[PRESS RELEASE] – LONG BEACH, Calif., and TORONTO, July 27, 2026 – Glass House Brands Inc. announced that the company has retained Matt Murphy as an adviser on Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) compliance as it relates to instituting regulations related to interstate commerce and the export of medical cannabis compliant with Schedule III regulatory requirements contained in the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
Murphy is the founder and president of Pharma Compliance Group (PCG), an advisory firm specializing in providing compliance expertise to pharmaceutical companies, assisting them to comply with the regulations related to the CSA and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), enforced by the DEA, as it pertains to pharmaceutical drug manufacturing, wholesale drug distribution and retail pharmacy operations.
Before founding PCG, Murphy had a distinguished 26-year career with the DEA as a Special Agent and regulatory subject-matter expert. Murphy served as the chief of pharmaceutical investigations for the DEA and retired as the assistant special agent in charge in the New England Field Division.
Additionally, from 2017 through 2021, Murphy was the chief compliance officer for Khiron Life Sciences, the first licensed vertically integrated cannabis operator in Colombia and an early supplier of cannabis flower and extracts to Germany and the U.K. During his tenure, Murphy developed Khiron’s compliance and seed to sale tracking program, enabling the company to become Colombia’s first medical cannabis producer to comply with DEA security and compliance protocols.
“Given our scale and low-cost production capabilities, Glass House is uniquely qualified to opportunistically supply cannabis markets outside the state of California and the United States. As we progress in developing new sales channels, there are few, if any people, as uniquely qualified as Matt to assist us with the development of new regulatory compliance processes,” said Kyle Kazan, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Glass House.
“Having lived it for more than two decades, Matt knows the inner workings of the DEA and controlled substance and pharmaceutical-grade compliance, and while at Khiron he experienced the inner workings of compliant cannabis production and distribution,” Kazan said. “At Khiron, Matt achieved much of what we are trying to do – implementing systems to enable the secure distribution of products out of Colombia and into Europe. As we aim to develop and implement track-and-trace processes that comply with existing closed-loop California systems and enable us to distribute outside the state, we will lean on Matt’s experience and expertise. Furthermore, we hope for Matt to be a resource to state and federal regulators, providing a pathway to better understand and implement viable regulatory frameworks resulting in expedited opportunities for interstate commerce and U.S. cannabis export.
"As we look ahead, we aim to compliantly grow cannabis for sale in whatever markets offer us the highest possible price. It is clear that European and U.S. customers outside our home state want our and other California product, and our goal remains to deliver it to them as quickly as possible.”
Murphy said, “At Khiron, in coordination with the Colombian government, we led the development of Khiron’s comprehensive seed-to-sale compliance and security program, enabling the company to become Colombia’s first licensed medical cannabis producer to implement DEA-comparable controlled substance compliance and security protocols supporting international exports. The Khiron compliance and security plan identified and mitigated all risks related to the traceability of products covering the entire production, distribution, logistics and operations chain, therefore detecting and preventing diversion. The team at Glass House has built a formidable compliance system with its current California operations. I look forward to advising the team on the implementation of new tools and systems that can simultaneously adhere to and align with the criteria of additional regulated markets.”
