Cannabis Lawyer | HLG

You signed the purchase agreement in March. The state still has not approved anything. Your buyer is antsy, your seller wants out, and somebody finally asks the question that keeps cannabis deals up at night: can you operate dispensary while license transfer pending approval? Yes — somebody has to. The store cannot go dark for six months. But the moment the <...

Congress just bought the hemp industry twenty-nine more days. That is the entire substance of the hemp ban delay that cleared the House on September 1, 2026 by a 370-48 vote: the Section 781 restrictions that would have wiped out most of the intoxicating hemp market on November 12 now land on December 11 instead. The Senate had already blessed it 90-6 back in...

If your plan is to sell Illinois cannabis license rights while the license is still conditional, stop reading contracts and read this first. You cannot sell Illinois cannabis license interests at the conditional stage — not the license, not an ownership interest in the entity holding it, and not a slice of control dressed up as a management agreement. IDFPR’s...

An Illinois dispensary change of ownership is not a private transaction between a buyer and a seller. You can sign the cleanest purchase agreement in the state, fund escrow, and shake hands — and still own nothing. In Illinois, the regulator approves the deal, not the parties. Every Illinois dispensary change of ownership runs through the Illinois Department ...

Every cannabis operator eventually asks the same question in the same tone of voice: “I own a licensed dispensary worth several million dollars — why can nobody lend against it?” The short answer is that a cannabis license as collateral is not the clean asset it looks like on a balance sheet. It is a revocable government privilege that usually cannot be pledg...