In 2023, Ganjactivist.com reported on MMJ International Holdings after the company secured a court order related to federal delays in its effort to develop FDA-approved cannabis-based medicine.
At the time, the issue was clear. A company pursuing cannabinoid research and drug development was being slowed by federal inaction. For an industry that has spent decades calling for more science, more research, and more serious medical development, that mattered.
Ganjactivist.com supported that fight.
The latest development is more complicated.
MMJ International Holdings is now part of litigation challenging the federal cannabis rescheduling process. In a June 12 release, the company framed the issue as a constitutional one, arguing that the Drug Enforcement Administration should not proceed with a June 29 rescheduling hearing before courts address whether the Administrative Law Judge framework being used by DEA is lawful.
MMJ points to a February 2025 Department of Justice filing in which DOJ reportedly stated that the removal protections for Administrative Law Judges “do not comport with the separation of powers and Article II.” MMJ argues that DEA is moving forward with a major rescheduling hearing using that same ALJ framework.
That is not a small procedural claim.
MMJ’s position is that the June 29 hearing is not simply about marijuana policy, science, taxation, or market access. The company argues that if the process itself is constitutionally flawed, any outcome could face further legal challenge and create more uncertainty for patients, researchers, and regulated businesses.
Process matters. A lawful industry needs a lawful process.
But access matters too.
That is where the cannabis industry has to pay close attention.
Schedule III is not legalization. It does not fix banking. It does not solve taxation. It does not erase past criminalization. It does not settle the future of adult-use cannabis. Still, it would mark a significant shift away from the federal position that cannabis has no accepted medical use.
For patients, physicians, state-licensed operators, researchers, and reform advocates, that shift matters.
The concern is not that MMJ is raising legal questions. Courts exist for that reason. The concern is whether procedural litigation becomes another delay in a federal system already defined by delay.
Cannabis has spent decades trapped between agencies, courts, politics, prohibition, and competing business interests. If every step toward reform becomes another fight over who controls the process, the plant remains stuck while patients, farmers, operators, and researchers wait.
There is nothing wrong with FDA-approved cannabis medicine. There is nothing wrong with clinical trials, controlled research, pharmaceutical standards, or investing in a formal drug-development process. Cannabis needs more credible science, not less.
But medical cannabis is bigger than one pathway.
The challenge is making room for pharmaceutical cannabis development without allowing that pathway to become a gate that narrows broader medical access.
This is not about dismissing MMJ Holdings, Duane Boise, or the importance of pharmaceutical cannabinoid research. It is about recognizing the real-world impact of legal challenges that could slow or disrupt rescheduling.
A company can be right to demand a lawful process and still raise concerns for the broader industry if the practical effect is more delay.
For Jamaica and the wider Caribbean, there is a lesson here as well.
As our own cannabis industries evolve, we need research, testing, patient safety, and serious medical development. We also need room for licensed operators, farmers, small businesses, traditional knowledge, and patient access. The future cannot be built by copying the worst parts of the American model, where every step forward becomes another fight over who controls the door.
Ganjactivist.com will continue to support cannabinoid research and the development of FDA-approved cannabis medicines. We will also continue to support wider medical cannabis access through regulated, responsible systems.
Those positions should not be in conflict.
Science should help expand the cannabis industry’s possibilities, not narrow them.
And process should protect access, not become another reason to postpone it.
