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SXSW Is Taking Votes On Dozens Of Marijuana And Psychedelics Panel Proposals For 2026 Festival
Voting is now open for panels to be part of next year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, allowing anyone with an opinion to weigh in on what topics the event covers and whose views are featured onstage.
And once again, like in past years, there are dozens of marijuana- and psychedelics-related panels up for consideration.
There are 16 proposed panels touching on cannabis and more than 40 on psychedelics, though that’s a decline compared to what’s been offered in recent years.
The marijuana-focused proposals fall into broad categories such as culture, criminal justice, agriculture and business.
Overall, the drug policy panels run the gamut—with discussions on the need for marijuana clemency, putting cannabis products in convenience stores, the therapeutic potential of ibogaine to treat head trauma in athletes and even a psychedelic “puppet show.”
Here are summaries of some of the noteworthy panels being considered for SXSW 2026:
Marijuana
Cannabis Prisoners in the Era of Legalization, featuring Last Prisoner Project’s Stephanie Shephard and former NFL player Ricky Williams
As cannabis becomes legal across the country, tens of thousands of Americans remain incarcerated for the same plant. This panel brings together advocates and directly impacted leaders—Ricky Williams and Stephanie Shepard—to examine the state of cannabis legalization, expose how cannabis prisoners are being left behind, and offer solutions. From clemency to re-entry, the panel will share strategies to ensure justice is at the center of cannabis reform, not just profit.
C-Stores and the Mainstream-ification of Cannabis
Cannabis is no longer confined to dispensaries and head shops—it’s riding shotgun at the local gas station. From THC beverages and gummies to hemp pre-rolls and vapes, convenience stores are becoming the frontline of cannabis normalization. This panel will explore how C-Stores are becoming the unlikely accelerators of the cannabis industry’s march toward mainstream acceptance. We’ll examine the intersection of regulation, retail innovation, and consumer demand-and what this means for CPG investors, functional beverage brands, and legacy cannabis players eyeing broader distribution.
The Censored Playbook: Marketing When You Can’t Advertise, featuring David Downs
Marketing in industries like cannabis, psychedelics, and sexual wellness means playing a high-stakes game of strategy, creativity, and compliance. With mainstream advertising channels off-limits and social media platforms quick to censor, how can brands in regulated spaces break through the noise without breaking the rules? This panel brings together leading marketers from highly regulated industries to explore how to build brand credibility, navigate evolving legal landscapes, and engage audiences through education-first content, community-building, and boundary-pushing creative campaigns.
Marijuana & Monopolies: The Fight for Free & Fair Markets, featuring Shaleen Title, founder of the Parabola Center
This panel explores the risks and consequences of monopolization within markets through the lens of America’s evolving cannabis industry. Leaders engaged in the fight against monopolies will provide a closer look at their process for implementing regulatory frameworks designed to ensure emerging industries are built on a foundation of fair competition; opportunities for small businesses and entrepreneurs across all communities; and the empowerment of consumers through true choice in how they spend their money.
The Wellness Revolution: Living and Leading For Good, featuring JoJo Simmons, Andrew DeAngelo & Steve DeAngelo
Join JoJo Simmons, host of the acclaimed For Good Podcast, for a live and candid conversation with legendary cannabis reformers Steve & Andrew DeAngelo. They’ll explore the evolving role of cannabis and psychedelics in a wellness-driven future focused on health, inclusion, and liberation for historically marginalized communities. With decades of advocacy, innovation, and healing behind them, the DeAngelo brothers offer a powerful lens on what it truly means to live—and lead—for good. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to listen, learn, and grow with two of the movement’s most influential voices.
Psychedelics
The Psychedelic Puppet Show: Tripping Down the Art Hole, featuring Paul Stamets
Get ready to tumble down the rabbit hole in the trippiest way possible! The Psychedelic Puppet Show is a panel extravaganza featuring visionary artists, mischievous puppets, and wild stories collected from global psychedelic communities. We’ll discuss tales, and creative explorations—with felt, foam, and far-out ideas—to spotlight the future of psychedelic art, celebrate the storytellers behind the scenes, and ensure that artists are paid as well as the mushrooms’ therapist.
Expediting psychedelic research to qualify for Right To Try, featuring Sue Sisley, principal investigator at the Scottsdale Research Institute Field To Healed Foundation
This session explores intersection of psychedelic science & federal Right to Try (RTT) law, which allows patients with life-threatening conditions to access investigational treatments outside of clinical trials. Focusing on ibogaine research for treating PTSD and opioid dependence, session will examine scientific, legal, and ethical considerations involved in making this powerful but under-researched compound accessible under RTT. Experts in medicine, law, policy will discuss current state of ibogaine research, pathways to FDA authorization, how to qualify ibogaine for compassionate use.
Building Bridges: Psychedelics and Conflict Transformation, featuring Rick Doblin, president and founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)
In a world plagued by polarization, division, rupture, and war, could psychedelic-assisted therapy help build bridges? While not a panacea for complex, systemic issues, psychedelics, when used carefully in therapeutic settings, may support willing participants on the road to repair. Explore the potential of MDMA-assisted therapy in conflict transformation—across ideologies, identities, and borders, and in couples therapy. Discover international efforts at MAPS and beyond aimed not at simple solutions, but at nuanced processes of transformation.
What Psychedelics Reveal About Creating Anything, featuring the University of California San Francisco’s Robin Carhart-Harris and Zoe Wilder
This panel explores how insights from psychedelic experiences can inspire innovative design approaches to today’s social, environmental, and existential challenges. Psychedelics teach us that set and setting—our mindset and environment—shape every outcome. As non-specific amplifiers, they show how context influences experience. What if we applied this to creativity? Drawing from science, design, and culture, we explore how altered states can reframe process and deepen awareness. What if we learned to listen to a river before building space around it?
Ibogaine: A Hail Mary for Pro Athletes with Head Trauma
Concussions and brain injuries are a silent epidemic in pro sports. With few treatment options, many players are now heading to Mexico seeking ibogaine, a powerful psychedelic that is proving to repair the brain. This session brings together pro athletes and clinicians to reveal how ibogaine is emerging as a powerful intervention for traumatic brain injury and what it could mean for the future of care in professional sports, neuroscience, and people with brain injuries and illness once thought irreversible.
Broken Barriers: The Texas Ibogaine Initiative & Its Impact, featuring Texas Rep. Cody Harris (R)
This panel will spotlight the Texas Ibogaine Initiative, a groundbreaking legislative effort aimed at using psychedelic-assisted therapy to address PTSD, TBI, and opioid use disorder among veterans. Attendees will hear from key leaders who made the initiative a reality, including veterans, legislators, and advocates. The session will explore the bipartisan support behind the bill, the science of ibogaine, and the broader national impact of Texas’ leadership in psychedelic policy. This conversation will inspire hope for the future of mental health care for veterans.
Healing the Helpers: Psychedelics, Police & First Responders
Police and first responders carry invisible wounds from years of service – trauma, loss, moral injury–that conventional care often fails to treat. Psychedelics are emerging as transformative therapies for those on the front lines. This panel brings together a former SWAT officer, a retired federal agent, a nonprofit leader, and a pioneering psychedelic treatment provider to explore how ibogaine and other plant medicines are helping first responders reclaim their lives, challenge stigma, and shift the conversation around trauma, resilience, and recovery.
Cosmic Trip: Unlocking the Power of Psychedelics—in Space
Psychedelic drugs like ayahuasca are known for their potential to boost mental health. Can they also treat or even prevent neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, ALS, & Parkinson’s? Could they ease functioning for those with neurodevelopmental conditions like autism & ADHD? Hear from Alysson Muotri, PhD, a scientist who’s taken the question to outer space; an Amazonian indigenous leader who has witnessed the drugs’ transformative power; & a former MTV VJ-turned-psychologist—all of whom are on a quest for answers that spans the globe & beyond.
Rewiring the Brain: Psilocybin and Neurological Healing
Join former NHL player Daniel Carcillo as he shares how psilocybin-assisted therapy helped him overcome traumatic brain injury (TBI) after years of failed treatments. Highlighting real-world cases and emerging clinical research, Daniel discusses psilocybin’s potential to heal TBI, Parkinson’s, and neurodegenerative disorders through neuroplasticity and inflammation reduction. This conversation reveals a hopeful frontier in brain health recovery.
Image element courtesy of Kristie Gianopulos.
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Author: mscannabiz.com
MScannaBIZ for all you Mississippi Cannabis News and Information.
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Newly Posted Texas Medical Marijuana Rules Will Let Doctors Recommend New Qualifying Conditions For Patients
Texas officials are taking another step toward implementing a law to significantly expand the state’s medical marijuana program—posting a draft of proposed rules to let physicians recommend new qualifying conditions for cannabis and create standards for allowable inhalation devices.
The state Health and Human Services Commission is set to formally file the proposed rules next week, and they’ll subsequently be published in the Texas Register, opening up a 31-day public comment period.
This comes about a week after the the Department of Public Safety (DPS) previewed a separate set of rules to increase the number of licensed dispensaries under recently passed legislation.
To comply with the medical marijuana expansion bill that Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed into law in June, DPS will be formally proposing a future licensing application process, security standards for satellite locations and license revocation parameters.
Meanwhile, the new memo published ahead of a Health and Human Services Commission Executive Council meeting scheduled for Thursday, August 21 outlines additional steps that are being taken.
Specifically, the department is proposing rules that “explain how physicians can request to add medical conditions to the list, set standards for pulmonary inhalation medical devices prescribed under the program, and establish a timeline for reviewing and approving such devices.”
Under the rule, doctors would submit recommended medical cannabis qualifying conditions to the Department of State Health Services (DSHS), which would then forward the recommendation to DPS. That department would be tasked with submitting the request to lawmakers for consideration in the next legislative session.
The rules must be finalized by October 1, 2025.
In addition to increasing the number of dispensaries, revising physician recommendation policies and setting standards for vaping devises, the law signed by the governor also expands the state’s list of medical cannabis qualifying conditions to include chronic pain, traumatic brain injury (TBI), Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory bowel diseases, while also allowing end-of-life patients in palliative or hospice care to use marijuana.
That policy change will be automatically adopted via the enacted statute when the law takes effect on September 1, so it will not require further rulemaking.
DPS, for its part, will ultimately be issuing 12 new licenses for dispensaries across the state. Currently there are only three. The additional licensees will go through a competitive process, with officials prioritizing Texas’s public health regions to optimize access.
The first round of licenses will be awarded to nine of 139 applicants who submitted their forms during an earlier application window in 2023. DPS will select those nine licensees on December 1. The 2023 applicants that didn’t receive a license, as well as any new prospective licensees, will have another shot at getting their license during a second round where awardees will be announced on April 1, 2026.
The 2023 group can still revise their applications up until September 15. New would-be dispensary owners have until that date to submit their applications as well.
The Department of Public Safety has separately previewed future rulemaking to comply with the medical marijuana expansion law.
That includes proposals to establish “security requirements for dispensing organization satellite locations if approved by the department,” creating rules to revoke licenses for dispensaries that fail to dispense cannabis within two years of a license issuance and setting a timeline for “reviewing and taking action on dispensing organization licenses.”
Meanwhile, Texas lawmakers took up a bill on Wednesday that would ban consumable hemp products containing THC. But despite the committee hearing being held, the legislation isn’t expected to advance during an ongoing special session as Democratic state lawmakers continue to deny the House a quorum to pass any measures amid a conflict over proposed redistricting.
The House bill, a companion to an identical Senate-passed hemp proposal, was discussed during a lengthy meeting of the House Public Health Committee, which is able to conduct business despite the broader lack of quorum in the chamber. While the governor has threatened prosecution or dismissal of absent Democratic members, the walkout hasn’t shown signs of relenting.
Time is running short in the special session the governor convened to address a series of outstanding issues, including legislation related to hemp cannabinoid products. Abbott vetoed an earlier version of the controversial ban that passed during this year’s regular session, and he recently outlined what he’d like to see in a revised version of the bill.
The governor and legislative leaders have since affirmed that, if Democrats members don’t show up and establish a quorum by Friday, they will end the current special session and start a new one. Under the state constitution, special sessions cannot last longer than 30 days, but there is no limit to how many can be called.
At a press conference last month, a group of Democratic state senators introduced two new cannabis-related bills, including one that would regulate the hemp market, allowing adults 21 and older to purchase hemp products containing no more than 5 mg of THC per serving.
A second new bill would effectively legalize cannabis for adult use by removing criminal penalties for possession of up to two ounces of marijuana on a person and up to 10 ounces in a single household if it’s secure and out of sight. Cultivation of up to six plants, only half of which could be mature, would also be legalized.
The governor, who during the state’s regular legislative session this year vetoed a similar hemp product ban, SB 3, has also backed the idea of limiting THC potency and prohibiting sales to minors rather than outlawing products entirely.
Under the current Senate-passed proposal, consumable hemp products with any amount of THC—or any other cannabinoid besides CBD and CBG—would be illegal. Even mere possession would be punishable as a Class B misdemeanor, carrying up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine.
Some advocates are hopeful that either SB 5 or its House counterpart could see revisions as they make their way through the legislative process—either to affirmatively regulate the hemp market or to at least ease some of the criminal penalties on individuals found in possession of the affected products.
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Separately, Rep. Nicole Collier (D) introduced a one-page bill, HB 42, designed to protect consumers in the state from criminal charges if what they believed was a legal hemp product turned out to contain excessive amounts of THC, making it illegal marijuana. It would prevent the criminalization of someone found in possession of a product that’s labeled as hemp but is determined to contain “a controlled substance or marihuana.”
In order for the person to obtain the legal protection, the product would need to have been purchased “from a retailer the person reasonably believed was authorized to sell a consumable hemp product.”
Another bill—HB 195, introduced by Rep. Jessica González (D)—would legalize marijuana for people 21 and older, allowing possession of up to 2.5 ounces of cannabis, with no more than 15 grams of that amount being in concentrated form.
Yet another proposal would order state officials to conduct a study on testing for THC intoxication.
As for what Texans themselves want to see from their representatives, proponents of reining in the largely unregulated intoxicating hemp industry in Texas shared new polling data indicating that majorities of respondents from both major political parties support outlawing synthetic cannabinoids, such as delta-8 THC.
The survey also found that respondents would rather obtain therapeutic cannabis products through a state-licensed medical marijuana program than from a “smoke shop selling unregulated and untested hemp.”
Ahead of the governor’s veto in June of SB 3—the earlier hemp product ban—advocates and stakeholders had delivered more than 100,000 petition signatures asking Abbott to reject the measure. Critics argued that the industry—which employs an estimated 53,000 people—would be decimated if the measure became law.
Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.
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Author: mscannabiz.com
MScannaBIZ for all you Mississippi Cannabis News and Information.
The age old search for youth may have a new direction – marijuana
The fight to stay young and healthy has been going on for hundreds if not thousands of years. Billions have been spent, but now there is a new twist – can cannabis help make the brain younger. In the age of biohacking and wellness trends, millennials juggling Zoom fatigue and daily stress are asking: can cannabis do more than chill us out—might it actually make our brains feel younger?
RELATED: Marijuana Might Be A Better Hurricane Party Guest
Preclinical research has shown striking results: in older mice, low-dose THC boosted synaptic connectivity and improved memory, seemingly reversing age-linked cognitive decline.
On the human front, a controlled trial at Johns Hopkins and Tufts used dronabinol—a synthetic THC—in 75 Alzheimer’s patients experiencing agitation. Over three weeks, a twice-daily 5 mg dose reduced agitation by about 30% and was better tolerated than traditional antipsychotics.
However, when it comes to cognitive effects in healthy or aging adults, the data is more mixed. A JAMA Network Open study tracked 57 new medical cannabis users for a year using fMRI scans. The result? No meaningful changes in working memory, reward processing, or inhibitory control—good news for safety-minded users.
But another large-scale imaging study found among young adults (ages 22–36), heavy cannabis users showed reduced brain activation during working memory tasks—63% in lifetime users and 68% in recent users.
Long-term studies add nuance: a Danish cohort study followed over 5,000 men from young adulthood to their 60s and found no greater cognitive decline among cannabis users—in fact, users showed slightly less IQ decline than non-users
RELATED: Science Says Medical Marijuana Improves Quality Of Life
What Does It All Mean for the average person?
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Dronabinol may soothe brain agitation in Alzheimer’s patients—a meaningful bump in quality of life for patients and caregivers Johns Hopkins Medicine.
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Medical cannabis over a year doesn’t appear to disrupt key cognitive functions in healthy adults, based on fMRI measures.
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Heavy recreational use, especially among the younger crowd, may impair working memory and brain activity in imaging studies
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Long-term cognitive aging trends may not suffer—and could potentially fare better—in users, according to a large Danish study.
While animal studies highlight a fascinating possibility—THC under tightly controlled, low doses might rewind aspects of brain aging— human trials are still in early stages. For Alzheimer’s-related agitation, synthetic THC shows real promise. For healthy adults, cannabis appears neurologically safe over a year. Yet, heavy habitual use—particularly among younger individuals—may carry cognitive costs. Conversely, long-term cognitive aging does not seem accelerated among users—and might even be subtly mitigated.
Author: mscannabiz.com
MScannaBIZ for all you Mississippi Cannabis News and Information.
[PRESS RELEASE] – NORTHFIELD VILLAGE, Ohio, Aug. 15, 2025 – Klutch Cannabis, one of Ohio’s leading vertically integrated cannabis companies, announced the grand opening of its newest dispensary, located at 10650 Northfield Road in Northfield Village, Ohio. Doors will officially open at 10 a.m. Aug. 21, 2025.
The new location marks Klutch’s first dispensary in Summit County, where the company is headquartered. Conveniently situated directly across the street from the MGM Northfield Park Casino and Racetrack, the dispensary is easily accessible from Route 8 and I-271, finally bringing much-needed access to medical cannabis patients and adult-use consumers in Northern Summit County communities, including Northfield Village, Macedonia, Northfield Center Township, Twinsburg, Hudson, Sagamore Hills, Boston Township, Richfield Township, Bath Township, and more.
The expansion further solidifies Klutch’s retail footprint in Northeast Ohio and represents an important milestone as the company begins delivering its renowned top-shelf products on its home turf. Offerings will include exclusive drops and limited releases along with customer favorites from the company’s Klutch Cannabis and Habitat by Klutch lines, its Ohio-exclusive brand partners, and other Ohio cannabis companies. The Northfield dispensary will also feature Klutch’s signature aesthetic and exceptional customer service, as well as a convenient drive-thru pickup window for pre-orders.
Hours of operation for the new Northfield Village location will be:
- 10 a.m. to 10:45 p.m. Thursday through Saturday
- 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday
“We’re incredibly excited to expand Klutch Cannabis’s retail footprint to Summit County,” Klutch founder and CEO Adam Thomarios said. “This location has been years in the making and will finally provide patients and adult-use customers in Northern Summit County with access to the quality, care, and consistency that Klutch is known for. Our thanks go out, especially, to the community, administration, and officials in Northfield Village for being such great partners from the start. The Village is a great place to do business, and we can’t wait to start making a positive impact in the community.”
For more information about Klutch Cannabis, its dispensaries, and its award-winning products, visit KlutchCannabis.com and HabitatbyKlutch.com or follow @KlutchxCommunity and @HabitatbyKlutch on Instagram.
Author: mscannabiz.com
MScannaBIZ for all you Mississippi Cannabis News and Information.
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