Use Your Power, Mr. President: Reschedule Marijuana

In the April release of the White House’s Drug Policy Priorities, one key issue was noticeably absent: marijuana rescheduling. Despite 88 percent of Americans favoring legal access to medical marijuana and President Trump campaigning on the hope of reform, the administration seems to be giving this simple reform the cold shoulder. In some cases, the administration has all but reversed course, such as with Trump’s politically challenged interim U.S. Attorney, Ed Martin, forcefully pushing back on the District of Columbia’s “home rule” marijuana policies.

This is a problem for not just local governments and industry, but countless patients and consumers who would benefit from some legal clarity on accessing medical marijuana.

Right now, marijuana remains classified as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, lumped in with LSD and heroin. The designation is based on the out-of-date premise that cannabis has no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) contradicted this standard when they released a scientific review in August 2023 recommending that marijuana be moved to Schedule III. This classification would acknowledge marijuana’s legitimate medical uses and its lower potential for abuse than the other substances.

You don’t have to love cannabis to know it’s not in the same ballpark as ecstasy.

Following HHS’s review, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) proposed rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III in May 2024, but procedural delays and administrative inertia in other areas have slowed down the process. With the agency recommendations to reschedule marijuana already in play, it’s as good a time as ever for the Trump administration to deliver on something MAGA voters already tend to support.

Washington is painfully slow on enacting the general will of the people. While the administration continues to delay, it’s the consumers and patients who suffer from limited access, higher costs, and less innovation taking place due to the lack of a legal market.

Under current federal law, marijuana businesses are prohibited from taking standard tax deductions under IRS Code Section 280E, meaning these businesses have to pay two or three times higher tax rates than other industries.

These costs are inevitably passed down to consumers, forcing patients seeking medical marijuana to pay more. A clearer regulatory environment is desperately needed to lower prices, but also to increase choices for patients as new businesses open and help better ensure that safety standards are upheld.

Rescheduling marijuana to a Schedule III would not federally legalize marijuana, nor would it upend states’ rights to control cannabis policy locally.

If Iowa wants to keep marijuana illegal, that’s their prerogative.

Instead, this approach would introduce some common sense into federal drug policy, allowing legitimate businesses to operate on a more level playing field and with clear rules of the road. Federal law enforcement could focus on localities where it’s still illegal and support is needed.

The research component is also vital. A Schedule III status would allow for significantly more research to be conducted on the medical benefits of marijuana. Right now, we have a medical marijuana industry that isn’t able to perfectly calibrate treatments based on a patient’s unique needs. It’s well known that THC levels are far higher in marijuana today than decades past, so delicacy matters. Rescheduling would help with this.

The silence from the White House on rescheduling is disappointing, and it’s certainly a missed opportunity for an easy political win by championing something a large part of Trump’s base supports. While the White House sits back on its campaign promise regarding marijuana in favor of unpopular battles over tariffs and trade policy, U.S. Attorney Ed Martin’s sharp actions against dispensaries in D.C. signal that President Trump has either flipped on the issue or been overruled by his staff.

It’s a rare occasion that anything in Washington, D.C. is exclusively up to the president, as we’ve seen with most parts of Trump’s agenda, but marijuana rescheduling is one such area where the president is in charge. President Trump should waste no time in using that authority to modernize American drug policy.