Holden Leads Blog
Data, outreach strategies, and market intelligence for cannabis B2B professionals.
The clock is now running on one of the most consequential proceedings in American drug policy history. The Drug Enforcement Administration's formal hearing on whether to reschedule marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act is officially set to begin.
Read more →The cannabis industry had a week of quiet but consequential momentum, driven less by splashy announcements than by the accumulating weight of numbers that are starting to tell a coherent story: markets are maturing, winners are consolidating their positions, and the question of who survives the next two years is coming into sharper focus.
Read more →There are two ways to know that cannabis has gone fully mainstream. One is when the federal government reschedules it. The other is when you can buy a THC seltzer at Target while picking up toilet paper — in Texas.
Read more →Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger's decision this week to veto legislation creating the state's first licensed adult-use cannabis retail market is, on one level, a familiar story: a governor and a legislature disagreeing over the details of a cannabis bill.
Read more →A new study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that patients using medical cannabis for chronic pain reduced their opioid consumption by an average of 65% over a five-month follow-up — with seven of 29 participants stopping opioid therapy entirely.
Read more →The cannabis industry has spent years arguing it deserves to be treated like any legitimate business. This week, it got exactly what it asked for — in the form of a 320-page federal complaint invoking the same legal framework that took down the mob.
Read more →Two significant studies landed within days of each other, each rigorous, each credible, each pointing in a subtly different direction — and together they illustrate exactly why the science of cannabis and cognition is so difficult to summarize in a headline.
Read more →a brand synonymous with suburban family shopping trips, dollar-bin treasures, and Starbucks kiosks near the entrance — quietly stocking its shelves with intoxicating products that, in a dispensary, would require an ID check and a brief tutorial on onset times.
Read more →The calendar on the wall of every cannabis lobbyist's office is circled in red on two dates this spring: May 24 and June 29. They mark, respectively, the deadline to formally request participation in the most consequential federal cannabis rulemaking in history, and the day the hearing actually begins.
Read more →Controlled Substances Act — an action that technically changed nothing about what's legal where, but is rapidly changing everything about how cannabis companies operate, report earnings, and plan their futures.
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