For the Culture By The Culture
Senator Thom Tillis’s call for a federal probe into the Cherokee cannabis program isn’t oversight, it’s theater. The Eastern Band of Cherokee built the South’s first legal adult-use market, clean and compliant, yet a U.S. senator is weaponizing fear and politics to question their sovereignty. We trace the lies, the motives, and the drug-war power play behind it.
Michigan’s new 24 percent wholesale tax lit up outrage across the cannabis industry, while New York regulators faced a courtroom map lesson and Massachusetts tried to reboot its commission. Pennsylvania found compassion in hospital reform, and Germany slowed progress with new rules. Reefer Report Card Vol. 18 grades a week of taxes, lawsuits, and bureaucratic burnout.
For decades cops used the smell of weed as a free pass to shred the Fourth Amendment. A Florida court just slammed that door shut. The ruling ends one of the drug war’s oldest scams and exposes how the “odor equals crime” myth has humiliated, fined, and jailed millions.
Reefer Report Card Vol. 17 grades the latest moves in cannabis policy. California brings intoxicating hemp under regulated sales, Nebraska misses its medical deadline, a Florida court curbs police search powers, Oregon challenges the interstate commerce ban, and the FDA starts tracking hemp events. Thailand offers a rare global bright spot. Better than last week but still a mess.
This week’s cannabis report card runs the gamut: Ohio hits $3B in sales while federal reform stays stuck, Connecticut raids smoke shops, and California wipes out 21,000 plants in public land raids. The lone bright spot comes from Thailand, where the new Prime Minister pledged support for reform. One win, too many failures.
Hemp may have been ripped from the Controlled Substances Act in 2018, but freedom was only on paper. Farmers are still shackled by THC math, the DEA’s shadow rules, and FDA’s silence on CBD. The loopholes gave rise to delta-8 and other lab-born cannabinoids, sparking a new prohibition panic. The truth is simple: hemp didn’t escape the drug war, it just exposed the absurdity of it all.
