In our Thursday Trade To Black presented by Flowhub, Shadd Dales and Anthony Varrell welcome back FundCanna CEO Adam Stettner. We’ll take a look at the latest headlines as several new cannabis policy stories continue to develop in the United States.

Lawmakers in Virginia are working to address concerns after recent legislation may have unwittingly repealed some marijuana sanctions, raising new questions about how the law will be interpreted moving forward. Dales and Varrell noted that lawyers are already fighting over the language, debating whether the loophole allows distribution before the official air date.

In North Carolina, Gov. Josh Stein and House Speaker Destin Hall remain divided on whether to legalize marijuana, providing another example of how states are approaching reform differently. The hosts pointed to North Carolina’s illegal cannabis market, estimated at $3 billion, as the state leaves billions in uncollected tax revenue on the table amid the standoff.

There’s also news from Wyoming, where Attorney General Bridget Hill announced that the state will not automatically follow future federal cannabis planning, even if changes are made at the federal level.

And finally, does this surprise you? A new poll shows many cannabis consumers don’t expect the Trump administration to complete the federal transformation process this year, despite ongoing hearings by a DEA administrative law judge.

Elsewhere, Stetner weighed in on the ALJ’s hearing, noting that the DOJ and DEA are still fully committed to their case, and pointing to the opposition’s own witness admitting that cannabis meets Schedule III criteria as a telling moment. He cautioned against treating any one catalyst, including the recent gains of Trulieve and Green Thumb, as a “silver bullet” for the stock’s performance, framing the sector’s progress as more of an ultramarathon than a sprint.

On the business side, Stettner shared that operators are more proactive rather than reactive, with average loans from its customers rising from about 46% to the high 50s as companies prepare balance sheets ahead of a potential restructuring, and described a wave of consolidation that has already begun in the private markets. This and more when you join.

Shad Dales and Anthony Varrell opened Wednesday Trade to blackwhich Flowhub submitted, in brief review on the third day of the ALJ hearing; a quieter session ahead of the prohibitionists’ testimony, which is scheduled to begin on Thursday, before marking the first time medical cannabis products for smoking became available in Georgia. The presenters emphasized that the first purchase was made by a veteran, using the moment to highlight the continued importance of expanding access to plant medicine for those who have served.

In the first segment, Flowhub founder and CEO Kyle Sherman joined to discuss how artificial intelligence is beginning to transform cannabis retail operations and where most operators are still falling short of its true potential. Sherman observed that while AI adoption is accelerating across industries, most users are stuck with basic generative tasks rather than stepping into the emerging agent era, where tools connect to each other, automate workflows and take actions on the user’s behalf.

To address that gap, Flowhub launched an open MCP – Model Context Protocol – server, making it the first cannabis retail platform to allow operators to connect their data directly to AI language models of their choice, including those from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google. Instead of building a proprietary chatbot, Flowhub made its system accessible to the operator’s preferred frontier model, enabling agents to independently query inventory data, identify trends, handle transactions, adjust pricing across multiple locations, and generate scheduled reports in natural language.

The second segment continued the show’s weekly Vantage Standard series, presented by Vantage, in which Dr. Paul Shields, Vantage’s chief medical officer, offered his perspective on medical use discussions arising from ALJ hearings. Shields described the FDA’s public recognition under oath of the medical benefits of cannabis as a landmark moment; not a change in scientific opinion, which he suggested doctors had kept quiet for some time, but a key public confirmation.

Hear it all as you merge.

In our latest Trade To Black podcast presented by Flowhub, hosts Shadd Dales and Anthony Varrell bring you the most consequential week of federal cannabis policy, live. Gretchen Gale joins live from Arlington, Virginia, where the DEA administrative law judge’s hearing continues with Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) testifying today. Michael Bronstein, president of the American Trade Association for Hemp and Hemp (ATACH), returns with a full recap of key highlights from the hearing.

Gretchen Gale joined live from the courthouse to recap testimony from Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), the leading ban-aligned group in the proceedings. SAM called as a key witness Dr. Bertha Madras, a professor of psychobiology at Harvard Medical School who has testified for the DEA under both the Bush and Trump administrations. Gailey detailed Madras’ three-plus hours of testimony, which argued that cannabis is highly addictive, unregulated and dangerous, especially for teenagers and pregnant women, and links it to an increased risk of schizophrenia.

The DEA’s cross-examination lasted just five minutes, during which Madras conceded that hemp met the definition of a Schedule III substance. The discussion also touched on the medical use disclosure adopted by HHS and SAM’s attempt to argue that the push for realignment was politically motivated.

Michael Bronstein, president of the American Hemp and Hemp Trade Association, chimed in with his weekly analysis, arguing that opponents are increasingly relying on procedural objections rather than substantive science, calling it a likely long-term legal strategy for future court challenges. Bronstein and the hosts also discussed the sluggish state of cannabis capital markets, the need for clearer guidance from the Treasury on tax liability and the ongoing effort to build institutional investor confidence ahead of a possible positive outcome from the overhaul.

Hear it all as you merge.