clarity the beverage sector has been begging for. The Hemp Beverage Alliance, representing more than 375 members, said the bill “provides a pathway for the hemp beverage industry to continue to thrive.” The group noted it has been advocating for age limits, testing and sensible THC levels since 2023. In its words, this proposal creates the environment the category needs to survive.
The bill would also force the FDA to finally step into the role it has avoided for years. It would be required to create rules for online sales, good manufacturing practices, child-resistant packaging and testing standards. It would need to verify facilities, enforce lab accreditation and establish a “nutrition facts” style panel for cannabinoid products. This could change everything from how labels look to how products move across state lines.
At the same time, states would still have the right to go further. They could ban intoxicating hemp outright or impose stricter rules. But they couldn’t block interstate transport and would have to follow consistent packaging and labeling standards. That matters, because as we wrote earlier this month, several states had already begun carving their own regulatory lanes long before this bill showed up.
The proposal also includes more than regulation. It sets aside $200 million a year for CDC research into cannabis use. It allocates millions more for impaired driving studies and youth prevention programs. It pushes agencies to collaborate on THC beverage rules, something that became necessary the moment these drinks moved from novelty to national shelf space.
What makes this moment interesting is not just the policy but the timing. Congressional Research Service analysts warned there’s no clear roadmap for enforcing the ban. Industry groups are pleading for an extension, so lawmakers have time to build an actual framework. Senator Rand Paul is preparing his own bill to protect hemp markets. And despite widespread public pushback, Trump publicly supported the ban language.
So now the country sits between two possible futures. One is the ban we’ve already dissected: a measure that would collapse an entire supply chain with almost no guidance on how to do it. The other is a regulatory model that treats intoxicating hemp as a category that already exists, already has millions of consumers and already operates with or without Washington’s approval.
This new bill doesn’t settle the fight, but it gives Congress something real to work with. It gives states something predictable. It gives producers a path that doesn’t depend on loopholes. It gives consumers a category with clear rules instead of panic and improvisation.
The clock is still ticking. But for the first time since Trump signed the shutdown bill, there’s a version of the future that doesn’t end with empty shelves.
Oklahoma’s Cannabis Cautionary Tale: From Gold Rush to Crackdown
Oklahoma’s Cannabis Cautionary Tale: From Gold Rush to Crackdown
Oklahoma was once the hottest cannabis story in America: ultra-low barriers to entry, no license caps, rock-bottom fees, and easy patient access after medical legalization in 2018. Within a few years, licenses exploded into the five figures, production dwarfed in-state demand, and prices cratered. Now, the state is living with the hangover—market contraction, aggressive enforcement, and a bruised reputation.
How the boom sowed the bust
With lenient rules and cheap land, Oklahoma invited thousands of small growers and retailers—peaking around 14,000 licenses at the height. But a glut followed: officials have said the state produced many times more cannabis than residents consumed, pushing wholesale prices toward the floor and attracting opportunists who exploited the system. Licenses have since plunged to roughly a third of that peak as the market corrects and regulators tighten the screws.
Foreign money, straw owners, and high-profile violence
As profits tightened, investigators say criminal networks slipped in, using straw ownership to evade residency rules. The issue became national news after the 2022 quadruple murder at a Kingfisher County grow—an operation later revealed to be fraudulently licensed. The gunman, a Chinese national, pleaded guilty in 2024 and received life without parole, cementing public perceptions that parts of the industry had turned dangerous.
The political and enforcement whiplash
Voters rejected adult-use legalization in March 2023, an early sign of backlash in a deep-red state where the medical program already felt unmanageable. Since then, the governor, attorney general and the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics (OBN) have leaned into enforcement, forming task forces, revoking licenses, and raiding large illegal grows—officials tout hundreds of arrests and the seizure of vast plant counts. Supporters call it a necessary reset; critics see an overcorrection that punishes compliant operators alongside bad actors.
What went structurally wrong
Policy design: No caps + easy qualifying = oversupply and diversion risk.
Compliance capacity: Rapid licensing outpaced regulators’ ability to vet owners, audit operations, and police diversion.
Economics: Free-falling prices crushed mom-and-pop margins, making gray-market shortcuts more tempting and compliance more expensive relative to revenue.
Public trust: Sensational crimes and media narratives hardened opposition, which then fed stricter politics and enforcement.
Lessons for other states
Ramp licensing with guardrails. Phased license windows, real background vetting, and residency verification help deter straw owners before the first harvest.
Match growth with enforcement resources. If application volume quadruples, investigative and auditing capacity must as well—or bad actors will fill the gap.
Data-driven supply management. Monitor canopy and yields vs. in-state demand to keep production within sane bounds.
Stabilize the legal market. Predictable taxes, fair testing and packaging rules, and swift penalties for diversion help legitimate operators survive the troughs.
Communicate wins. Publicly closing illegal grows while showing support for compliant businesses can rebuild trust.
Oklahoma’s story isn’t just about crime or laissez-faire policy—it’s about sequencing. If you liberalize access before you build durable compliance and market scaffolding, you risk a boom-bust-crackdown cycle that’s hard to escape. The state is now trying to crawl out of that loop with fewer licenses, tougher oversight, and a political reset. Whether it can nurture a smaller but healthier market will be the real measure of success.
Audience Question: If you were designing cannabis legalization in a new state, which lever would you prioritize first to avoid Oklahoma’s cycle—tight licensing, stronger enforcement capacity, production caps, or price/tax stabilization—and why?
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Jessimae Peluso Didn’t Use Weed to Numb Grief — She Used It to Face It
“Grief is a gift. Right now, it may feel like a curse. It burns every fiber of your being, leaving you feeling lost, alone, and untethered,” says Jessimae Peluso, remembering the period when she lost both of her parents. She does not say it for effect. She says it because she earned it. She says it the way people speak when there is no filter left to protect them.
Peluso is known for stand-up comedy, MTV’s Girl Code, a long relationship with humor and weed, and the kind of irreverent timing that makes even the mundane absurd. But somewhere between growing an audience and after her parents got sick and eventually passed, she found herself holding something heavier than jokes. She found grief.
Most people run from pain, but Jessimae turned toward it with a microphone.
After her parents passed, something strange happened: people online began messaging her about their own losses. She did not ask for that responsibility, nor did she brand herself as a guide for emotional collapse. She was just openly grieving, and her audience recognized something familiar.
In her words, the response clarified the work that needed to be done: “After losing both of my parents, I was struck by how many fans reached out to share that my grief also touched them. I had always included my parents in my stand-up and on my podcast, so when they got sick and eventually passed, my audience felt like they knew them and felt connected to the loss.”
That is where Dying Laughing was born. Not in a meeting or as a pitch, but in the simple fact that loss had made her transparent and her audience felt safe enough to respond.
Jessimae says she did not jump into the concept right away. “It actually took me over a year to rebrand my podcast into something grief and mental health focused,” she explains. She wanted to be intentional. She jokes about being a Virgo, but the truth behind it is focus, avoiding the show to become trauma porn. The goal was to build something that could hold the weight.
“I’m a Virgo, so perfectionism is the cross I bear. I wanted to make sure it had real depth. I dug into grief literature and explored different healing modalities, partly for my own journey and partly to shape the show.”
She was already talking about her family in comedy, so, when her parents died, the audience did not disappear; they leaned in. They wanted to know what comes after the punchline. The answer was the part no one wrote for her.
Grief shows up without a script. Jessimae says humor did not trivialize her experience: it kept her alive in it and made space for breath. “My purpose is to sprinkle joy onto a heavy subject, to show that we can laugh with our grief, not just suffer through it. Suffering is a choice. Healing is a journey.”
The podcast is not “funny takes on death” or novelty sadness. It is a collection of the emotional leftovers no one knows where to store, filtered through someone who understands that comedy is not the opposite of pain. Comedy is how pain metabolizes.
And yes, cannabis sits close to that process.
Jessimae has always had a connection with weed, but she says it did not start in high school, or as a rebellious stoner origin myth. That part of her identity emerged later. “The truth is I actually only started partaking in the jazz cabbage in the last decade or so, having never even smoked in high school.”
The way she describes weed is not as a crutch or hype, but as a companion. “Once I only enjoyed cannabis as a solution to boredom, and that quickly evolved into a portal for healing for me.”
Years ago, Jessimae used to host a live show on Instagram called Weedsday. She smoked, told stories, interacted with fans. It was a loose, intimate hangout, and her family would sometimes appear on camera. Later, when her father became sick, the tone changed. Even though the space was still playful and chaotic and full of personality, something deeper was happening. “Once I lost my father, I used the show as a way to raise awareness and charity for an Alzheimer’s foundation.”
Cannabis stopped being recreational and became relational, allowing her to stay present through the kind of day most people try to escape.
“Cannabis was a medicine that helped me show up deep for myself while I was losing my father. It slowed me down, and gave me some space to feel the feels.”
Her take on weed and grief is not the cliché of stoner enlightenment. It is quieter. More grounded. “I wouldn’t say cannabis opens the door to grief, it walks you through it.”
And then she says something you do not hear often. That grief is not something to fix. “Grief is universal, but it wears a custom suit for everyone.” That sentence is a reminder that no two losses are the same, but we still try to navigate them as if there is a map.
Jessimae talks about the community forming around her work. People write to her, send voice notes, DM her. Not to ask for jokes, but to share something that hurts. “I find it really humbling to be a person many people have turned to for solace, reprieve and relief from their own despair.”
Although the show isn’t therapy, it has become a gathering point: “Through the sharing of my own losses, I am building a community. How beautiful is that? My loss has given me more than I could have asked for. A universally shared experience and one giant grief gang.”
Photo by Bradford Rogne Photography, 2024
There is an episode where Sarah Barthel of Phantogram talks about her sister’s suicide. There is another where John Stamos speaks about signs from the other side. Jessimae listens. She does not actively try to solve anything. “By talking so much with people about loss, it really proves and highlights that everyone’s grief is so personal. This universal experience is a deeply individualized one.”
Then she shares something that could only come from her: “I think loss can create magic. I know it does. After my mom passed, I saw her in Italy. I called my sister immediately and said, Mom didn’t die, she’s just on vacation in Sorrento.”
It is impossible to tell if she is serious or joking, and that’s the point. Sometimes the pain hits so hard you need a laugh just to breathe. Sometimes the laugh hits so honestly it becomes a kind of prayer. Jessimae lives in that tension.
She also believes in absurdity as survival. “Absurd humor became a survival mechanism.” She tells a story about her father, deep into dementia, getting confused and aggressively hitting on her sister.
“It was truly heartbreaking for me to see. Because I’m the hot sister.” Pain. Then punchline. Not to erase the ache. To hold it.
She does not pretend weed solves grief, but she knows that cannabis shaped her ability to sit inside the hard parts. “It allowed me to just be. To just be sad. To just be angry, and depressed.” She describes the plant as a bridge. Not out of grief. Into it.
“We all know laughter is one of the best medicines. But when paired with a little bit of the jazz cabbage, it can be a super healer.”
It is easy to imagine Dying Laughing filling a room soon. Jessimae sees it too. “Definitely live events and grief seminars are in the future.” Not comedy clubs. Not self-help conferences. Something new.
“There are endless possibilities, but I do know that I am brewing up a unique grief experience that focuses on the blessings and joy that come from and are on the other side of loss.”
In her mind, grief is not a hole, a bottomless pit. It’s a gateway.
“Grief is a doorway to personal freedom if you can have access to the right tools. I want to make that accessible to a wider audience. That’s my calling in life.”
When asked what she would tell someone in the High Times community who is grieving right now, she does not offer a shortcut. She brings truth. “Grief is a gift.”
She knows it may feel cruel, like the world is ending. She has been in that landscape and she knows the terrain. “There is life and love waiting for you. And that’s a gift.”
No slogan. No takeaway. Just the real thing: a woman who lost both parents. A comedian who refuses to pretend pain is punchline-ready. A stoner who used weed not to escape reality, but to feel it.
Source: Pexels Modern cannabis delivery has quickly become one of the most significant developments in the legal cannabis industry. As online shopping continues to grow across every sector, cannabis consumers are choosing digital access over traditional in-store visits. According to the Cannabis Delivery Global Market Report, legal cannabis delivery is expanding at an annual rate […]
Audience Question: If you were designing cannabis legalization in a new state, which lever would you prioritize first to avoid Oklahoma’s cycle—tight licensing, stronger enforcement capacity, production caps, or price/tax stabilization—and why?
