Lately I wake up almost every night around 1 AM and stay awake for hours.
Not from anxiety or restlessness in the ordinary sense, but with a clear, alert presence. The house is quiet. The world outside is sleeping. And my mind turns, as it has for years, to the intricate architecture of federal drug policy and the slow, grinding movement toward meaningful exemptions for medical cannabis patients.
In spiritual terms, the 1–3 AM window is often described as a time when the veil is thinner — when deeper signals, unresolved collective energies, and personal assignments surface. For someone who has spent nearly two decades mapping the Controlled Substances Act’s exemption mechanisms, preemption battles, and state-federal conflicts, these wakeful hours feel less like insomnia and more like being placed on watch. While much of the broader weed movement cycles through hype, disappointment, and short-term tactical wins, something in the deeper architecture keeps pulling me awake right now — especially as the DEA rescheduling hearings approach.¹
This is not new. Since at least 2011, I have been documenting and analyzing the core structural problem that most of the movement treated as secondary:
This Arizona lawsuit alerted me to rebel, by studying law and putting on a suit ($420, Calvin Klein, purchased with student loans). I trained in DC, (shoutout Young Americans for Liberty and Leadership Institute alumni) turned down campaign manager job offers, turned down a national profile from Students for Liberty, and left with a Rolodex of people who now are congressional chiefs of staff and insiders at high levels. (SFL wanted to promote my work on federal exemptions for the cannabis industry in 2011 by doing a national story on me and that life goal and I told them that would alert opposition and to let me cook silently instead and I’d keep everyone in the loop behind the scenes. Minnesota, I explained, had changed the laws to remove our ability to work on federal exemption and I didn’t want any other state rigging the system against us again. So, using existing laws quietly, with trained advocates without alerting the wrong people, was the play. It worked. Now we all get to have federal exemption hearings this month with DEA!)
When Arizona sued to stop medical marijuana in 2011, it showed the weed movements criminal negligence – via blocking independent voices from implementing existing legal and workable federal exemption pathways, state medical cannabis programs – would always remain vulnerable, incomplete, and institutionally conflicted.² When Arizona’s medical cannabis law faced a direct preemption challenge from the governor, the dispute centered on the absence of any clear federal exemption mechanism under the Controlled Substances Act.³ Similar fights played out in other states.
While many “advocates” (unprofessional amateurs ignorant of public policy complexities) focused on passing state laws and hoping for lax federal enforcement, WeedPress consistently mapped the deeper legal architecture — 21 U.S.C. § 822(d) exemption authority, treaty obligations, scheduling criteria, and the real mechanics of how federal recognition would eventually have to interact with state programs.⁴
http://leadershipinstitute.org/the-laws-of-the-public-policy-process/
That long vision vigilance…is now bearing partial fruit.
The results speak for themselves:
The April 28, 2026 federal order moved certain FDA-approved and state-regulated medical marijuana products into Schedule III.⁵ For the first time, the federal government has formally recognized accepted medical use and lower abuse potential for categories of marijuana operating under state medical frameworks.
This is the realization of the singularly core focused argument I have advanced since the early 2010s: real medical legitimacy requires navigating federal exemption architecture rather than pretending state law alone could suffice indefinitely.⁶
Yet the broader weed movement largely slept through much of this foundational work. Many voices treated federal issues as abstract or secondary, focusing instead on state-level battles, ballot measures, and personal branding. Meanwhile, the structural tensions — preemption risks, institutional resistance in healthcare facilities, banking barriers, and the persistent Schedule I overhang for home cultivation and non-commercial use — remained unresolved. The result is the current moment: excitement over Schedule III mixed with confusion, compliance cliffs for small operators, and lingering vulnerabilities for the most sick and vulnerable patients.⁷
These 1 AM waking hours feel like a spiritual continuation of that watchman role.
While others rest in their happy place or chase the next five minutes of relevance, the architecture keeps demanding attention. In one intense session I wrote roughly 80,000 words mapping policy implications, exemptions, state conformity mechanisms, and implementation pathways.⁸ Not because it was glamorous, but because the work required it. Those 80,000 words are now the WeedPress Policy Series and are going to be made into a public book published on Amazon so the seven people who care about the truth behind marijuana laws out there can gain insights into what’s been going on from the best person in the country to tell it at this stage.
Our WeedPress team’s obsessive documentation and networking — connections built over years with lawmakers, staffers, researchers, and advocates — is now actively shaping how this transition unfolds. That team is indescribably pure in its community service hours poured into getting this right. Our families are depending on these laws working. If we fail, prison will continue to destroy families for a plant. This isn’t the time for bragging. It is a time for listening alertly. And boy how, is this team got ears in every corner of this new structure of federal exemption for our patients and neighbors….thank, God.
Comin’ from space to teach you of the Pleiades
Can’t stop the spirits when they need you
This life is more than just a read-through
This is my life dream coming true in real time. It’s a thrill to experience. Nerd shame me all you want but I have lived for witnessing federal exemption. The state anarchy cannabis industry was and always will be a shameful repulsive insult to the importance of laws as peace bringing equalizers rather than unneeded conflict. This thrill, is therapeutic. Even better than refereeing semi-professional and NCAA soccer used to be (that was massive fun).
Equal to riding motorcycles around the Dakotas for work, though. That’s never going to get boring.
For nearly two decades this central vision of federal protection for vulnerable patients was not just about chaotic state programs, but watching federal exemption mechanisms inevitably activate so that medical cannabis could function more like legitimate medicine. The DEA hearings, the Schedule III move, the state-level conformity pressures, and the emerging conversations around user-level exemptions are the arena I have studied like a sports-obsessed fan studies every play, statistic, and strategic shift.⁹ The players are moving. The procedures are being tested. And the architecture I have painstakingly mapped since 2011…is finally in motion.
Don’t go telling me using words can’t set wrongs – like setting up nursing home patients for pain and turning grandmothers into federal fucking outlaws to avoid opiate addictions – back to right again.
Spiritually, the consistent 1 AM awakenings feel like confirmation that this chapter requires heightened vigilance. One does not sleep through the critical plays. The work is not finished — nursing home access, home cultivation protections, full Schedule I removal for medical use, and stronger exemption implementation remain open fronts.
But the long game, is paying off. The movement as a whole may – as usual – sleep or celebrate prematurely.
Watchmen stay awake.
WeedPress will continue documenting, analyzing, and pressing – for full realization of what medical cannabis patients were promised.
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men
Well, there’s things that never will be right. I know.
And things need changin’…everywhere you go
But ’til we start to make a move to make a few things right
You’ll never see me wear a suit of white
Ah, I’d love to wear a rainbow every day
And tell the world that everything’s okay
But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back
‘Til things are brighter, I’m the man in black
Footnotes
¹ Traditional and modern intuitive sources often associate the 1–3 AM window with heightened spiritual sensitivity, subconscious processing, and “watchman” assignments. See, e.g., spiritual literature on circadian rhythms and liminal states.
² WeedPress policy analysis series beginning in 2011 examining federal preemption and exemption pathways under the Controlled Substances Act.
³ Arizona gubernatorial challenge to the state’s medical cannabis law, 2011, centered on federal preemption arguments due to the absence of clear exemption mechanisms.
⁴ WeedPress articles and commentary, 2011–present, mapping 21 U.S.C. § 822(d) exemption authority and related CSA provisions. (1500 published articles to date)
⁵ Schedules of Controlled Substances: Rescheduling of Food and Drug Administration Approved Products Containing Marijuana From Schedule I to Schedule III; Corresponding Change to Permit Requirements, 91 Fed. Reg. 22714 (Apr. 28, 2026) (2026-08176).
⁶ WeedPress federal exemption architecture series, 2009–2026. (1500 published articles to date)
⁷ See, e.g., compliance challenges and institutional barriers discussed in post-rescheduling analyses (2026).
⁸ Internal WeedPress documentation and policy drafting sessions mapping rescheduling implications (2026). Various law firms and researchers taught real truth in those meetings.
⁹ Ongoing and unrelenting WeedPress coverage of DEA administrative proceedings, state conformity mechanisms, and exemption implementation pathways.
¹⁰ Iowa Capital Dispatch, “Nursing Home Takes Regulators to Court Over Resident’s Eviction” (June 4, 2026).
¹¹ SDCL 34-20G-22 (pharmaceutical equivalence provisions).
¹² SDCL 34-20G-25.1 (healthcare facility opt-out authority).
¹³ 91 Fed. Reg. 22714, supra note 5.
¹⁴ Carl Olsen, discussion following Beard Bros webinar, June 2026 (on file with author).
¹⁵ SDCL ch. 34-20G (overall framework reflecting prohibition-era constraints).
¹⁶ Federal Register notice establishing June 29, 2026 hearing timeline.
¹⁷ Analysis of post-Schedule III institutional and patient access gaps (2026).
¹⁸ WeedPress documentation of early Arizona preemption litigation and related state-federal conflicts (2011).
¹⁹ 21 U.S.C. § 822(d) (exemption authority).
²⁰ Ongoing monitoring of DEA administrative record and state responses (2026).
²¹ Spiritual and intuitive interpretations of 1 AM wakefulness as heightened vigilance during periods of significant transition.
²² WeedPress federal exemption policy series spanning 2009–2026.
²³ Comparative analysis of state medical cannabis frameworks and federal alignment challenges.
²⁴ Iowa nursing home eviction proceedings involving 91-year-old medical cannabis patient (2024–2026). https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2026/06/04/nursing-home-takes-regulators-to-court-over-residents-eviction/
²⁵ SDCL 34-20G-22 and 34-20G-25.1 (contrasting patient protections and facility discretion).
WeedPress: The Paper Trail 
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