Texas hemp businesses are facing renewed enforcement pressure after a court allowed the state’s new hemp rules to take effect while an industry lawsuit continues. According to FOX 7 Austin, the ruling means Texas can enforce the challenged rules for now, even though the court has not made a final decision on whether the regulations are legal. The case is still moving forward, with a trial on the merits scheduled for July 27, 2026, in Travis County. The dispute centers on new consumable hemp rules adopted by the Texas Department of State Health Services. Those rules include stricter testing requirements, child-resistant packaging standards, age-verification requirements, and higher licensing costs for hemp businesses. One of the biggest issues is how Texas treats THC testing. The state’s approach counts “total THC,” including THCA, toward the legal limit. That matters because THCA is the dominant cannabinoid in many hemp flower products and can convert into Delta-9 THC when heated. For retailers selling smokable hemp flower, pre-rolls, and similar products, that standard could make many products harder to sell legally in Texas. The hemp industry argues the state went beyond its authority and that the rule changes could severely damage businesses that have operated under Texas hemp law since 2019. State officials argue the rules are needed to regulate hemp-derived products, especially products that may become intoxicating when smoked, vaped, or otherwise heated. The latest court decision does not end the lawsuit. It only changes what happens while the case is pending. For now, Texas regulators are no longer blocked from enforcing the rules. For THCFarmer readers, the Texas case is worth watching because it reflects a larger national fight over hemp, THCA flower, and the line between legal hemp and regulated cannabis. Since the 2018 Farm Bill, many hemp businesses have relied on the federal definition of hemp as cannabis containing no more than 0.3% Delta-9 THC. States are now increasingly moving toward total THC standards, age restrictions, product bans, and tighter licensing rules. That shift has major consequences for growers, breeders, retailers, and consumers. A crop or product that appears compliant under one testing standard may become noncompliant under another. For businesses, that creates legal risk and uncertainty. For consumers, it can affect access, pricing, and whether products remain in regulated stores. Texas remains one of the most important states in this fight. Marijuana is still illegal there outside the state’s limited medical program, but hemp-derived products have become widely available since hemp was legalized. That has created ongoing tension between regulators, lawmakers, hemp operators, and consumers. The next major date is July 27, 2026, when the case is scheduled to be heard on the merits. Until then, businesses in Texas will be watching how aggressively the state enforces the rules and whether the hemp industry seeks additional emergency relief. This is a developing legal story. Anyone affected by the Texas hemp rules should check current state guidance and speak with qualified legal counsel before making business decisions.

Trulieve will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on June 10, the company announced Friday, making it the first US cannabis operator to ever list on a major American exchange. The move follows an April rule from the Department of Justice that reclassified state-licensed medical cannabis as a less dangerous drug and laid out an expedited hearing process for adult-use operators starting this month. When that rule first landed, the benchmark US cannabis ETF, MSOS, dipped, since most operators sell both medical and recreational product. The Trulieve news pushed it the other way: MSOS rose more than 7 percent. Canadian names including Tilray, Canopy Growth, and Village Farms (VFF) fell. US exchanges have long refused to list companies that grow or sell cannabis on American soil. Trulieve found a way around it. In a regulatory filing earlier this week, the Florida operator said it would spin off its adult-use cannabis business so the remaining medical-focused company could qualify for the NYSE. Medical sales make up the larger share of Trulieve's revenue, which is likely why separating out the recreational side was the cleaner route to a listing. The plan worked, and Trulieve probably will not be the last to try it. Last week, Curaleaf announced a 1-for-3 reverse stock split, citing preparation for a US exchange uplisting. Verano Holdings followed on Monday with a 1-for-5 split aimed at a prospective US listing. A reverse split cuts the number of shares outstanding and lifts the per-share price, which helps a company clear an exchange's minimum price requirement. Operators that lean more heavily on recreational sales may hold off until after the DOJ's summer hearings before attempting their own listings. Adam Stettner, CEO of cannabis lender FundCanna, framed the moment as a targeted response to a narrow policy shift rather than a full industry unlock. The bigger change, he said, would come if federal rescheduling reaches the adult-use market. Until then, the appetite he is seeing is selective and institutional. It remains unclear whether the exchanges adjusted their own rules to make room for US cannabis companies. Nasdaq declined to comment on whether it would allow US medical operators to list. What changes for investors Without access to the major exchanges, US cannabis stocks have traded over the counter, where liquidity is thinner. MSOS, the AdvisorShares Pure US Cannabis ETF, launched in 2020 as the main proxy for investor exposure to the sector. It has been able to trade on the NYSE only because it does not hold the stocks directly. Instead it holds swap contracts, typically through major banks such as Nomura, that track the underlying companies. A direct listing changes that math. Investors will be able to buy shares of individual US operators through ordinary brokerage accounts rather than low-liquidity OTC venues. Trulieve is already MSOS's largest position, at roughly 26 percent of the fund as of Friday. Fund manager Dan Ahrens said MSOS will start converting a large chunk of its Trulieve swaps into direct holdings starting next week. He expects the shift to move quickly, since many institutional compliance departments tie their standards to NYSE or Nasdaq listing, a barrier that has kept large investors out of the space until now. Not everyone sees ETFs losing their place. Frederico Gomes, director of institutional research in life sciences at ATB Capital Markets, said easier access to individual companies does not erase the value of a diversified vehicle. Plenty of investors would rather not pick individual winners, he said, and a fund remains an efficient way to hold the whole sector.

A coalition of doctors, addiction-recovery groups and a cannabis biopharma company has asked a federal appeals court to throw out the Schedule III order. This time the president is on the list of defendants. The federal move that pulled some marijuana off Schedule I is taking fire from a new direction. A coalition of anti-legalization activists, addiction-treatment professionals, two physicians and a cannabis-focused drug company filed suit last week asking a federal appeals court to vacate the rescheduling order. Unlike the challenges that came before it, this one names President Donald Trump personally among the defendants. The complaint landed Thursday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Alongside Trump, it names the Department of Justice, the DEA, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and DEA Administrator Terrance Cole. The plaintiffs are New Directions Addiction Recovery Services, Cannabis Industry Victims Educating Litigators, MMJ International Holdings and two medical doctors. Each says it is "aggrieved" by the reform and faces concrete injury that a favorable ruling could undo. What the order actually did In April, under an order from Blanche, marijuana products covered by a state medical cannabis license moved immediately from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act to Schedule III. The same went for any marijuana product approved by the FDA. A separate administrative hearing set for this month is expected to weigh broader rescheduling, including recreational products. So the order on trial here is narrow: it reclassified medical and FDA-track cannabis, not the whole plant. The arguments The petitioners' core complaint is procedural. They argue the order skipped notice-and-comment rulemaking, never got a formal hearing on the record, ignored the rescheduling recommendation from Health and Human Services, and ran past an administrative process that was already underway. Beyond process, the suit makes four substantive claims: That the order invents a "hybrid" schedule Congress never authorized, placing marijuana in Schedule III while keeping Schedule I and II style controls like production quotas and import-export permits. That the DEA acted arbitrarily by failing to grapple with the health risks its own scientific review had laid out. That physicians were left without the FDA-grade dosing, risk-benefit and monitoring guidance they would need to prescribe responsibly. That the framework violates equal protection by treating chemically identical marijuana differently depending on whether a state medical license or FDA approval is attached. The plaintiffs want the court to freeze the order while the case is reviewed, declare it unlawful, vacate it outright and award attorney fees. Americans Against Legalizing Marijuana flagged the filing in a press release, calling it one of the most legally indefensible drug-policy actions in modern American history. Group president Carla Lowe said the administration is trying to declare marijuana medicine "by political decree instead of scientific proof." Not the first challenge This is the latest of several attempts to stall the reform in court. Last month three Republican state attorneys general, from Indiana, Nebraska and Louisiana, filed their own challenge in the same court. Judges consolidated that case with an earlier suit from the prohibitionist group Smart Approaches to Marijuana and the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association. That complaint came from Torridon Law, the firm where former Attorney General William Barr is a partner. SAM brought Barr's firm on in January, after Trump signed an executive order telling officials to finish rescheduling quickly. The opponents have not won everything they have tried. A federal judge last month tossed a separate SAM suit over a Trump initiative to cover up to $500 a year in hemp-derived products for eligible Medicare patients. A House committee, for its part, recently voted to block officials from taking further steps on rescheduling, even as the administration keeps moving. What it means for growers For now, nothing on the ground changes. Schedule III does not legalize anything, and it does not touch the home grow or the state-by-state patchwork most members live under. What it does is set up a long court fight over how, and whether, federal policy actually shifts. The reform survives until a judge says otherwise, and with this many suits stacked in one courtroom, the timeline just got longer.

The state that once let hemp-derived THCA flow freely is about to make most of it illegal. Industry insiders say the rule could wipe out the bulk of Tennessee's hemp market overnight. Starting July 1, the most popular hemp-derived cannabis products in Tennessee, THCA chief among them, become illegal to sell. The Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission has finalized the rules that enforce a ban state lawmakers passed back in 2025, and the timing leaves retailers and wholesalers with almost no runway. THCA is the raw, non-intoxicating form of the cannabinoid. Heat it, and it converts to THC. That bit of chemistry is exactly what let it slip past Tennessee's existing THC restrictions after the 2018 federal Farm Bill opened the door to hemp-derived products nationwide. For years, smokable, drinkable, and edible THCA goods delivered a marijuana-like high while staying nominally legal. That window is now closing. How we got here Tennessee lawmakers started circling the hemp industry in 2022. Their first move was an outright ban, which failed, partly over money: the state's fiscal review committee that year pegged the economic impact of hemp products at roughly $180 million. Prohibition-minded legislators regrouped and got their win in May 2025, passing legislation specifically written to close what they called the THCA loophole. The federal government followed. In November 2025, Congress passed a law aimed at shutting the same loophole nationally by 2026. Between the two, the legal footing under THCA has effectively collapsed. The commission took over as the state's hemp regulator at the start of this year. A last-minute arrangement let companies operating under the old framework keep selling THCA through June 30, which is the only reason the shelves haven't already cleared. When officials appeared before the legislature's government operations committee in May to finalize the rules, they acknowledged that most of the public comments were complaints about the ban itself. Commission executive director Russell Thomas said their job was simply to carry out the framework the general assembly handed them. A death blow, by the industry's own estimate The stakes here are not subtle. Industry experts estimate that THCA accounts for about 75% of all hemp sales in the state. Strip that out and there is not much market left. Many in the trade expect the July 1 cutoff to be exactly what it sounds like: a death blow. Even some of the lawmakers enforcing it seem uneasy. Rep. John Crawford, a Kingsport Republican, said during the hearing that the new rules are likely to put a wholesaler in his own district out of business. He told the committee he had a hard time with the state granting permission over the past year and then yanking it back. Not just THCA The THCA ban did not arrive alone. Tennessee's 2026 session stacked several hemp-related deadlines on the same July 1 date, including a kratom ban, new nitrous oxide restrictions, and a fresh tax on vape cartridges. A medical cannabis program was floated but pushed off to a summer study, meaning the one avenue that might give Tennessee consumers a legal alternative remains parked indefinitely. For anyone watching cannabis policy from the cultivation side, this is the now-familiar pattern: a hemp loophole opens a gray market, the gray market gets big enough to notice, and the legislature closes it without putting a regulated adult-use or medical channel in its place. Tennessee growers and retailers who built businesses inside that gray zone have until the end of June to figure out what comes next.