Chile’s Operación Imperio Ámsterdam (Operation Amsterdam Empire, in English) mobilized more than 500 police officers and around twenty prosecutors, resulting in more than 70 arrests and the dismantling of a network linked to Dispensario Nacional, leaving more than 16,000 medical cannabis users facing disrupted access. The crackdown has brought longstanding legal gaps around collective cultivation and medical access into sharper focus, as attorneys, activists, and lawmakers warn of growing tension between criminal enforcement and the right to health.

It was a glimpse. Barely a breath—a light breeze, perhaps. In Latin America’s cannabis ecosystem, Chile once occupied a position at the forefront. Or, at least, that seemed to be where things were headed. It began with clinical debates, advances in academic research, and a certain proliferation of collective models focused on health. In this way, the country found itself navigating the fringes of technical pragmatism. Even on a continent largely trapped in prohibitionist dogma.

However, the recent launch of Operación Imperio Ámsterdam—an operation that mobilized more than 500 police officers and around twenty prosecutors and culminated in more than 70 arrests—has called that illusion of progress into question.

In that sense, the fall and dismantling of the network linked to Dispensario Nacional, one of the country’s largest and longest-running patient organizations, does not merely expose the limits of judicial persecution. More fundamentally, it lays bare the cracks in a contradictory legal system that now leaves more than 16,000 medical users on the brink of illegality.

Between the Right to Health and the Criminal-Law Paradox

The official narrative presented the operation as a decisive blow against organized crime, criminal association, and money laundering. Prosecutors argue that cannabis containing CBD is medicinal but exclude THC from that classification. That is, broadly speaking, the basic argument underpinning the case. However, from the perspective of the legal defense team and activists, the underlying issue looks very different from that narrative.

“The corporation is a patient organization with more than ten years of history and thousands of members. I’m not talking about 5,000, I’m talking about more than 10,000 people. And that’s important because they’re not customers who walk in off the street and sign up: they are people who have to submit an application, their medical records, their prescription for cannabis, their criminal record certificate, and sign a contract formalizing their membership in the corporation,” explains Hernán Bocaz, a criminal defense attorney.

The Patients’ Dilemma

For the defense, the crux of the problem lies in a structural contradiction in Law No. 20,000. While Article 8 explicitly recognizes a prescription issued by a physician as grounds justifying cannabis cultivation for medical treatment under Law No. 20,584 on patients’ rights, regulatory gaps surrounding how to access plant material turn every collective initiative into a minefield.

According to Bocaz, a contradiction has emerged that places citizens in an impossible dilemma. They are told they can use cannabis to alleviate symptoms associated with serious conditions such as cancer or rheumatism, but everything in the chain before and after use remains legally unclear—an uncertainty the state chooses to address through criminal prosecution.

In this way, collective production and cultivation are left entirely to the discretion of a police officer or prosecutor, for whom ten grams may be treated as a shipment linked to organized crime or as justified possession, depending on the interpretation applied at the time.

In addition, Bocaz warns of “the procedural inconsistencies in the case,” stressing that “in a large number of the arrests, there were clear pressure tactics, with workers and administrative staff kept in custody without even being provided a copy of the investigative file or the formal orders, violating the fundamental right to a defense.”

Health and the Illicit Market

The impact of the mass raids extends beyond the walls of the courts. At the community level, the closure of operating sites sparked panic among users who depended on specific strains to treat complex conditions. Activist Paola Sagués, popularly known as Muy Paola and director of the Santiago Verde platform, describes a climate of collective vulnerability that is worsening amid the lack of institutional responses and the emergence of an increasingly hostile political climate.

“As an activist, I’m worried. I feel that it is urgent for social and human rights organizations to come together because this is not only affecting cannabis. A very difficult situation lies ahead, and as a community we need to unite to confront it more effectively,” Sagués says.

The activist emphasizes that, after years of waiting for legal protections that never materialized under Gabriel Boric’s administration—in fact, seizures increased by 72.8% during the final year of his government—the community was left in an extremely fragile position in the face of an approach that “threatens the health of the population.”

Sagués explains the direct medical impact of these kinds of interventions. She says that “the choice of substance is not based solely on THC percentage, but on the full spectrum of cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids that interact through the entourage effect.” In her words: “When a patient is looking for calm or relaxation, they will choose varieties with linalool or myrcene, while if they need stimulation, they will opt for profiles with limonene.”

By shutting down access to these stabilized profiles, thousands of people are pushed into the illicit market or into buying products informally, with no traceability. Added to this is criticism of trial by media: “On TV, they say the dispensary was a criminal front before there has even been a trial or a hearing. The people sitting in cold jail cells are workers, ordinary people who are not accustomed to the criminal world,” Sagués says.

The Political Backdrop

From a legislative standpoint, the political landscape calls for caution. Lawmaker Ana María Gazmuri, a longtime advocate for reforms on home cultivation and medical cannabis use in the Chamber of Deputies, stresses the need to understand Operación Imperio Ámsterdam within the “spirit of the times” shaping public debate in Chile.

“We have to be clear: in Chile, the right to cultivate individually or collectively through nonprofit corporations exists and has been upheld by the courts when traceability between the number of plants and members’ prescriptions is demonstrated,” the lawmaker explains.

With that in mind, Gazmuri clarifies that current legislation explicitly prohibits sales or commercial dispensing outside the pharmaceutical channel. Although she has introduced a bill seeking to establish rules for collective cultivation and adult use, she acknowledges that there is currently no parliamentary majority to move toward a regulated system of open sales.

Gazmuri places the legal crackdown in a broader context “where the security agenda and penal populism dominate public debate, amid executive proposals seeking to extend states of emergency and intercept communications.”

In this context, “deploying 500 personnel and around twenty prosecutors to target collective cultivation creates an immediate media impact, but diverts essential resources that should be devoted to fighting real organized crime.” Faced with this landscape, the lawmaker argues that the community’s priority should be to uphold and defend the historic gains already secured in the courts, while avoiding actions that exceed the existing legal framework.

Public Health Perspective and Regulatory Gaps

The outcome of Operación Imperio Ámsterdam could set a major precedent for the future of drug policy in the region. While legal defense teams work to secure the release of the dozens of people who have been jailed and challenge the money laundering allegations, more than 16,000 patients are facing the abrupt suspension of their treatments.

The tension between criminal prosecution and the fundamental right to health is once again laid bare. Without clear administrative regulations or the political will to resolve regulatory gaps, Chile’s experience demonstrates that when the state chooses to sidestep a public health approach, the first casualty is ultimately the safety of patients themselves.

<p>The post Chile Sent 500 Police to Raid a Cannabis Patient Organization Serving 16,000 People. Prosecutors Call It Organized Crime. first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Chile Sent 500 Police to Raid a Cannabis Patient Organization Serving 16,000 People. Prosecutors Call It Organized Crime. appeared first on Paradise Found.

Sun-grown cannabis, living soil, and the growers building a regenerative future while federal money flows everywhere but their fields

This past June, President Trump signed an executive order expanding a pilot program the USDA had already funded, routed through conservation programs like EQIP and the Conservation Stewardship Program, which pays farmers for building soil health. Across row crops and rangeland, regenerative agriculture has moved from a fringe idea to the fastest-growing banner in farming.

Almost none of that money will reach a marijuana farm.

Because the plant remains federally illegal, state-licensed cannabis growers cannot draw federal conservation dollars, cannot be certified USDA organic, and do not appear anywhere in the executive order’s plans. Hemp is the exception that proves the problem: since the 2018 Farm Bill, hemp producers have been eligible for USDA organic certification and for the same conservation programs the order expands. Same plant, same soil, same practices. What decides whether a farm can access federal help is a THC threshold.

The crop with arguably the most to gain from a soil-first turn is the one Washington still won’t name.

So the work is happening without Washington, carried by third-party certifiers and the small farms that seek them out.

The order came wrapped in the language of the Make America Healthy Again campaign, and it landed in the middle of something that is genuinely growing worldwide. Jacob Policzer, chair of the board at the cannabis certifier Sun & Earth and director of science and strategy at The Cannabis Conservancy in Denver, keeps an eye on the broader numbers. “It does seem to be growing about 15% annually,” he says. “One of the things I saw that was really inspiring, and kind of what we’re seeing on the ground as well, is something like 86% of young farmers entering agriculture are practicing regenerative farming, and that’s really where we’re seeing a lot more optimism and growth in this.”

Making the Change Visible

Sun & Earth exists to translate what happens in a field into something a shopper can recognize on a shelf. “As a whole, we make regenerative farming visible to the consumer through our certification,” Policzer says. “Certification is a way that goes along the supply chain, and ultimately is a label, a seal of approval, so to speak, that the consumer can recognize and understand that this product has been grown using these practices.”

I was curious about the mechanics, so Policzer walked me through it: “The farms will reach out to us, either through phone calls or on our website, then they fill out an application, a farm plan, essentially detailing all of their practices, their soil inputs. That’ll get reviewed, we’ll ask questions, and then if all that looks good, they get introduced to an inspector who schedules the inspection, goes on site, spends two to three hours, and does an entire walkthrough of the farm.”

Sun & Earth grades on two tiers, and the top tier turns on what a farm does with its own dirt. “We have gold standards as well as green standards,” Policzer says. “So we kind of poke at what we feel is extremely important as far as regenerative agriculture, when it comes to on-farm soil fertility. We do a calculation on how much NPK the farm used, how much they generated on site, how much they purchased offsite, really encouraging on-site composting, local resource use, all of that.” Two conditions are non-negotiable. “For our regenerative certification, it has to be sun-grown in native soil. Living soil and native soil are like the two biggest factors.”

Policzer draws the line between conventional and regenerative farming as a question of debt. “When you’re farming conventionally, especially in monocrop, you’re really borrowing from the soil,” he says. “You’re using the nutrients, the microbial activity, all of that, and that’s ultimately leading to needing an increase in what usually is a synthetic nutrient, which every year we’re seeing becoming increasingly more expensive, and you have to add more and more. What we’re seeing with regenerative is that you’re giving back to nature. You’re increasing the biomass, the soil structure, and a lot of retention, so ideally you’re reducing your need for off-farm inputs.”

That is an ecological argument, but in a warming climate, it is fast becoming a matter of necessity. “For regenerative practices, they’re seeing an 80 to 90% crop survival rate using 70 to 80% of the water requirements versus conventional,” Policzer says. “So ideally it’s boosting the resiliency of the farmers, which then translates into improving the conditions in rural economies, which, especially in the United States, are mostly impoverished or economically disadvantaged.”

But the standard doesn’t stop at the soil line. Certifiers like Sun & Earth also watch for ethical cultivation practices, particularly worker rights. “Making sure the farms are paid fair wages or a living wage, having the resources to have good housing, ideally healthcare, education, all that, that’s where our small farms really struggle,” Policzer says.

And unlike USDA Organic, a costly certification better suited to corporate-scale operations, Sun & Earth targets small farmers and manufacturers. “Our typical certified farm is a small family farm, usually a mom-and-pop kind of operation,” Policzer says. “In California they’re usually legacy growers who have entered the market, stalwarts of the community and in the cannabis culture, who have been doing this for 20-plus years. They’re honoring this legacy.”

Two Ways of Joining the Change

The two words most often used for the work these sustainable farmers do, regenerative agriculture and agroecology, are not exactly interchangeable.

Agroecology is the older and more demanding of the two. It emerged as a discipline in the 1940s, and its original and still predominant practitioners are Indigenous peoples and peasant smallholders. It applies the science of ecology to farming, designing fields that mimic natural ecosystems, favoring intercropping, traditional seeds, and biological pest control over purchased inputs, but it refuses to stop at the fence line. Agroecology treats a farm as a social and political system as much as a biological one, and it comes bundled with claims about land tenure, seed sovereignty, fair markets, and who gets to make a living from the ground. In a way, it is more a set of principles linking ethics, human labor, and nature.

Regenerative agriculture is younger, looser, and easier to adopt. There is no fixed definition, but in practice, it names a family of soil-first practices, cover cropping, no-till, rotational grazing, composting, and keeping living roots in the ground year-round, all aimed at rebuilding organic matter, water retention, and biological life underground. Its great strength is that it is measurable: soil carbon, water infiltration, and microbial activity can be tracked and compared season over season.

But what gets regenerated, or recovered, in regenerative farming? Three things, mainly. The first is the soil, the literal rebuilding of a living medium that a century of extraction has degraded, treating the ground as an asset to compound rather than a mine to empty. The health of the soil is measured in the life working below ground, life that, instead of being fought off, is promoted, analyzed, and balanced. The second is the human intellect that the work demands. Industrial farming outsourced and protocolized thinking, getting farmers to apply a pre-established, input-dependent formula: use the recommended rate, spray on schedule, repeat. Regenerative farming puts the knowledge back in the farmer’s hands because you cannot manage a living system with chemicals alone. Technical teams and workers need to spend far more time on the ground, analyzing and searching for dynamic solutions to the ever-changing landscape of seasonal crops. They need to learn how to better read their own fields. It is a full-time job that requires proximity. That is why regenerative farming also promotes a third kind of recovery, the repopulation of the farmland. It is the link between a person and the particular piece of earth they tend, and behind it, the far older understanding that agriculture was a cultural and ecological craft long before it was an industrial process.

Recovering the soil, recovering the intellect, recovering the tie to nature.

The Right Way to Do Things

Sunset Lake is one of four Vermont farms Sun & Earth has certified. It sits near Lake Champlain on land that used to be dairy pasture, grows entirely outdoors, and came to cannabis through the family that has run the dairy for generations. Rev Baker, who handles the farm’s marketing, has a degree in philosophy and worked for 16 years in craft beer and fine wine. “I had to dry out and stop drinking, and so I actually used cannabis to quit drinking and transitioned into this industry,” he says.

The owner of the farm, Baker’s boss, grew up around the cows, and sees the new crop as a way to keep the next generation on the land. “He views what we do here as a way to get young Vermonters excited about farming again,” Baker says, “because it’s really hard to say, ‘Hey, there’s this tech company that has all these cool bells and whistles,’ or you can ride a tractor around and harvest corn. But growing cannabis and growing hemp, it’s kind of fun and exciting. So it’s a way to get some people excited about agriculture.”

Baker himself came up a city kid, but eventually answered the siren call of nature. “For us, regenerative agriculture is: we want to leave the soil and the farm better than when we started,” he says. Here is what that looks like in practice.

They compost manure from the family dairy with spent grain from a brewery down the road and work the result into the field as fertilizer, so organic matter and biology return to the soil instead of being trucked off as waste. The field itself is kept on a multi-year crop rotation, with sections pulled out of cannabis each season and rested. During those fallow periods, the resting ground is planted with cover crops, a mix of grasses and legumes sown not to be harvested for sale but to feed the soil, a practice sometimes called green manure. The legumes matter for a specific reason: in partnership with rhizobia bacteria in their root nodules, they perform biological nitrogen fixation, pulling nitrogen out of the air and depositing it in the soil in a form plants can use, which cuts the need for purchased synthetic fertilizer. The grasses, meanwhile, keep living roots in the ground year-round, feeding the microbes that build soil structure. When the cover crop is cut, it is hayed and sent back to the dairy as feed. Waste from one operation becomes an input for the next, a principle of circularity, and the fertility stays local: the circular economy as a literal circle of fields, animals, and a brewery inside a few square miles.

The Vermont soil they are building this into is not easy ground. It is sandy and quick-draining, which guards against root rot but holds neither water nor nutrients well, over a base with a fair amount of clay. Cover cropping does double duty here, because tilling the residue back in before planting adds carbon to a soil that would otherwise stay thin. At transplant, the farm also practices mycorrhizal inoculation, dosing the young roots with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. These fungi have partnered with plant roots for more than 400 million years. The plant feeds them sugars from photosynthesis; in return, their thread-like hyphae extend the effective root system many times over, scavenging phosphorus, nitrogen, and water the plant could never reach on its own, and ferrying them back. They also buffer the plant against drought and secrete glomalin, a sticky glycoprotein that glues soil particles into stable aggregates, the crumb structure that lets the ground hold both water and air. A conventional program of soluble fertilizer and fungicide tends to make this partnership redundant and then kill it off. A regenerative one is largely the discipline of keeping it alive.

Everything here is grown outdoors in native soil, with no indoor capacity at all.

Pest and disease control follow the same logic, under the umbrella term integrated pest management, or IPM, and at Sunset Lake it leans entirely on biological control. The farm’s main insect threat is the European corn borer, which tunnels into the open stalks of corn, hemp, and cannabis alike. Against it, they release Trichogramma, a parasitoid wasp so small it is nearly invisible, which lays its eggs inside the borer’s eggs so the pest is destroyed before it can hatch. For soft-bodied pests like aphids and spider mites they rely on predatory insects, such as the green lacewing larvae, which they release, and native ladybugs, which they recruit and keep on-site through companion planting, seeding red clover between the rows as an insectary strip that feeds the beetles between aphid meals. Disease is handled by cultural controls first, wide plant spacing and canopy pruning to move air through the crop and cut the humidity that fungal pathogens need. Where that is not enough, they use a foliar spray of potassium bicarbonate to shift the pH of the leaf surface against fungal growth, and microbial slurries that colonize the plant and outcompete pathogens like Botrytis for space, a strategy called competitive exclusion. Nothing on the field is trying to sterilize it; the whole system is built to tip the ecology in the crop’s favor.

Ancient Plant, Young Movement

“Stoicism in the true sense, not ‘broicism’ like it gets done on TikTok, but real stoicism, is about this: if you ignore reality and don’t understand how things work, it’s going to come back to bite you,” Baker says. “So if you farm in a way that you’re just focused on getting the most value per square inch, you’re going to destroy the soil, and then your business is going to collapse, and then the earth is going to collapse. If you understand how the ecosystem works naturally and how you can interact with that, you can still get a valuable product out of it without destroying it. That’s really the core of sustainability.”

“Otherwise you’re left holding a handful of sand.”

Rev Baker, Sunset Lake

Cannabis was a soil-and-sun plant for thousands of years before it was anything else. The windowless warehouse is a recent child of prohibition, and no state-licensed cannabis producer can touch the federal machinery now expanding for everyone else.

“Because of the federal legalization issues, we can’t get federal funding. We’re a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so we’re really limited to private organizations, institutional funding, private investors, and then state funding,” Policzer says of his organization.

The economics are punishing without help, and they are pushing growers out. “We have a decent portion of farms that are surrendering their licenses or deferring their cultivation or shrinking their sizes while they get off-farm jobs, just because the economics are really difficult,” Policzer says. “If you’re looking at $250, $350, $400 a pound, that’s barely break even.”

Certification itself can compound the problem when it prices out the people it should serve. “If the pricing is so high, you exclude these small farmers from participating, and then you create a system where only people who can pay become certified,” Baker warns. “The goal should be to include as many farms as possible.”

The larger fix is the freedom to move product at all. “Farmgate is something that would really revolutionize the cannabis industry from our perspective,” Policzer says, referring to the right of a farm to sell directly to visitors on site, the way a vineyard does.

It would also help make the conversation about quality standards more transparent. “A lot of consumers still think that, because of the regulations around it, cannabis is already organic and that it’s all there, when in fact it’s not,” Policzer says.

The executive order Trump signed in June will pay corn and soybean growers to do a gentler version of what Sunset Lake already does with brewery grain and dairy manure. But the farms doing this work in cannabis are asking for far less than a check. They want to be allowed to sell what they grow, across a state line, or off the back porch, the way a vineyard does. And they want the rest of us to see that a legal cannabis market built on windowless rooms and grid electricity, drawn up under prohibition, is a choice rather than a necessity.

The plant grew in soil under the sun for millennia before it grew under lights. Give the growers the freedom to put it back there, and the most wasteful corner of the industry will shrink on its own. In the long run, the alternative is a handful of sand.

<p>The post Trump Signed an Order Paying Farmers to Heal Their Soil. Weed Growers Get Nothing. first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Trump Signed an Order Paying Farmers to Heal Their Soil. Weed Growers Get Nothing. appeared first on Paradise Found.

On July 31, 2026, the Texas Department of State Health Services reinstated controlled-substance definitions it first adopted back in 2021, classifying delta-8, delta-10, THCP, and most other non-delta-9 THC compounds as Schedule I controlled substances under state law. Possession can now be charged as a felony. The only hemp-derived cannabinoid product still legal on Texas shelves is delta-9 THC at or below 0.3 percent by dry weight, the same federal hemp threshold that’s existed since the 2018 Farm Bill.

The post How the THC Ban Is Turning Texas Blue – Well, Purple at Least appeared first on Paradise Found.

A new annual list will name 100 Latino and Hispanic leaders shaping cannabis around the world. Nominations open Friday; anyone can submit one, including for themselves, and nominees can live anywhere.

Who are the Latino leaders cannabis should be paying attention to?

Maybe it is a founder building a company in California. Maybe it is a scientist advancing research in Brazil, a cultivator preserving genetics in Colombia, an advocate rewriting policy in Mexico, a physician expanding access in Argentina, or an organizer whose work has never once made a headline.

High Times, the National Hispanic Cannabis Council and El Planteo are launching the inaugural Latino Power 100 in Cannabis, a new annual list recognizing 100 Latino and Hispanic leaders whose work is moving cannabis forward worldwide.

Nominations open August 21 and close September 11, 2026. Self-nominations are welcome. Nominees can live anywhere in the world.

The list is deliberately broader than the usual roster of founders, CEOs and familiar names from the U.S. industry. It will consider entrepreneurs and executives, and also cultivators, scientists, policymakers, advocates, healthcare professionals, educators, investors, journalists, marketers, retailers, manufacturers and community leaders. Impact takes different shapes in different countries, and the point is to find it wherever it lives.

“Representation has the power to change what people believe is possible. The inaugural Latino Power 100 gives us a moment to look across our industry and recognize the Latino leaders who are creating businesses, driving culture, advancing policy, building communities, and opening doors for the next generation. I’m deeply proud to see this vision become a reality. When we name our leaders, we strengthen their impact and remind the world that Latino power is cannabis power.”

Susie Plascencia, Executive Director of the National Hispanic Cannabis Council and Founder of Latinas in Cannabis

Not a Popularity Contest

There is an obvious problem with lists like this. The most visible people are not always the ones having the greatest impact.

The Latino Power 100 was built with that problem in mind. Nominations are not votes, and the people who receive the most of them do not automatically make the list. Eligible nominations run through a standardized framework weighing industry impact, leadership, community engagement, contributions to cannabis and credibility in the field, and commercial relationships, sponsorships and memberships do not influence selection. A review committee drawn from all three organizations evaluates them. Committee members are not eligible for the list while they serve on it, anyone with a direct conflict recuses, and High Times retains final editorial approval over anything published under its name. The full criteria are published on the nomination page.

Commercial relationships, sponsorships, memberships and organizational affiliations do not influence selection. A review committee drawn from all three organizations evaluates the nominations. Committee members are not eligible for the list while they serve on it, and anyone with a direct conflict involving a nominee recuses from that review. High Times retains final editorial approval over anything published under its name.

Global by Design

This is not a U.S. list with a few Latin American names attached. The organizers are actively looking for leaders whose work is better known in Bogotá, São Paulo, Buenos Aires or Mexico City than in Denver or Los Angeles, and Brazil counts as fully as any Spanish-speaking country.

That is a large part of why El Planteo, a cannabis and culture publication with roots across Latin America, joined the project. The nomination page runs in English and Spanish.

“The National Hispanic Cannabis Council is proud to join High Times and El Planteo in recognizing standout Latino leaders. Cannabis prohibition has long discriminated against Latinos worldwide. In the past decades, Latinos have seized power back and become some of the most important leaders in dismantling prohibition and building a sustainable, just cannabis economy.”

Brian Vicente, Founder of NHCC and Founding Partner of Vicente LLP

Who Should Be Nominated?

The test is not how famous someone is. It is what changed because of their work.

Who created an opportunity that did not exist before? Who changed a law, or fought a bad one? Who built something that lasted? Who expanded scientific understanding, access or education? Who strengthened a community? Who brought a new voice, idea or product into cannabis? And who has been doing the work for years without anyone outside their city noticing?

Nominees must be at least 21, identify as Latino, Latina, Latinx or Hispanic, and have made meaningful contributions to the legal cannabis industry or the cannabis movement. If selected, they will be asked to provide a rights-cleared image and confirm permission to publish. Images are optional at the nomination stage, and nobody should be uploading photography they do not have the rights to.

The inaugural Latino Power 100 will be announced during Latino/Hispanic Heritage Month.

Submit a nomination for the Latino Power 100. Nominations close September 11, 2026.

Editor’s note: High Times is a partner in the Latino Power 100 alongside the National Hispanic Cannabis Council and El Planteo, and participates in the review committee. This article announces an initiative High Times is involved in.

<p>The post Who Are the Latino Leaders Cannabis Should Know? Nominations Open Friday for the First Latino Power 100. first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Who Are the Latino Leaders Cannabis Should Know? Nominations Open Friday for the First Latino Power 100. appeared first on Paradise Found.

Cannabis technology has come a long way from rolling papers and hand-packed bowls. Edibles, vapes, and dosed beverages have already proven that consumers want options that fit their lifestyle, not just tradition for tradition’s sake. But until now, that innovation has largely bypassed dry herb. Enter the EZ-UP Aurora from Boston-based Spark Perceptions Technology: The […]

The post Bring your next smoke sesh into the future with the fully automatic dry herb combustion device, the EZ-UP Aurora appeared first on Leafly.

The post Bring your next smoke sesh into the future with the fully automatic dry herb combustion device, the EZ-UP Aurora appeared first on Paradise Found.

The government spent most of its final brief making the legal case for Schedule III. Then, in the closing pages, it took the opposition’s witnesses apart, and quoted some of those same witnesses to prove cannabis is medicine. One scientist walked away almost untouched. She works at the DEA.

The federal government’s closing argument for moving marijuana to Schedule III is in, and its lawyers did not hedge. “Marijuana can no longer remain in Schedule I,” the DEA’s attorneys wrote in a post-hearing brief filed August 17 with Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek C. Julius, asking the judge to “expeditiously recommend” the transfer.

It is the government’s last word before Julius drafts the recommendation that will frame DEA Administrator Terrance “Terry” Cole‘s final decision. And it lands where this proceeding was always going to land: not on whether cannabis has medicinal value, but on which legal test gets to answer that question, and on whose testimony the judge should be allowed to believe.

High Times has covered this hearing since before it opened: the participant roster stacked entirely with opponents, the DOJ’s argument that those opponents’ real injuries are commercial, and the stretch of days in which the opposition’s own witnesses kept helping the government. The closing brief turns that pattern into legal strategy.

Six briefs arrived by the August 17 deadline, as first reported by Marijuana Moment: the government’s, a joint filing from Smart Approaches to Marijuana and the states of Idaho, Indiana and Nebraska, separate briefs from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association, a joint brief from DUID Victim Voices and pain physician Dr. Kenneth Finn, and a pro se statement from pharmacist Dr. Phillip Drum. Julius capped each at 50 pages. The government used all 50. On Thursday morning, the judge issued the order correcting the hearing transcript, putting the full record in public hands by August 26.

Getting cannabis out of Schedule I is the easy half, and the brief treats it that way. Schedule I requires that a substance have no accepted medical use. The 2023 Health and Human Services evaluation found three: chronic pain, anorexia related to a medical condition, and nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy. One is enough. A 2024 Office of Legal Counsel opinion holds that the DEA owes those scientific findings “significant deference” and cannot redo them from scratch. Then the brief adds the arithmetic: more than 30,000 practitioners authorized to recommend cannabis to more than six million patients across 43 U.S. jurisdictions, which the government says also undercuts any claim that cannabis cannot be used safely under medical supervision.

Getting it in Schedule III specifically takes dozens more pages on abuse potential and dependence, most of it built on the HHS comparison of cannabis against heroin, fentanyl, cocaine and prescription opioids, plus government witness Dr. Corey Burchman‘s testimony that opioid withdrawal is “horrific” while cannabis withdrawal rarely sends anyone to a hospital.

A reminder of what’s actually on the table, because coverage of this saga keeps blurring it: April’s order already aimed to move FDA-approved cannabis products and state-licensed medical marijuana to Schedule III. This proceeding decides whether the rest of the plant follows. The government wants all of it moved, while keeping cannabis federally controlled either way.

The Closing Pages

Julius ruled before the hearing that all expert designations would be decided afterward, in writing. The government took him up on it. Starting on page 43, the last eight pages of the brief work through the opposition’s witnesses one at a time, sorting what it calls the “so-called expert witnesses” into different grounds for disqualification.

Some testified outside their expertise, the brief argues. Yale psychiatrist Dr. Deepak D’Souza was offered by the states as an expert in five areas and then asked about pain management, which the brief notes sits outside the boundaries D’Souza drew around his own expertise on the stand.

Some answered the wrong question entirely, per the government: workplace drug-testing witnesses describing hypothetical future hurdles, a state investigator who spoke about “deregulation” and “legalization” in a proceeding that would do neither, and Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal, whom the states never properly noticed as an expert and who, the brief says, admitted he has “no meaningful connection to Nebraska, Idaho or Indiana,” the three states that called him.

The sharpest allegation gets its own section. According to the filing, Ed Wood of DUID Victim Voices and Finn both ignored the tribunal’s sequestration instructions and admitted to reading transcripts of earlier testimony before taking the stand. Their testimony, the government argues, “has been irreparably tainted and cannot be cured other than providing it little to no weight.” The brief cites transcript pages for both admissions. Those are the government’s characterizations of a record the public still cannot read—though that changes next week.

Dr. Drum, testifying on his own behalf, painted a different picture. He told the tribunal there is no scientific indication or medical use for plant-based marijuana, and the brief notes his opinion on cachexia and cancer pain rests on personal experience with two patients. It also notes what he said next: that Schedule II “would be potentially more appropriate level for marijuana,” because of how fast it absorbs. Schedule II is stricter than Schedule III. It is still not Schedule I. A designated party who came to oppose rescheduling told the judge, under oath, that cannabis belongs somewhere other than where it is.

The filing allows itself one moment of grace. Of Laura Stack, who testified about losing her son, the government writes that it “acknowledges the personal impact of Ms. Stack’s testimony and commends her testimony.” Then it goes back to work.

Because the same brief that asks Julius to discount these witnesses also quotes them making the government’s case. “Testimony from both Government and Opposed Parties alike support the Government’s position,” it argues, and the receipts follow. Harvard’s Dr. Bertha Madras, SAM’s marquee expert, “testified that there is scientific evidence of marijuana’s efficacy for neuropathic pain patients, although she believes that the science is weak,” per the brief, and her own demonstrative exhibit noted benefits for wasting syndrome, appetite and pain in cancer patients and severe nausea. D’Souza described a study in which a standardized cannabis extract beat placebo for pain.

Finn gets perhaps the most lawyerly treatment in the document. A footnote sets up the fallback in advance: the government believes his testimony should get no weight because of the sequestration problem, but “should the Tribunal choose to give any consideration” to it, the brief highlights the parts where he admits he recommended marijuana to his own pain patients and believes there is likely a therapeutic benefit. Throw him out. If you won’t throw him out, he’s ours.

“The evidence proffered by the Opposed Parties boils down simply to the fact that Schedule III marijuana poses employment and enforcement difficulties, the same as any other controlled substance in Schedules II – V.”

The Witness They Didn’t Touch

Dr. Luli Akinfiresoye is a pharmacologist in the DEA’s Drug and Chemical Evaluation Section and an author of the agency’s own scientific review. SAM called her, and she delivered. The SAM and states brief cites her 25 times, using her testimony to argue that cannabis fails the five-part medical-use test the DEA applied for decades, including her line that there was no clear data supporting cannabis for chronic pain.

Cannabis Business Times, which first reported the brief’s credibility strategy, described her as the lone witness the government didn’t pick apart. The document is a shade stranger than that. Akinfiresoye appears in the government’s 50 pages exactly once, cited in support of the government’s own finding that marijuana has no consistent, reproducible chemical profile. The eight pages devoted to picking apart everyone else never name her.

Her actual conclusion does get answered, but on a different level. The government’s response is that the OLC found the five-part test “impermissibly narrow” and the newer two-part inquiry legally sufficient, so a witness applying the old test is applying a standard that no longer controls. That is not a rebuttal of her science. It is a request for a ruling about which science counts.

Which is the tell: against the sheriff, the pharmacist, the drugged-driving advocate and the Harvard addiction expert, the government litigates credibility and relevance. Against its own scientist, it shifts ground and argues that the question she answered is beside the point.

One more small detail, from the order Julius signed Thursday morning. On the tenth hearing day, when her surname came up, the official transcript rendered it “Akinfire-Soye.” The tribunal corrected it this week.

The Opposition’s Case

The other briefs are worth reading too, starting with the signature block. The SAM and states filing is signed by Patrick Philbin, former deputy White House counsel to Donald Trump, of Torridon Law, the firm founded by former Attorney General William Barr. It opens by noting the government has considered rescheduling marijuana “no fewer than nine times, most recently in 2016” and refused every time, then argues abuse and mental-health harms have worsened since. Its bluntest line comes a section header calling the two-part standard a test “That Was Made Up for This Proceeding.” Its conclusion: the government “has not carried its burden,” and marijuana should stay in Schedule I.

Tennessee’s investigators barely engage with the science. Their brief leads with a procedural knife: the attorney general long ago delegated scheduling authority to the DEA administrator, yet the attorney general issued the rescheduling proposal himself. “That alone is enough to hold the NPRM deficient and keep marijuana in Schedule I,” TBI writes.

NDASA’s brief traces the history of federal drug testing, from Reagan’s 1986 executive order through the 1987 Conrail crash, and builds toward one warning: because the federal testing framework defines illegal drugs by reference to Schedules I and II, moving marijuana to Schedule III could pull the legal floor out from under the Department of Transportation’s testing program, which its witness called the largest in the world. The DUID Victim Voices and Finn brief closes on the human register, invoking a “memorial roll of young people” and accusing the agency of institutional inaction. And Drum, filing alone, opens by declaring marijuana “not a medicine” and numbering the industry’s claims as fraudulent statements one and two.

What Happens Now

The record is nearly closed. On Thursday morning, Julius issued a 13-page order correcting the hearing transcript across all eleven days, and set August 26 as the deadline for the fully corrected version to go up on DEA’s website, with the fixes marked in red. Six parties filed proposed corrections; NDASA did not. Most of the list is housekeeping: misspelled names, misattributed speakers, dozens of lines on day four assigned to the wrong government attorney. Some of it is not. On day one, “there’s adulterants” becomes “there’s no adulterants.” On day eight, “illegal” becomes “legal.” On day ten, “increase” becomes “decrease.” The court reporter also spent a stretch of day one transcribing “Touhy,” the rule governing testimony by federal employees, as “DUID.”

After that, federal regulations direct Julius to prepare his recommended decision “as soon as practicable,” with no deadline attached. Parties then get 20 days after service to file exceptions, and the record is certified to Cole no earlier than 25 days after service. Cole faces no clock either. And the D.C. Circuit is still sitting on a motion to stay April’s order, a ruling that could scramble all of this in a week.

One footnote in the government’s brief points at the real fight: Julius separately asked the parties to brief the binding effect of the OLC opinion, the document that blessed the two-part test and shelved the five-part one. The judge flagged the exact question this case turns on. If the two-part test governs, the government’s arithmetic wins. If the five-part test survives, the strongest evidence against rescheduling came from a DEA pharmacologist.

The government spent its last eight pages taking witnesses apart. Its own scientist got one citation and a change of subject. She works down the hall.

<p>The post ‘Marijuana Can No Longer Remain in Schedule I’: Inside the Government’s Final Case for Rescheduling Weed—and the Witnesses It Tore Apart first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post ‘Marijuana Can No Longer Remain in Schedule I’: Inside the Government’s Final Case for Rescheduling Weed—and the Witnesses It Tore Apart appeared first on Paradise Found.

Barney’s Farm pairs eight familiar cannabis names with BF Super Auto #1 to deliver faster, light-independent cycles without abandoning the character that made the originals stand out.

Championship genetics shouldn’t depend on the season, calendar, or a perfectly managed light cycle. This collection reimagines eight of cannabis’s most celebrated modern names as autoflowers, each crossed with Barney’s Farm’s BF Super Auto #1 to preserve their character while delivering a fast, light-independent cycle.

Barney’s Farm designed these strains with ease of growth in mind, positioning them for beginners and experienced growers alike. According to the breeder, the plants are intended to tolerate common growing mistakes, require relatively modest nutrient inputs, and perform with straightforward care.

It’s a deliberately broad spectrum. On one side are the dessert- and fruit-forward icons: London Pound Cake, Bubblegum, Tropicana Cookies, Cherry Cola, and Lemon Cherry Cookies—all sweetness, resin, and undeniable bag appeal. On the other side is raw heritage power: the landrace depth of Afghan Hash Plant, the diesel punch of Bruce Banner, and the soaring pine-and-citrus rush of Trainwreck.

Every name here brings familiar genetics into a faster format: no seasons, no schedules, and no photoperiod trigger. Barney’s Farm says the collection suits indoor, outdoor, and greenhouse cultivation across a range of grow setups.

Let’s dig into each strain below, or head over to their site to view all of Barney’s autoflower seeds.

London Pound Cake Auto F1

A sativa-dominant autoflower from London Pound Cake, crossed with BF Super Auto #1, built for speed and simplicity, with dessert-strain flavor and a balanced, well-proportioned frame. Dense colas deepen from emerald to rich purple beneath a crystalline trichome layer so thick it catches light like cut glass.

In full bloom, she smells like a patisserie: warm vanilla and ripe berries rising together, with a soft creaminess beneath that slowly fills a room and draws people in. The flavor follows faithfully—creamy vanilla first, sweet berry through the smoke, and a quiet nutty depth that keeps the sweetness from ever turning cloying, giving it a dessert-style profile that stays balanced.

Barney’s Farm describes the experience as euphoric and happy, with an energetic opening followed by a calmer, more laid-back finish. The breeder positions it as versatile enough to move between daytime and evening use.

Across Barney’s Farm’s supplied materials, London Pound Cake Auto F1 is listed in the 22–28% THC range, with minimal CBD content.

Bubblegum Auto F1

A heavily indica-dominant autoflower, born from Bubblegum × BF Super Auto #1, delivers a fast, self-sufficient take on its candy-sweet legend. The structure is compact and resin-heavy, with branches spreading outward into a productive canopy. The chunky buds glisten almost translucently as harvest nears.

The aroma is disarmingly nostalgic, blending sweet strawberry and ripe red cherry wrapped in a sugary, confectionery quality, with a soft earthiness grounding it. Barney’s Farm identifies myrcene and limonene among the strain’s prominent terpenes, contributing berry, earthy, and bright fruit notes. What the nose promises, the palate delivers: candy-sweet fruit up front, broad berry sweetness, and a gentle earthy exhale.

The experience is characterized as euphoric and unhurried, with a more relaxed tone developing over time and creativity still in the mix. The breeder positions Bubblegum Auto F1 toward slower evenings and quieter sessions.

Tropicana Cookies Auto F1

Championship genetics made accessible: a sativa-dominant autoflower from Tropicana Cookies × BF Super Auto #1, with Girl Scout Cookies and Tangie deep in its lineage. Its sativa-leaning frame supports an open, naturally ventilated canopy, while the finish brings shimmering resin and warm color tones.

The aroma announces itself with vivid orange peel, underpinned by broad tropical fruitiness and earthy-floral depth—a terpene load serious enough to tempt extract artists. On the palate, the Cookies ancestry shines: bright, fruity sweetness first, rich cookie dough through the mid-smoke, then a clean citrus lift on the finish.

Barney’s Farm describes the experience as creative, euphoric, bright, social, and motivated at first, with a calmer tone developing later. The breeder positions it as a daytime-leaning auto that pairs an energetic profile with a more relaxed finish.

Afghan Hash Plant Auto

An indica autoflower tracing directly to the legendary landrace genetics of the Mazari Sharif region, crossed with BF Super Auto #1: preservation, not reinvention. Compact and bushy, with broad, dark-green leaves and tight internodal spacing, she carries a heavy load and finishes with dense trichome coverage.

The aroma is warm and ancient: a rich sandalwood base, earthy and resinous, with an unexpected punch of bright citrus that keeps the nose returning again and again. The palate follows with smooth, hash-like sweetness up front, woody warmth through the middle, and a gently spiced, unmistakably Afghani finish.

Barney’s Farm describes the experience as deeply relaxing, calm, and evening-leaning. The breeder also highlights Afghan Hash Plant Auto’s resin production, positioning it as an option for growers interested in hash and solventless extraction.

Bruce Banner Auto

A sativa-dominant autoflower from Bruce Banner × BF Super Auto #1, she brings one of cannabis’s most explosive reputations into a format that flowers on its own terms. Sturdy and well-proportioned, she grows upward with real force, throwing out thick lateral branches that bear substantial, trichome-heavy colas shimmering beneath the canopy.

From seed to harvest, Barney’s Farm lists a cycle of 10–11 weeks, making it one of the faster-turnaround options in the collection.

Crack open a jar and the room changes: tropical, fruity sweetness up front, a sharp diesel note cutting through, and earthy base notes anchoring the whole thing so it never tips into pure candy. The palate adds its own dimension—zesty citrus first, sweet fruit through the body, a diesel edge, then a smooth, earthy close.

Barney’s Farm describes the experience as quick and cerebral, with energy, creativity, and conversation at the forefront before the profile takes on a calmer tone. The breeder positions Bruce Banner Auto as a daytime-leaning option for consumers looking for an uplifting rather than heavily sedating experience.

Cherry Cola Auto

A predominantly indica autoflower bred from Cherry Cola—a cross of Cherry Cookies × Original Zkittlez—and crossed with BF Super Auto #1. She grows with vigor and structure, with a sturdy central stem ringed by well-developed branches. The densely packed buds are light green, flecked with magenta and threaded with dark-orange hairs, taking on a frosty, almost luminous quality at maturity.

The terpene profile has a character all its own: bold, ripe cherry and earthy pungency that hits at once, with a spicy undercurrent that keeps it from settling into purely sweet territory. The flavor rewards patience—fresh, sugary berry and cherry across the palate, with spice emerging through the body, then a smooth, slightly earthy finish.

Barney’s Farm describes the experience as playful, giggly, and social at first, gradually shifting toward a slower, more relaxed finish. The breeder also highlights heavy resin production, positioning Cherry Cola Auto for growers interested in hash and extracts.

Lemon Cherry Cookies Auto

A predominantly indica autoflower from Lemon Cherry Cookies × BF Super Auto #1. Compact and beautifully structured, she develops dense lateral branches early, forming a canopy of tightly packed, resin-drenched flowers. Rich greens shift to deep purple, while vivid orange pistils thread through and frost catches light from across the room.

The terpene profile makes no attempt at subtlety. Sharp, fresh lemon citrus dominates first—the kind that clears the senses rather than sweetening them—then joins ripe cherry for warmth and depth, with earthy-floral undertones and a pungent backbone that gives it real longevity. Every draw is bright lemon, building into berry and cherry, then a woody, earthy exhale.

Barney’s Farm describes the experience as creative and euphoric at first, followed by a calmer, more laid-back tone while maintaining a sense of mental clarity. The plant itself is positioned as a high-output, relatively low-maintenance option.

Trainwreck Auto

A sativa-dominant autoflower blending one of cannabis’s most legendary varieties with BF Super Auto #1, bringing Trainwreck’s fast-acting, creativity-fueling reputation into a light-independent format. She grows tall, well-branched, and energetic, with buds a vibrant mix of green and gold, threaded with red and orange hairs like fire, and finished with a satisfying, frosty sheen of crystal trichomes.

The aroma is sharp, immediate, and distinctive, with fresh pine leading, backed by bright citrus and a spicy pepper kick, and earthy undertones grounding the more volatile top notes. That same balance carries into the flavor: pine and earth take center stage from the first draw, with subtle sweetness through the mid-smoke and a citrus lift on the exhale that keeps every draw engaging. Barney’s Farm notes that vaping may bring out a slightly more pronounced citrus note and a cleaner finish.

Trainwreck Auto is described as fast-acting, euphoric, creative, uplifting, and energetic, with a calmer edge developing later in the experience. The breeder positions it as a daytime-leaning option built around momentum rather than heaviness.

Visit Barney’s Farm USA.

Get 20% off your first order when you sign up Barney’s sign up newsletter: Subscribe Here

Images courtesy of Barney’s Farm.

Sponsored Content Disclosure: This article was produced by High Times in partnership with Barney’s Farm as part of a paid commercial arrangement. Product specifications, cultivation details, potency information, terpene profiles, and experiential descriptions are based on information supplied by Barney’s Farm. Individual experiences with cannabis may vary.

<p>The post Speed Without Compromise: Eight New Autoflower Strains From Barney’s Farm first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Speed Without Compromise: Eight New Autoflower Strains From Barney’s Farm appeared first on Paradise Found.

Barcelona’s Plan Druida expands police presence and surveillance in response to drug trafficking and use, while also placing the city’s cannabis clubs under renewed pressure. Although authorities present it as a modern public-safety strategy, its focus on control, pressure on cannabis clubs, and drug use reflects the same prohibitionist approach that could deepen the criminalization of users rather than shift toward health, human rights, and harm reduction.

Barcelona authorities have unveiled a new strategy to combat drug trafficking and use: Plan Druida (“Druid Plan”). Although it has been in effect since mid-June, the plan was presented in early August at a press conference by Albert Batlle, Barcelona’s third deputy mayor and head of Security, alongside the chief of the Guardia Urbana, Pedro Velázquez.

According to the Barcelona City Council’s official website, the measure was prompted by greater availability of drugs and increasingly sophisticated distribution methods. However, it is also targeting cannabis clubs —associations that, while existing in a legal gray area, operate as private member associations and community spaces rather than commercial points of sale.

What the Plan Druida Involves

This strategy can be broken down into three pillars: a stronger Guardia Urbana presence at drug-dealing locations, a new operational intelligence model, and closer coordination with the Mossos d’Esquadra and other municipal services.

On the one hand, the plan includes a permanent risk mapping and classification system, with ongoing operations aimed at preventing repeat offenses, keeping these activities from becoming established, and stopping them from shifting to other neighborhoods, as well as investigations and judicial interventions in narcopisos (homes used for the sale or distribution of drugs). The plan also includes measures to reclaim affected spaces through the involvement of “districts, cleaning services, municipal inspection, public health, and social services.”

In terms of operational intelligence, the Guardia Urbana will introduce a model that cross-references police data, incidents, neighborhood complaints, and area-specific information to turn them into “analysis and anticipation tools,” detecting new points of sale, identifying patterns of use, and directing its operations accordingly.

This will be accompanied by greater coordination with the Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s regional police force. In 2025 alone, collaboration between the two forces resulted in collaboration between the two forces resulted in 110 investigations, 165 points of sale shut down, 210 arrests, and the recovery of 57 properties used as drug flats. So far in 2026, there have been 90 additional arrests, 74 points of sale shut down, and 22 homes recovered. Plan Druida now seeks to strengthen this coordination with the Mossos d’Esquadra.

The plan also includes drug and alcohol checks in nightlife areas, festivals, large events, and major roads entering and leaving the city. As announced at the press conference, the Guardia Urbana will also add 50 officers in September.

What About Cannabis Clubs?

The outlook appears bleak for Barcelona’s cannabis clubs. They have spent several decades navigating the ups and downs of Spanish regulation and remain in a fragile position since they have never been protected by a clear legal framework. The clubs have been facing closure threats from authorities for years, but this new strategy tightens restrictions even further.

Now, officials overseeing the Plan Druida said they had opened administrative proceedings against “practically all” of the city’s clubs. What’s more, they explicitly spoke out against their presence in the city: “We have an excess of legislative safeguards, and it is not just a matter for the Urbana or for us. We will continue applying pressure because it is an activity that should have no place in the city,” Batlle said at the press conference.

They also said that a period of tighter enforcement lies ahead and that they are working to establish, through administrative and criminal proceedings, that what happens in these spaces amounts to drug trafficking. It is worth clarifying that cannabis clubs are nonprofit associations, spaces conceived around a community-based, harm-reduction approach, that allow members to use marijuana in a safe place. Those members pay a fee, as they would at any other club.

Plan Druida and Its Objectives

In remarks from the press conference reported by Europa Press, Batlle said the plan “is another step in Barcelona’s commitment to safety, coexistence, and the recovery of public space. We are talking about a complex phenomenon that has a direct impact on coexistence and everyday life and that we cannot normalize.”

The third deputy mayor also signaled a further tightening of controls in line with the prohibitionist model: “There will be more police presence, more technology, including more security cameras, and a greater capacity for anticipation. Modern, effective security adapted to current challenges.”

Velázquez, head of the Guardia Urbana, also said there would be increased surveillance, explaining that “special attention” would be paid to venues and events open to the public “that show a permissive attitude toward drug use.” He also said the plan includes a line related to “assistance policing and the consumption of addictions” (it is not clear what he meant by that phrase, since addictions are not something you consume) and that resources would be allocated to “prevention and awareness efforts aimed at young people.”

With all this emphasis on surveillance and control, one thing is clear: the strategy is not limited to drug trafficking, but also includes measures related to drug use in public spaces. This detail is relevant because, in Spain, drug use or illicit possession in public places does not, in itself, constitute a criminal offense, but it can be subject to administrative penalties under Organic Law 4/2015 on the Protection of Public Safety. The arrest figures reported by the authorities are tied to investigations, points of sale, and narcopisos, so available sources do not make it possible to determine whether any of them resulted solely from drug use. Policies focused on policing drug use have been criticized from public health and harm-reduction perspectives for their potential effects on stigma, criminalization, and access to health services.

Another detail—perhaps a minor one, but no less curious—that may raise some eyebrows is the choice of name. Druids were members of the priestly class who held a central place in Celtic societies during the Iron Age, several centuries before Christ. They were neither a military nor a police force, nor did they have a role linked to population control. What connection the authorities saw between that historical figure and an operation against drug trafficking and use in 21st-century Barcelona is, for now, beyond us.

Did we say “new strategy”? We have our doubts: no matter how much the name changes or how new the hat may look, Barcelona’s brand-new plan appears to offer little that is genuinely new. It repeats the same rhetoric and repressive measures, which could produce similarly inadequate results, placing drug users at greater risk and deepening their criminalization. The day prohibitionism gives way to an approach rooted in health, support, human rights, and harm reduction, perhaps then we can talk about something new.

Cover photo: Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons // Joanne and Matt, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons // Edited with AI

<p>The post Barcelona’s Plan Druida Is Turning Up the Pressure on Cannabis Clubs first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Barcelona’s Plan Druida Is Turning Up the Pressure on Cannabis Clubs appeared first on Paradise Found.

4,516 people logged what they drank for three weeks. On the days they had a THC beverage, their odds of also drinking alcohol fell by roughly half. The finding held for 23 of the 36 products tested, and moved the same direction in every one.

The largest real-world study of hemp THC beverages has published its numbers, and the clearest thing in it has nothing to do with sleep, pain or productivity.

It’s beer.

MoreBetter, a Philadelphia research firm that has run observational studies on consumer products since 2016, tracked 4,516 people across 36 products from 23 brands, at doses between 1 and 10 milligrams of THC. Each participant logged seven days before touching any product, fourteen days on it, then answered an exit survey. Every person served as their own control, measured against their own pre-use baseline. The fieldwork ran in two waves across 2025, so the results are new rather than the research. The company published the full dataset free on its Real-World Data Exchange platform and prepared a findings summary exclusively for High Times, breaking out the numbers behind each measure.

On a participant’s ordinary day, before any of this started, the modeled probability that they would drink alcohol was 22.9%. On days they drank one of these beverages, it was 10.9%.

Two Measurements, One Direction

What gives that number weight is that it doesn’t come from asking anybody about it. It comes from what people logged, day by day, about what they actually drank, run through a model that compares each person to themselves.

The exit survey asked the question directly, and the answers point the same way. Two-thirds said they were consuming less alcohol. Fifty-six percent called the drinks a regular replacement for it. Those are people describing themselves, which is a weaker kind of evidence, but they line up with the behavioral measure instead of contradicting it.

The tightest number in that group is the health one. An 86.6% average with a floor of 80% across every single product means the belief holds no matter which drink somebody picked up. Worth being precise about what that measures: it’s what people think, not what is true. Nothing in this study tested whether these products are safer than alcohol.

The eleven-point gap between the health answer and the social one is the more interesting detail. People are more confident about what these drinks do to their body than about how showing up with one plays in a room.

Fifty Days Later

The obvious question about a two-week study is whether anything survives it. MoreBetter went back and asked.

Fifty days after the study period ended, the company surveyed participants from 18 of the 36 products about how their relationship with alcohol had changed. It got 1,420 responses. Setting aside the 249 who weren’t drinking alcohol before any of this began leaves 1,171 people who were. Those results are not on the public dashboard; MoreBetter provided them to High Times on the record.

Two things to hold onto there. A third of respondents reported no change at all, which is the honest headline alongside the 63%. And this is people recalling their own drinking seven weeks later, on a narrower base than the main dataset, which makes it softer evidence than the daily logs. It points the same direction anyway, and the gap between 63% and 2.4% is not a close call.

MoreBetter also says a portion of the original group has continued into a second and now a third cohort, the third of which is currently open, spanning 12 to 18 months between the first and the present one. The point is to see whether consumption patterns and substitution behavior hold up over that kind of stretch. Those results don’t exist yet.

What It Actually Feels Like

The experience these numbers describe is mild and short, which is the whole design premise of the category and now has some evidence under it.

Duration is the most consistent thing in the entire dataset. Thirty-six products, 23 brands, doses spanning a factor of ten, and every one of them landed between two and 2.9 hours. The standard deviation is 0.2 hours. Whatever else varies in this category, how long it lasts does not.

Feeling high is the opposite. It swings from 18.8% of use days to 81.5%, which is what a 1 to 10 milligram spread would predict, and it means the 53.3% average describes almost nobody’s actual product. Half the people buying in this category are not particularly trying to get high, and the products know it.

The onset figure needs an asterisk. Participants picked from bands rather than clocking themselves, so 26.9 minutes is a center of mass, not a stopwatch reading.

And the hangover number, which the industry will want to run with, is a share of use days rather than a share of people. There was no alcohol comparison group in this study, so it cannot be read as better or worse than a hangover from drinking. MoreBetter says so itself, in writing, which is not something most industry-funded research bothers to do.

The Productivity Number, Handled Carefully

Participants reported roughly 36 more minutes of productive time on product days than on their own non-product days, a jump from 5.64 hours to 6.24. That reached significance for 20 of the 36 products, and every significant result was positive.

The companion measure is messier and deserves the scrutiny. The probability of reporting a productive day rose 12.5 points on average, but that only held for 13 of 36 products, and one product moved 15 points in the other direction. The accurate version is that for about a third of the products tested, people were more likely to report a good day, and for one of them the reverse was true.

Both are estimates people made about their own hours, not measured output.

How to Read Any of This

This is observational, not a clinical trial. There is no placebo arm and no separate comparison group; the comparison is each participant against their own pre-use baseline, which is a real method with real limits. People chose to enroll and chose their product through what MoreBetter calls a semi-blinded process. Almost everything here is self-reported, including the alcohol logs behind the headline finding. This describes what a large group of people reported while drinking these products. It does not establish that the products caused any of it.

One caveat matters more than the rest, and it comes from MoreBetter rather than from us. When a finding is significant for 23 of 36 products, the headline average covers only those 23. Products that showed no significant change are left out of the average, not counted as zero. Quote the twelve-point drop without the coverage number and you have overstated it. That warning is printed in the company’s own summary, in bold.

Who Paid For It

MoreBetter says it funded the Infused Beverage Study primarily itself, with partial funding from the beverage brands whose products were tested, and that those brands had no influence over protocol design, data analysis or published findings.

Twenty-three brands participated: BRĒZ, Cantrip, Nowadays, Uncle Arnie’s, Willie’s Remedy+, Woodstock, Medterra, Rebel Rabbit, Snoop Dogg’s Iconic Tonics, Herbal Oasis, Cornbread Hemp, Stiiizy, 1906, Sober(ish), Wims!, Hippie Water, Squared, Hightail, Kava Haven, 23rd State, Drippy, Good Feels and Rexis Biotech.

None of that makes the data bad, and the company reports 17 peer-reviewed publications across 12 university research partnerships behind it. It does mean some of the companies that helped pay for the study sell the products the study is being used to defend, and anyone citing these numbers in a policy fight should say so. Nothing is broken out by brand, so no figure here belongs to any individual participant.

The Products in This Study Are About to Stop Being Legal

Section 781 of Public Law 119-37 caps finished hemp products at 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container, applied to the whole package rather than a serving. It takes effect November 12.

The products in this study run from 1 to 10 milligrams per serving. The weakest one carries more than twice the legal ceiling for an entire container.

None of the 36 would survive it.

That date is still moving. The Senate has passed a stopgap that would push most of the new restrictions to December 11, and the House hasn’t taken it up. Until it does, November 12 is the law. We’ve been tracking the whole fight here.

Some brands have already made their bet. Cann pulled the THC out of part of its lineup, while B-Real and Rachel Wolfson launched into the same market with full-dose product. One side is reformulating for the rule on the books. The other is betting Congress changes it first. NielsenIQ data cited by MoreBetter puts the category at $239 million in tracked retail sales over the 52 weeks ending June 27, up 135% year over year, which is what the 0.4 milligram number is aimed at and why the fight has pulled in everyone from trade groups to Rosario Dawson.

Every figure in this article, and the several dozen measures that didn’t make it in, are free at rwdexchange.com/community. Verify a phone number or email, enter the code, then open Community Insights and the Infused Beverage Performance Data dashboard. No cost, no trial period, no card. Everything is filterable by seltzer, soda, sparkling beverage, functional tonic, and spirits, shots and mixers, and MoreBetter asks that anyone using the figures credit the source.

The data arrived after the vote.

<p>The post Exclusive: New Study Finds People Drinking THC Beverages Reached for Alcohol Half as Often. Every Product Tested Is About to Be Banned. first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Exclusive: New Study Finds People Drinking THC Beverages Reached for Alcohol Half as Often. Every Product Tested Is About to Be Banned. appeared first on Paradise Found.

Matthew McConaughey has apparently discovered the outer limit of how many consecutive plays of Janet Jackson’s “That’s the Way Love Goes” one man can handle before reevaluating his relationship with weed.

For him, that number is 24.

In a new Rolling Stone interview about the music that has shaped the soundtrack of his life, McConaughey revisited the unusual story behind why he stopped smoking weed: one particularly strong joint, one parked car, one Janet Jackson song, and an entire birthday party unfolding without the guest of honor. 

According to the actor, the episode happened around the time the weed he encountered started to change.

“It’s right around the time weed started turning hydroponic. A lot of y’all don’t remember,” he said.

McConaughey contrasted it with the weed he remembered from earlier years, when, as he put it, “you could roll a joint, smoke it, pass around, everyone giggles, gets some munchies, and maybe runs off and tries to get some snuggle time.”

Then, he said, things started hitting differently.

“Well, then it started getting this hydroponic stuff where like one toke people, the subplots could become unmanageable and people would implode,” McConaughey recalled.

And on this particular night, he was heading to his own birthday party.

His friends had taken over a club for the occasion. Before McConaughey headed to the celebration, a friend handed him a joint and encouraged him to try it.

McConaughey drove to the venue, parked outside and took a hit.

“It was not like the weed I’d smoked before,” he said.

He had successfully completed the difficult part of the journey: arriving at his own birthday party. Getting out of the car proved considerably harder.

“I listened to Janet Jackson’s ‘That’s the Way Love Goes’ 24 times in a row,” McConaughey said, “and when I finally got out of the car to go into my birthday party, no one was in there because it was over.”

Everyone had left.

“They had all left because I sat in the fricking car listening, listening to ‘That’s the Way Love Goes’ 24 times because I thought at the time that was more important than going to my own birthday party.”

It is difficult to imagine a cleaner review of an altered state than realizing, sometime after replay number 24, that Janet Jackson has somehow outranked your own birthday.

McConaughey’s verdict was equally straightforward.

“Loved the song, didn’t love the weed.”

Dedicated students of the Matthew McConaughey Extended Universe may remember hearing this story before.

When McConaughey appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in December 2025, he told essentially the same story, but with one notable difference: in that version, he said he had listened to “That’s the Way Love Goes” 34 times rather than 24.

He also included another detail in the earlier telling: he remembered sitting in his truck crying because the song felt so beautiful to him in the moment.

Cover photo: Rich Esteban, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons // AMFM STUDIOS LLC, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons // Edited with AI

<p>The post Matthew McConaughey Got So High He Missed His Own Birthday Party After Playing the Same Song 24 Times  first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Matthew McConaughey Got So High He Missed His Own Birthday Party After Playing the Same Song 24 Times  appeared first on Paradise Found.