Arizona Tribune - June 29th DEA Hearing: The Marijuana Industry That Stole the Word "Medical" Is Now Choking on It

WASHINGTON, DC / ACCESS Newswire / June 17, 2026 / MMJ International Holdings, Inc. (MMJIH), together with its subsidiaries MMJ BioPharma Cultivation, Inc. and MMJ BioPharma Labs, Inc. (collectively, "MMJ"), applied to participate as an aggrieved interested party in the expedited Drug Enforcement Administration hearing commencing June 29, 2026, in Arlington, Virginia, under Docket No. DEA-1362 and Attorney General Order No. 6754-2026.

MMJ says the hearing will force a reckoning the state cannabis industry has spent a decade dodging: a registry card is not a clinical finding, a budtender is not a pharmacist, and a dispensary is not a pharmacy.

"The state marijuana industry stole the word 'medical' and never paid for it," said Duane Boise, President and CEO of MMJ International Holdings. "The FDA does not recognize a $50 pre-roll or a strain-specific tincture as medicine, and it shouldn't. It recognizes Epidiolex, Marinol, and Syndros - products that ran the full gauntlet of Phase I, II, and III trials, with defined pharmacokinetics and documented drug interactions. MMJ has spent more than eight years and substantial capital building exactly that: an active IND program, an FDA Orphan Drug Designation for Huntington's disease, and a DEA-registered analytical laboratory. We did the work the word 'medical' actually requires. The state-licensed industry did not, and AG Order No. 6754-2026 rewards it for skipping every bit of it."

Therapeutic Consumerism Wearing a White Coat

MMJ's position is blunt: state health departments approve access, not efficacy. When a state lists "chronic pain" or "anxiety" as a qualifying condition, that is a sociological decision dressed up as a medical one. There is no large-scale, randomized, placebo-controlled evidence behind the overwhelming majority of products sold under state medical marijuana programs - only variable-potency botanical extracts with strain profiles that shift from harvest to harvest, sold to patients told they are receiving medicine.

"This is therapeutic consumerism wearing a white coat," Boise said. "It is the same linguistic fraud the hemp industry got caught running, except the marijuana industry is committing it with a prescription pad instead of a gas station shelf. Calling an unstandardized plant product 'medicine' without a single clinical trial, dosing standard, or FDA approval behind it isn't an industry - it's a liability the federal government has decided not to look at yet."

MMJ argues AG Order No. 6754-2026 imports this fiction directly into federal law, granting state licensed operators the practical benefits of Schedule III status without requiring a single IND, a single clinical trial, or the manufacturing and diversion controls the Controlled Substances Act demands - the same controls MMJ has spent eight years and substantial capital building, while its own federal applications sit unresolved.

The Legal Exposure Behind the Rule

MMJ's hearing participation will draw on the Department of Justice's February 27, 2025, formal concession - made in MMJ BioPharma Cultivation Inc. v. Bondi (D.R.I., No. 1:24-cv-127) - that the removal protections afforded DEA administrative law judges under 5 U.S.C. § 7521 are unconstitutional. Read together with Axon Enterprise, Inc. v. FTC, 598 U.S. 175 (2023), MMJ argues this concession guts the structural legitimacy of the tribunal hearing the case and supports a stay of the proceeding.

MMJ is also a petitioner in the consolidated D.C. Circuit cases challenging the rescheduling order (Nos. 26-1106, 26-1130, and 26-1136), which raise statutory, treaty, and constitutional objections to AG Order No. 6754-2026, including arguments under the major questions doctrine and the Administrative Procedure Act.

Get Real or Get Out

"MMJ is not anti-marijuana. MMJ is anti-bad-science," Boise said. "Cannabinoids have real therapeutic potential - that's the only reason this company exists. What we will not accept is an industry that calls itself medical to get tax advantages and legal cover while refusing to do a single thing medicine actually requires: prove it works, prove the dose, prove it's safe. The hemp industry died because it chose profit over proof. The marijuana industry is writing the same suicide note right now, just with better packaging and higher taxes. The federal government built a real pathway. MMJ took it. Everyone else needs to get real or get out."

About MMJ International Holdings, Inc.

MMJ International Holdings, Inc., through its subsidiaries MMJ BioPharma Cultivation, Inc. and MMJ BioPharma Labs, Inc., is a pharmaceutical cannabinoid development company pursuing FDA botanical drug development and DEA controlled substance registration exclusively through federal regulatory pathways. MMJ holds an FDA Orphan Drug Designation for Huntington's disease, maintains active Investigational New Drug applications, and operates a DEA Schedule I - registered analytical laboratory.

CONTACT:
Madison Hisey
[email protected]
203-231-8583

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements regarding pending administrative and judicial proceedings, regulatory applications, and anticipated outcomes. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including the outcome of agency adjudication and ongoing litigation, and actual results may differ materially. MMJ undertakes no obligation to update these statements except as required by law.

SOURCE: MMJ International Holdings

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R.Lee--AT