From the blog

Nov 12, Dec 11, or Neither? Every Date on Your Florida Dispensary's Q4 Compliance Calendar [2026]

August 17, 2026

Update — September 3, 2026: The biggest open date on this calendar is settled. The House passed H.R. 6500 on September 1, 370–48, and the President signed it September 2: most federal hemp-THC restrictions now take effect December 11, with products containing cannabinoids the plant can't naturally produce still losing hemp status November 12. The table and hemp section below are updated; full countdown playbook: the hemp ban date is final — here's the 14-week plan.

Between today and New Year's, at least five separate regulatory triggers will land on Florida dispensaries — and not one of them arrives on a date you control. The federal hemp ban now takes effect December 11 (most products) and November 12 (synthetic cannabinoids) — settled by the funding bill signed September 2. The DEA's rescheduling judge now has everything he needs to issue a recommendation, on no particular schedule. Twenty-two new MMTC licenses could issue any week. The rules that have governed the program since 2017 are being rewritten into permanent form, comment window by comment window. And Tallahassee's committee weeks start this fall.

You can't plan a quarter around debates. You can plan one around triggers: for each date, decide now what changes in your store the day it hits, so the news lands on an execution day instead of a meeting. This page is that calendar — what's coming, what each item actually changes for an operator, and the screen-level move for each one. We'll keep it updated as dates resolve.

The calendar at a glance

When	What	Status (Sep 3)
Since Jul 27	Registry blocks card renewals without a current certification	Live
Aug 17	Rescheduling briefing record closes	Done — DEA's own brief urged Schedule III
Sep 2	Hemp-delay bill signed into law	Done — H.R. 6500 signed; date settled
Oct 15	Square's deadline: hemp/CBD items off seller catalogs	Fixed
Any week	Final order on 22 new MMTC licenses	Overdue
Rolling	OMMU permanent-rulemaking comment windows	Underway, rule by rule
Nov 12	Cannabinoids not naturally producible by the plant lose hemp status	Fixed — the delay doesn't cover these
Dec 11	Main hemp-THC restrictions take effect	Fixed — signed into law Sep 2
Dec 11	Government funding expires — next appropriations fight	Same day as the hemp date
Fall → Mar 2027	Committee weeks, then the 2027 session	Committee weeks begin this fall

Now the detail — in the order the dates arrive.

Already in effect: the July 27 renewal rule is quietly costing you regulars

The one item on this calendar that's already live. Since July 27, the Medical Marijuana Use Registry won't let a patient complete a card renewal without a current or scheduled physician certification with open orders. The failure happens early and silently — a patient gets stopped mid-application, doesn't notice until the card lapses, and simply stops showing up. With card and certification clocks running on different cycles, this compounds all quarter. The screen move is a standing one: keep a "check your certification date before you renew" slide in rotation with a QR to the Registry. It costs you one slot and protects repeat revenue every single day of Q4.

August 17: the rescheduling record is closed. Now comes the quiet part.

Update, Aug 24: the briefs are in — and the DEA's own attorneys urged Judge Julius to "expeditiously recommend" moving marijuana to Schedule III, arguing it "can no longer remain in Schedule I." The agency that spent the hearing looking adversarial is now formally on record for the transfer.

August 17 was the deadline for parties in the DEA's marijuana rescheduling proceeding to file post-hearing briefs — optional, up to 50 pages — along with corrections to the hearing transcripts. That closes the evidentiary record. From here, Chief ALJ Derek Julius issues a recommended decision on whether marijuana broadly moves to Schedule III. There is no deadline for that recommendation; most observers expect late 2026. It's advisory — the DEA Administrator makes the final call after that.

What operators sometimes miss: the operational change already happened. The April 23 order placed state-licensed medical marijuana in Schedule III months ago, with the 280E tax relief that follows — we covered what that changes day to day. What's left in this docket is the broader question, and for a Florida MMTC the honest calendar entry is: expect a headline sometime this quarter or next, expect customers to ask about it the same day, and have the "what this means here" answer ready. That answer belongs on your waiting-room screen before it's in the group chat.

September 2: the House voted, the President signed — your biggest date of the year is set

Resolved, September 3: this was the hinge of the quarter, and it swung. The House passed H.R. 6500 on September 1, 370–48 — the same bill the Senate approved 90–6 in August — and the President signed it into law September 2. Most federal hemp-THC restrictions now take effect December 11; products with cannabinoids not naturally producible by the plant still lose hemp status November 12. The White House has signaled no further extensions — and note the bill funds the government only through December 11, so the ban's effective date and the next funding fight share a deadline.

What's still genuinely open is the shape, not the date: Congress bought the month explicitly as time to negotiate a regulatory framework — age limits, testing, packaging instead of the 0.4 mg cap — and bills like the Beverage Regulatory Parity Act are circulating. Plan for the law as written; treat a framework deal as upside to react to, not a scenario to build around.

The operator move: the go-date variable is filled. Two-stage campaign — soft launch around November 12's narrower non-naturally-producible exit, full push for December 11. The week-by-week version is in the countdown playbook.

One date on this calendar, though, doesn't answer to that vote at all: October 15, when Square requires its sellers to pull every hemp and CBD item from their catalogs — whatever Congress does. The payments layer moving early means hemp retail starts contracting, and displaced customers start shopping around, weeks before any legal deadline.

Any week: the 22-license final order starts a 180-day clock

Florida's long-delayed final order on 22 new MMTC licenses was projected for June or July. It's now simply "any week" — and when it lands, two things happen at once. The winners (whose identities may still shuffle, after an ALJ recommended score adjustments for eight petitioners) start a clock of roughly 180 days to request cultivation authorization. And every existing operator's competitive map changes on paper the same afternoon.

If you're an incumbent, the calendar entry is simple: the day the order issues is a news-cycle day in this industry, and your customers will read "nearly double the licenses" without the context that new stores are a year-plus away. If you're a license winner reading this — the tech checklist linked above was written for you, and your 180 days go faster than you think.

Rolling all quarter: the rules become permanent, and you get a say — briefly

Since 2017, Florida's program has run on emergency rules. That era is ending: OMMU is converting its emergency rules to permanent ones through standard APA rulemaking — licensure renewal, seed-to-sale tracking, dosing limits, and, most relevant to what your store displays: trade names and logos, packaging and labeling, and website purchasing. Proposed rules and workshop notices are appearing in the Florida Administrative Register under Chapter 64-4, each with its own comment window.

Two reasons this belongs on an operator's calendar and not just a lawyer's. First, comment windows are finite — this is the first real chance since 2017 to shape the display and branding rules you live under, including the regime we mapped in the marketing-rules guide. Second, when a permanent rule takes effect, it takes effect everywhere at once — and if it touches what menus may display, screens are the only menu layer that can comply fleet-wide the same day.

November 12, no matter what: the synthetic carve-out

Whatever happens in September, products containing cannabinoids that can't be naturally produced by the cannabis plant lose federal hemp status on November 12 — the Senate's delay explicitly doesn't cover them. A slice of the gas-station shelf near you goes away on the original date regardless, which means an early, smaller wave of displaced customers ahead of the main one. That's your soft-launch date: the switcher campaign's first stage runs in November even in the delay scenario.

This fall through March 2, 2027: Tallahassee gets its turn

Florida's Legislature set its 2027 session dates: interim committee weeks begin this fall, and the regular session convenes March 2, 2027. Whatever survives Congress in September, the state-level response — aligning Florida's hemp statutes with the federal definition, or filling whatever gap Congress leaves — takes shape in those committee rooms first. If your Q4 goes according to plan and you capture the switcher wave, Q1's job is keeping those customers through whatever Tallahassee does next. Committee-week agendas are the early warning.

Running a store off triggers, not debates

Put the eight rows above on one page — this one — and the quarter gets simpler, because every row resolves to the same operating discipline:

Decide the change before the date. For each trigger, the day it fires should be an execution day. What slide goes up when the rescheduling recommendation drops? What does the menu emphasize the week the hemp date settles? Write those answers in August, not in the news cycle.

Make the date a field, not a fact. Half this calendar is dates that can move. On a digital menu system, a moved date is a dashboard edit; on printed signage, it's a reprint per location. When three of your five triggers are decided in Washington on nobody's schedule, the cost of being current should be zero.

Keep one honest slide up all quarter. "The rules around cannabis are changing this fall — ask us what it means for you" is accurate on every date in every scenario, and it makes your staff the people with answers.

The quarter ahead is unusually dense with dates someone else controls. The stores that come out of it ahead won't be the ones that guessed the outcomes right — they'll be the ones for whom no outcome required a scramble. If re-pointing every screen in your fleet the day one of these triggers fires sounds hard with your current setup, that's the part we do. See how GreenScreens works or get a demo — we'll show you a live store.

This article reflects the regulatory calendar as of September 3, 2026, and is general information for dispensary operators, not legal advice. Several of these dates are set by pending legislation or agency action and can move — we update this page as they resolve, but confirm current effective dates with your counsel before acting.