NEW YORK, NY / ACCESS Newswire / December 19, 2025 / Cannabis did not design its infrastructure for permanence. It designed it for speed.

That choice made sense in a fragmented, state-by-state environment where compliance was local, enforcement was uneven, and the priority was getting product to market. What worked then becomes fragile when oversight expands. And fragility is what federal normalization exposes first.

Industries rarely break because demand disappears. They break because their systems cannot tolerate scrutiny.

Cannabis is approaching that point now.

As federal alignment accelerates, the industry is being measured against standards it was never built to meet. Not cultural standards. Operational ones. The kind applied to products that enter the body, cross jurisdictions, and remain regulated long after sale. Food. Medicine. Controlled materials.

In those markets, compliance is not a filing exercise. It is a design constraint.

Why Cannabis Systems Fail Under Pressure

Most cannabis tracking systems were designed to report activity, not defend it. They capture events, but they do not harden them. When oversight is light, that distinction stays hidden. When oversight tightens, it becomes expensive.

Federal regulators expect continuity that survives time. They expect a chain of custody that does not rely on reconstruction. They expect data that matches physical reality without interpretation. These expectations are not unique. They are standard across FDA-regulated supply chains.

Cannabis infrastructure was not built for that level of durability.

As scrutiny increases, gaps that once felt manageable turn into bottlenecks. Audits slow movement. Inconsistencies stall approvals. Compliance costs scale faster than revenue. This is not a failure of intent. It is a failure of architecture.

Identity Is the Missing Control Layer

What regulated industries learn early is that documentation alone cannot carry the burden of proof. Records are only as strong as their connection to the physical product.

This is where identity becomes decisive.

When identity is embedded into materials, compliance stops being reactive. Verification becomes persistent. Systems no longer depend on trust between handoffs or reconciliation after the fact. Physical reality carries its own proof.

This is the problem SMX (NASDAQ:SMX) was built to solve.

Proof Tested Where Failure Is Not Allowed

SMX's technology is not theoretical, and it is not limited to cannabis. The company has already deployed molecular marking in recycled PET plastics used for food-contact applications, operating within FDA Food Contact Substance regulations under 21 CFR.

These are environments where tolerance for error is minimal. Materials must demonstrate origin, composition, and compliance across processing, reuse, and redistribution. Shortcuts do not survive. Systems either hold up or are removed.

Molecular identity allows materials to carry proof that persists through transformation. That capability has enabled recycled plastics to enter regulated, food-contact categories that were previously closed to them.

The relevance to cannabis is structural. Products that interact with the human body are judged by the same logic, regardless of category. Regulators do not evaluate narratives. They evaluate control.

From Flexibility to Discipline

Cannabis is transitioning from an industry optimized for flexibility to one that requires discipline. That shift does not reward the fastest operators. It rewards the most prepared.

As product forms diversify, flower becomes extracts, extracts become formulations, and formulations become derivatives. Each transformation increases compliance complexity. Identity that can survive those changes becomes a competitive asset.

SMX anchors identity at the material level, ensuring verification persists as products evolve. That approach mirrors what already exists in food, pharmaceuticals, and other tightly regulated markets where scrutiny is permanent, not episodic.

Regulatory change is often described as an opportunity. In practice, it acts as a filter.

Industries that scale under oversight do so because their infrastructure anticipated scrutiny rather than reacting to it. Cannabis is moving toward permanence, and the systems that survive will be the ones built for it. SMX is.

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

This information contains forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts, and assumptions regarding future events involving SMX (NASDAQ: SMX), its technologies, its partnership activities, and its development of molecular marking systems for recycled PET and other materials. Forward looking statements are not historical facts. They involve risks, uncertainties, and factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied.

Forward looking statements in this editorial include, but are not limited to, expectations regarding the integration of SMX's molecular markers into U.S. recycling markets; the potential for FDA-compliant markers to enable recycled PET to enter food-grade and other regulated applications; the scalability of SMX solutions across diverse global supply chains; anticipated adoption of identity-based verification systems by manufacturers, recyclers, regulators, or brand owners; the potential economic impact of turning recycled plastics into tradeable or monetizable assets; the expected performance of SMX's Plastic Cycle Token or other digital verification instruments; and the belief that molecular-level authentication may influence pricing, compliance, sustainability reporting, or financial strategies used within the plastics sector.

These forward looking statements are also subject to assumptions regarding regulatory developments; market demand for authenticated recycled content; the pace of corporate adoption of traceability technology; global economic conditions; supply chain constraints; evolving environmental policies; and general industry behavior relating to sustainability commitments and recycling mandates. Risks include, but are not limited to, changes in FDA or international regulatory standards; technological challenges in large-scale deployment of molecular markers; competitive innovations from other companies; operational disruptions in recycling or plastics manufacturing; fluctuations in pricing for virgin or recycled plastics; and the broader economic conditions that influence capital investment and industrial activity.

Detailed risk factors are described in SMX's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements. These statements speak only as of the date of publication. SMX undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward looking statements to reflect subsequent events, changes in circumstances, or new information, except as required by applicable law.

EMAIL: info@securitymattersltd.com

SOURCE: SMX (Security Matters) Public Limited