As the Spice Girls taught us in the nineties, it’s a lot easier if you tell me what you want, what you really, really want.  Last month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did just that.  On September 10, four of the FDA’s top drug officials took to the pages of the New England…

As usual, Tom Petty was spot on when he sang, “the waiting is the hardest part.” Marijuana rescheduling has tested that proposition all year, and this week it was retested. We’ve spent a lot of ink this year on what happens after marijuana rescheduling lands, on advertising rules, on data breaches, and on…

Groucho Marx famously said, “I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.” For years, many state-legal medical marijuana operators pleaded to be allowed into the club, essentially making this promise: “Bring us into the federal fold, and we’ll play by federal rules.”

Having finally gotten that wish, at…

Every good legal thriller needs a twist, and this one’s a doozy: The DEA — the agency that’s spent over 50 years playing prohibition’s final boss — is now the one arguing marijuana doesn’t belong in Schedule I anymore, while the seven groups it hand-picked to participate in the hearing are the ones fighting to…

We’ve been waiting on this one for three years. If you’ve frequented this blog, you know three years is basically an eternity in Food and Drug Administration (FDA) years but a blink of an eye in cannabis-and-psychedelics-regulatory years. On July 14, 2026, FDA finally published its final guidance titled “Psychedelic Drugs: Considerations for Clinical Investigations,”…

Good news for people who don’t want their airline pilots any higher than they already are.

If you’ve been following the rescheduling saga as closely as I have, you might have assumed that once President Trump signed the executive order directing DEA to move state-licensed medical marijuana and DEA-approved medications to Schedule III, the ripple…

We are going to white knuckle our way through a blog post about lawyers and guns without doing the obligatory Warren Zevon plug, but we want you to understand how hard this is for us.

Loyal readers of Budding Trends are well aware of marijuana rescheduling, but we offer the following for those who may…

In the summer of 2017, Phish lit up Madison Square Garden with a historic 13-night run. Your friends at Budding Trends believe the marijuana rescheduling decision calls for a rollout just as monumental, so we’ve created the Budding Trends Baker’s Dozen as a fitting homage.

Following the federal government’s move to reschedule medical marijuana from…

If you’re familiar with operators in the marijuana industry in the United States, you understand that they can be a paranoid bunch — and often with very good reasons. After all, they operated in the grayest areas of the law for years. I can’t help but think of one of the great anthems of the…

Dr. Marty Makary resigned as FDA commissioner last week, barely a year after his Senate confirmation. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed the departure and indicated the agency is searching for a replacement. Kyle Diamantas, FDA’s deputy commissioner for Food, will serve as acting commissioner in the meantime. The vacancy arrives at an extraordinarily…