Utah's Medical Cannabis Program Has a Strong Foundation — But It's Not Finished

There's a common narrative about Utah's medical cannabis program: that it's one of the most tightly regulated in the country, and that the regulation itself is the point. In a new op-ed for the Deseret News, our Chief Growth Officer, Narith Panh, agrees with part of that argument — and pushes back on the rest.

The infrastructure is real. Patients access cannabis through medical providers and licensed pharmacies, with testing, labeling, inventory controls, and oversight from the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food built into the system. But infrastructure isn't the same as access, and Narith is direct about where the program still falls short: conditions like insomnia, anxiety, and depression aren't on Utah's current qualifying list, which means patients who could be helped by medical cannabis have no legal way to get it here.

That gap is the center of his argument. Cannabis moving to Schedule III at the federal level in April 2026 has opened up a national conversation about what medical access should look like going forward. Narith's position is that Utah shouldn't treat that as a reason to wait. The state has its own legislature and its own process, and it doesn't need federal rulemaking to tell it which conditions belong on the list. Utah built this program ahead of most of the country the first time. Expanding it, deliberately and through the state's own channels, is how it keeps that position — not by waiting to see what Washington decides.

That's the argument we want to be part of advancing: not that Utah has this solved, but that it has the foundation to do better, and the standing to do it first.

Read Narith's full op-ed in the Deseret News →