A brand new part of hashish enforcement is underway—and few within the business are ready. On this visitor submit, activist and hashish enterprise and political advisor Deb Tharp lays out a compelling case that current raids, regulatory pivots, and conservative coverage blueprints like Undertaking 2025 aren’t remoted occasions however a part of a broader, coordinated shift. Her warning to operators? The entice has already been set.
First, this piece isn’t about defending Glass Home. It’s about understanding the forces now surrounding us all.
Watching The Partitions Shut In
Final yr, the way forward for the hashish business was trying fairly bleak in gentle of developments on the time. We noticed that:
- The rescheduling course of would possible be defunded
- The Rohrabacher-Farr Modification can be kneecapped with a 21 U.S.C. 860 carveout
- The brand new Farm Invoice would shut the hemp loophole
- The Chevron overturn would lead to harsher regulatory interpretations below a conservative administration
- We’d see aggressive use of RICO
- Whether or not or not President Trump owns Undertaking 2025, its anti-cannabis mandates can be applied by his administrative appointees.
One yr later, we now have witnessed the writing on the wall change into concrete coverage, and the business crackdowns have begun.
- CJS defunds rescheduling? Confirmed
- Rohrabacher-Farr protections destruction? Yup. Right here’s the 21 U.S.C. 860 carveout on web page 117 line 12. If handed, it will enable hashish enforcement towards all medical operators whatever the Modification based mostly on proximity of their exercise (together with supply) to varsities, faculties, universities, playgrounds, public housing amenities, youth facilities, public swimming swimming pools, or video arcade amenities.
- Hemp ban? It’s on its means — see web page 113 line 10
- Hashish as collateral injury in unrelated crackdowns? We’re seeing precisely that with RICO chatter, and raids on unlawful grows involving undocumented labor, together with the lethal raids at Glass Home.
Now, much more anti-cannabis fervor emerges as:
That is the Heritage Basis’s Undertaking 2025 enforcement roadmap, no query, and immigration plus RICO enlargement will likely be on the forefront of the plan, precisely as they proposed on pages 157 and 587 respectively.
Glass Home’s Political Optics: Bipartisan Crackdown
The current immigration raid on Glass Home is extra than simply an ICE operation. It’s a staging floor for political optics because the US begins to rebrand and repurpose its many investigative arms. Undertaking 2025 makes it express:
“The one investigations not associated to USSS’s protecting operate that brokers ought to pursue can be directed by HSI and relate to monitoring the monetary crimes related to unlawful immigration. This could embrace tracing remittances, any funds which can be used to pay coyotes or the cartels, and funds by companies to unlawful aliens and all different crimes related to unlawful immigration.” (Undertaking 2025, web page 157)
Glass Home’s raid isn’t an aberration. That is the Undertaking 2025 mannequin in motion. That is the check run for turning hashish operators into enforcement targets by linking them to undocumented labor and monetary crimes, even when they’re absolutely state-licensed.
Yesterday, Glass Home Manufacturers acquired immigration and naturalization warrants. As per the regulation, we verified that the warrants had been legitimate and we complied.
Staff had been detained and we’re aiding to supply them authorized illustration.
Glass Home has by no means knowingly violated…
— Glass Home Manufacturers Inc. (@GlassHouseBR) July 11, 2025
Explaining the Nuance
What Heritage/Undertaking 2025 is saying on web page 157-158 is that the USSS has misplaced focus as a result of it’s ‘distracted’ by its twin mission (public safety vs. monetary crimes), and so they suggest:
- Stripping out the monetary investigators fully, and
- Shifting them to ICE/HSI, the place they’ll chase immigration-linked monetary crime reasonably than normal monetary crime.
In different phrases, they’re repurposing federal monetary enforcement to criminalize immigration-related financial exercise. So mainly, USSS’s outdated monetary mission will get axed until that crime connects to undocumented immigrants. In that case? It turns into precedence one.
What They Are Actually Trying For In The Glass Home Raids
Throughout the alcohol prohibition period, the general public misplaced its style for enforcement attributable to collateral injury from violent raids. That is a part of the explanation the feds switched gears and began utilizing different enforcement angles like tax evasion.
Within the case of Glass Home, it’s a brand new area, however the identical tactic within the face of misplaced political capital from violent raids. Right here’s what the federal brokers are actually on the lookout for:
- Labor Practices – Glass Home employs lots of of staff, many seasonal or contract, and HSI accuses them of utilizing undocumented farm labor as effectively, a apply that President Trump has okay’ed in current public statements. For this reason we noticed the feedback that hashish is a product, not “legit produce.”
- ICE/HSI can also be investigating:
-
- Housing situations linked to “labor trafficking” accusations
- Using unaccompanied, undocumented minors in hashish processing
- Glass Home actually does have a historical past of labor tensions, doable union suppression, and so they make a really juicy goal for federal investigators.
To be clear, nobody is arguing that it’s dangerous to implement towards human trafficking and baby labor. Moderately, this data explains the optics of the upcoming business crackdowns and the way the business will likely be framed in gentle of this and comparable conditions to return.
How can affordable liberals decry the conservative crackdown on hashish if it’s addressing human trafficking? They will’t, they shouldn’t, and so they gained’t.
Whether or not it’s intentional or not, the top end result would be the similar – the business will undergo from guilt by affiliation and a devolving public narrative whereas the anti-cannabis conservatives chip away at affected person protections and states’ rights.
What We Know So Far
There’s no direct proof that federal redirection to immigration will likely be applied towards hashish as a complete but, however it’s extremely believable. Given the precision of the raids, the anti-cannabis actors getting into the administration, and the erosion of already weak business protections, we’ll see monetary enforcement as effectively. Immigration is simply the PR framing.
Right here’s what we all know up to now:
- HSI (Homeland Safety Investigations) led each Glass Home raids
-
- HSI is the legal investigation arm of ICE, and precisely the place Undertaking 2025 says to switch USSS brokers not centered on bodily safety
- HSI handles monetary crimes and accusations of labor trafficking, a key focus of the Glass Home raid
- Undertaking 2025 explicitly proposes embedding USSS brokers into ICE area places of work.
-
- From web page 157: “USSS brokers stationed exterior of Washington, D.C., needs to be transferred to work in Immigration and Customs Enforcement area places of work the place they’d proceed to be the ‘boots on the bottom’…”
- If applied preemptively (by way of casual coordination or “pilot applications”), this might already be occurring with out public disclosure
- Glass Home raids escalated in sophistication
-
- The second raid concerned multi-jurisdictional warrants, monetary audits, and labor interviews at each websites
- That means intelligence-driven coordination, according to the kind of skillset USSS monetary investigations brokers carry, together with these skilled in cyber, monetary forensics, or high-level menace evaluation
And the optics are nice for anti-cannabis zealots. Republicans get to say they’re powerful on crime, immigration, and corruption. Democrats gained’t defend hashish operators with labor scandals, in order that they’ll keep quiet, offering no political defend for the business.
This creates bipartisan silence whereas the enforcement machine rolls ahead…all whereas your entire business operates in monetary gray areas with no banking protections what-so-ever.
What Can the Trade Do to Put together?
The unhappy actuality right here is that the business wants to organize yesterday for this apparent monetary and immigration-related crackdown. However most hashish business operators are nonetheless grappling with the realities of operating a legit, state-licensed enterprise — which is flatly unimaginable to do profitably below present regulatory paradigms. So, as they’ve in different circumstances, most operators will:
- Lawyer up
- Quietly pay fines
- Maintain funneling product by way of aspect channels
- And nonetheless refuse to unify or foyer for systemic reform
So the cycle continues with compliance theater on the floor, black market habits beneath, till the following bust — which means a vicious cycle of extra raids, asset seizures, and immigration actions by way of this administration. We will anticipate to see:
- Large business contraction as mid-size gamers collapse below enforcement prices
- Banking reform dies quietly, buried below headlines about labor violations and human trafficking ties
- Public sentiment turns towards the business because it turns into related to abuse and crime, not wellness or fairness
Doable Paths Ahead (If We Are Severe About Survival)
If the business desires to outlive as a complete, operators want to wash home instantly. The actions of a number of non-compliant actors will solid aspersions on the business as a complete and set our public opinion positive factors again for years.
- Repair labor practices. Finish the pretend LPAs, pay time beyond regulation, cease misclassifying staff
- Finish the distro shell video games
- Have interaction in actual lobbying, not simply lip service
- Push for banking reform like our survival relies on it, as a result of it does
- Push for a sane state/federal framework for this business
- Put together your staff for federal raids with ASA Raid Preparedness Coaching
If we don’t battle for our survival and legitimacy now, we’ll lose a long time of momentum within the face of the upcoming PR onslaught.
Is there a means ahead? Sure, however it’s closing quick, and the window is razor-thin. Most operators won’t take the exhausting path of reform and advocacy. They’ll roll the cube, get caught, and feed the enforcement/damaging PR machine.
The hashish business as a complete is standing in the course of a authorized minefield whereas pretending the map isn’t actual. They gained’t come for the crops. They’ll come for the payrolls, the contracts, and the backdoor offers. So, if you happen to suppose this stops with Glass Home, you’re not paying consideration. The entice is ready. The set off’s been pulled and we stand or fall collectively – as a complete – whether or not we need to or not.
