President Donald Trump announced he would advise federal agencies to reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I controlled substance to Schedule III, easing federal restrictions on the plant.
Trump announced the executive order Thursday in the Oval Office, alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a line of medical workers in white coats and scrubs. The president does not have the direct authority to reschedule marijuana but can request his federal agencies to do so.
Marijuana has been a Schedule I controlled substance since the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, meaning the federal government considers marijuana to have no accepted medical use, with a high risk of abuse. Schedule I drugs, such as heroin, cocaine, and LSD, are illegal and strictly regulated, making medical research on these drugs, including cannabis, nearly impossible.
A reclassification would be the most significant reform on marijuana in more than half a century, opening the doors for medical research. But it would not be full legalization, said Adam Smith, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. It could also pave the way to federal intervention in the state-run medical and recreational marijuana industries, something stakeholders fear.
“There is a possibility that in moving cannabis to Schedule III, instead of opening up access, what it will do is incentivize federal agencies to clamp down control on the availability of cannabis,” Smith said. “Treating it as other Schedule III substances, which virtually all require prescriptions, is not how this works in medical cannabis and could really create chaos and a lot of economic pain in the industry.”
Smith said stakeholders are unsure what this might mean for the wider industry but remain optimistic, as rescheduling of marijuana has been a priority for decades.
Former President Joe Biden’s administration had moved to reschedule marijuana as a Schedule III drug; however, those plans stalled in bureaucratic limbo.
This executive order has plenty of positives, said Joshua Horn, a Philadelphia cannabis lawyer at Fox Rothschild. Loosening restrictions could clear the way for the IRS to allow cannabis businesses to deduct business expenses (which they currently cannot do). Additionally, more traditional banking options might become available to entrepreneurs.
“It could also rectify the criminal injustice that has been ongoing since the passage of the Controlled Substances Act, where people of color have been disproportionately impacted by the ‘war on drugs,’” Horn said. “In the end, rescheduling should reinvigorate these businesses out of their current tax and financial struggles.”
This federal rescheduling of marijuana would come on the heels of Congress’ banning all intoxicating hemp products, which are derived from cannabis plants. While this may seem like a policy flip-flop, Smith said, these are two different issues at hand.
“The hemp ban is the result of the fact that the market was chaotic and, in many cases, unsafe. Without regulation, that market was rife with pesticides, heavy metals, and products that should not be on shelves,” Smith said.
But he contends there is a movement to push back against wider marijuana legalization. “There’s always pushback when there’s big change,” Smith said. “But also because of the instability created when we have state-regulated markets operating in a federally illegal area.”
Industry folks are hoping this move better aligns the federal government and state markets, opens the doors to research, and provides better clarity to states that are hesitant to legalize marijuana, Smith said.
Reducing restrictions on commercially available cannabis is “a key missing ingredient toward making clinical breakthroughs,” said Stephen Lankenau, director of Drexel University’s Medical Cannabis Research Center.
“A key issue is that any reclassification efforts need to reduce restrictions for university-based researchers to have access to cannabis-derived THC — commercially available products in particular — for clinical studies, whether laboratory or human subjects,” Lankenau said.
Researchers now are only able to examine hemp-derived nonpsychoactive cannabinoids like CBD or CBC. However, Lankenau said, it is unclear whether Trump’s proposal would give them the green light.
