NEW YORK, NY / ACCESS Newswire / December 18, 2025 / Federal reform, if it lands as expected, is not the "green light" many traders are pricing. It is the beginning of federal-grade accountability. Recent reporting suggests President Trump may move toward reclassifying cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III, a shift that changes the tone from cultural debate to regulatory framework.

That matters because Schedule III is not a free pass. It is a category built around accepted medical use and a defined risk profile, with rules that are designed to reduce ambiguity, not tolerate it.

If cannabis is about to be governed more like medicine than a lifestyle product, the winners will not be the loudest brands. They will be the companies that can prove what they sell, where it came from, what happened to it, and who touched it.

The Reality of Change

Federal involvement does not remove complexity from cannabis. It formalizes it. Once cannabis enters a federal framework, documentation, chain of custody, and verification stop being optional best practices and become structural requirements.

The industry has operated for years inside a patchwork of state systems that rely heavily on declarations, labels, and after-the-fact reporting. That approach does not scale to federal oversight. Regulators do not audit marketing language. They audit systems.

Standardization is where many operators will struggle, not because they lack intent, but because their infrastructure was never designed for continuous, defensible proof.

Where Cannabis Breaks Down is Where SMX Starts

Cannabis is not a single product. It is genetics, cultivation methods, batch variation, extraction processes, formulation, testing, packaging, and distribution across jurisdictions with conflicting rules.

That complexity is precisely where traditional compliance systems fail. Labels can be swapped. Records can be reconciled later. Digital logs can look clean while physical reality diverges.

SMX (NASDAQ:SMX) was built for this exact problem. Its technology attaches food-grade molecular identity and verification at the material level, allowing products to carry a persistent truth layer as they move through the supply chain. With it, compliance no longer depends on trust or declarations. It depends on verification.

Seed-to-Sale Becomes Evidence-to-Sale

As federal standards take shape, the expectation becomes simple and unforgiving: show your work. Not in a spreadsheet after the fact, not in a marketing claim, but as a continuous, auditable record that travels with the product.

That shift favors systems that reduce friction between growers, labs, manufacturers, distributors, and regulators. When proof becomes the currency, the companies that generate it gain leverage across the entire ecosystem.

SMX is already aligned with that reality. Its platform was designed for provenance, traceability, and accountability, the very gaps exposed when an industry moves from state-level tolerance to federal guardrails.

The Winners Will Be Boring in the Right Ways

In other words, SMX is again in the right place at the right time to seize a global opportunity. Markets tend to react to cannabis reform headlines with excitement. Regulators react with checklists. Those perspectives rarely overlap.

If cannabis is reclassified, the narrative quickly shifts toward medical framing, research pathways, controlled distribution, and risk management. Hype fades. Infrastructure matters.

SMX fits that future because it does not sell stories. It sells immutable molecular-level verification. And as cannabis enters its most consequential phase yet, verification is no longer a feature. It is the business model.

About SMX

As global businesses face new and complex challenges relating to carbon neutrality and meeting new governmental and regional regulations and standards, SMX is able to offer players along the value chain access to its marking, tracking, measuring and digital platform technology to transition more successfully to a low-carbon economy.

Forward-Looking Statements

The information in this press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expectations, hopes, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. In addition, any statements that refer to projections, forecasts or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking statements. The words "anticipate," "believe," "contemplate," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intends," "may," "will," "might," "plan," "possible," "potential," "predict," "project," "should," "would" and similar expressions may identify forward-looking statements, but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. Forward-looking statements in this press release may include, for example: matters relating to the Company's fight against abusive and possibly illegal trading tactics against the Company's stock; successful launch and implementation of SMX's joint projects with manufacturers and other supply chain participants of steel, rubber and other materials; changes in SMX's strategy, future operations, financial position, estimated revenues and losses, projected costs, prospects and plans; SMX's ability to develop and launch new products and services, including its planned Plastic Cycle Token; SMX's ability to successfully and efficiently integrate future expansion plans and opportunities; SMX's ability to grow its business in a cost-effective manner; SMX's product development timeline and estimated research and development costs; the implementation, market acceptance and success of SMX's business model; developments and projections relating to SMX's competitors and industry; and SMX's approach and goals with respect to technology. These forward-looking statements are based on information available as of the date of this press release, and current expectations, forecasts and assumptions, and involve a number of judgments, risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing views as of any subsequent date, and no obligation is undertaken to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they were made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. As a result of a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, actual results or performance may be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Some factors that could cause actual results to differ include: the ability to maintain the listing of the Company's shares on Nasdaq; changes in applicable laws or regulations; any lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on SMX's business; the ability to implement business plans, forecasts, and other expectations, and identify and realize additional opportunities; the risk of downturns and the possibility of rapid change in the highly competitive industry in which SMX operates; the risk that SMX and its current and future collaborators are unable to successfully develop and commercialize SMX's products or services, or experience significant delays in doing so; the risk that the Company may never achieve or sustain profitability; the risk that the Company will need to raise additional capital to execute its business plan, which may not be available on acceptable terms or at all; the risk that the Company experiences difficulties in managing its growth and expanding operations; the risk that third-party suppliers and manufacturers are not able to fully and timely meet their obligations; the risk that SMX is unable to secure or protect its intellectual property; the possibility that SMX may be adversely affected by other economic, business, and/or competitive factors; and other risks and uncertainties described in SMX's filings from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Contact: info@securitymattersltd.com

SOURCE: SMX (Security Matters) Public Limited