Drug policy reporting from The Alkaloid — federal, state, and international.
newsletter
A lab in Israel engineered one tobacco plant to make psilocybin, DMT, bufotenin, 5-MeO-DMT, and psilocin at once. The molecules just left the mushroom and the toad behind. What that means for cost, supply, and a drug law written when the drug and its source were the same thing.
newsletter
Last fall Congress redefined hemp and capped legal products at 0.4 milligrams of THC. The rule erases an estimated 95 percent of the market by November. Now the same White House that signed it is asking Congress to carve out an exception before the deadline it created.
newsletter
In April, the DOJ rescheduled medical cannabis to Schedule III — handing operators billions in tax relief. It opened zero prison cells. Now 29 members of Congress want Trump to commute the sentences of roughly 3,000 people still serving federal time for a drug the government just reclassified.
Field Notes
Virginia just vetoed the bill that would have launched legal cannabis sales. The political story is small. The larger one — five years of legal possession without legal sales has produced the country's most documented case of what gray markets actually cost.
newsletter
The DOJ just rescheduled medical cannabis to Schedule III after fifty-six years. Billions in tax relief, new research access, and zero relief for the people prohibition harmed most. What the April 22 order changed, and what it deliberately left untouched.
newsletter
On November 12, 2026, the federal government will effectively ban most hemp-derived THC products — delta-8 gummies, THCA flower, HHC vapes. Buried in the shutdown spending bill, the provision affects 95% of products on the market. Seven months to adapt.
newsletter
Trump's executive order on psychedelics is the most consequential federal policy shift in the field's history. It directs the FDA to fast-track psilocybin, ibogaine, and MDMA, allocates $50M for state research, and expands Right to Try — via the medical pathway, not scheduling reform.