Guardrails or Gatekeepers? The Next Chapter of Cannabis Regulation [VIDEO WEBINAR]

OF COURSE Cannabis needs regulation. The REAL question is what we want regulation to accomplish. 

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to speak to the Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO) Cannabis, Hemp, and Natural Psychedelics Committee(opens in new tab) about the rapidly changing legal landscape for hemp and marijuana. Thanks to Thuy Vu, Amy Bonsell, Steve Moris, and the entire team at AFDO for inviting me to speak. 

You can watch the video below or by clicking here(opens in new tab). 

I called the presentation “Guardrails or Gatekeepers?” because I think this distinction is one of the most important cannabis policy questions we face. Nobody serious is arguing that cannabis should operate without rules. Cannabis products should be tested. Labels should be accurate. Children should not have unrestricted access to intoxicating products. Manufacturers should follow appropriate standards. Regulators should be able to identify dangerous products, trace them through the supply chain, recall them when necessary, and hold bad actors accountable. Those are what I call guardrails.

Rather than focusing on reducing a demonstrated risk, we increasingly see cannabis laws determine which businesses may participate, which existing industry gets to sell a product, or which products may legally exist at all. These laws create artificial license scarcity, impose arbitrary cannabinoid limits, or prohibit products without providing a workable route to compliance. Those are what I call gatekeepers.

We need more guardrails and fewer gatekeepers. 

One plant, three legal worlds

American cannabis policy has developed into an increasingly bizarre and dysfunctional system. We regulate hemp, state medical marijuana, and adult-use marijuana as though they exist in separate universes. At the federal level, they often do. But commercially, chemically, and from the consumer’s perspective, they are all part of the same cannabis market.

Hemp and marijuana are not different plants. They are legal classifications applied to Cannabis sativa L.

A consumer deciding between a hemp beverage and a marijuana edible does not experience two different plants. A laboratory testing cannabinoids does not use different chemistry because one product came through a hemp license and another came through a marijuana license. Regulators confronting contaminants, inaccurate labels, excessive doses, or products marketed to children are often addressing the same basic public-health concerns.

Despite this reality, our legal system frequently regulates those products according to their regulatory ancestry rather than their actual risk. Recent federal developments make this tension even more obvious. Congress has tightened the federal hemp framework. At the same time, DOJ has created a Schedule III pathway for FDA-approved marijuana drugs and state-licensed medical marijuana, while the broader federal proceeding concerning marijuana generally remains unresolved.

Good regulation should begin with the risk

One of the central points I made to AFDO is that regulators should repeatedly ask four basic questions: (1) Who are we protecting? (2) From what risk? (3) By what mechanism? (4) At what cost to lawful access and regulatory visibility? These questions sound simple, but they expose a lot of bad policy.

• If the concern is youth access, impose meaningful age restrictions.
• If the concern is inaccurate potency, require standardized testing.’
• If the concern is contaminants or conversion byproducts, establish manufacturing and testing standards.
• If the concern is misleading claims, regulate labels and advertising.
• If a particular cannabinoid or manufacturing process creates a demonstrated health risk, address that risk directly.

What we should avoid is using public health as a justification for rules whose principal practical effect is simply to transfer market share from one regulated industry to another.

I have long described my preferred approach as the Three Pillars(opens in new tab) of cannabis regulation: (1) Keep products away from minors. (2) Require appropriate product testing and quality-control standards. (3) Require clear and accurate labeling and packaging so adults know what they are buying.

These principles are not radical. They resemble how we regulate many ordinary consumer products. The radical approach is to eliminate lawful products and lawful businesses rather than regulate them.

Prohibition can make products less visible, not safer

This is particularly important when policymakers consider categorical product bans. Demand rarely disappears when a lawful market disappears. Instead, consumers often shift to unregulated sellers, illicit products, home production, or other substitutes. Regulators then lose the things that make a regulated market useful, such as testing, labeling, traceability, recall authority, adverse-event data, accountable businesses, and known points of sale.

A system designed to protect public health should generally try to keep responsible operators inside the regulated market, not to push them into the back market. That does not mean every product belongs in the same regulatory category. A low-dose CBD product, an intoxicating edible, inhalable cannabis flower, and an FDA-approved cannabinoid drug obviously present different issues and consumer may benefit from having them flow through different regulatory channels. 

The ultimate goal should be One Plant

My long-term view remains that American cannabis policy should move toward a One Plant(opens in new tab) framework. That does not mean one rule for every cannabis product. Instead, it means starting with the reality that we are regulating one plant and then applying increasingly rigorous controls based on the characteristics that actually matter, including dose, route of administration, ingredients, manufacturing process, intended use, claims, and risk.

Low-risk consumer products should have a workable consumer pathway. Intoxicating adult-use products should have appropriate age, serving, packaging, retail, and marketing controls. Medical products should have a medical pathway. FDA-approved drugs should remain subject to the rigorous pharmaceutical system. Industrial cannabis should not be regulated like an intoxicating consumer product simply because it comes from the same plant.

That is regulation. The alternative is to continue building competing hemp, marijuana, medical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, food, and state-specific regulatory silos and then fight over which silo gets control of which cannabinoid.

The video accompanying this article is my September 11 presentation to AFDO(opens in new tab). I discuss how we arrived at the current system, the major federal changes now underway, the Three Pillars approach, and what a more coherent One Plant regulatory framework might look like.

The central point is simple: Protect people. Preserve regulatory visibility. Create a realistic path to comply. These are guardrails, not gatekeepers.

September 21, 2026