Many celebrated finally “legalizing it,” but few could have foreseen the morass that decriminalized cannabis would become.

A vast majority of Americans support some form of legal cannabis. Hemp, which is defined as cannabis containing less than 0.3% of THC Delta-9, has been federally legal in the US since 2018, but when we start talking about medical and recreational cannabis, well, that’s an entirely different game. “Being legal” means a lot of things, and it’s not getting any easier for legitimate cannabis brands.

Legal cannabis is fraught with challenges, even in states that decriminalized cannabis years ago, such as California and Oregon. Cannabis’ continued Schedule I status, except for hemp, puts businesses at several financial disadvantages, and they must operate with additional overhead since interstate commerce is still forbidden. Designers new to cannabis will find a complex legal environment with many regulations crafted around it, some of which are also different in every state.