Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order Wednesday moving FDA-covered cannabis products and state-licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I — the same federal classification as heroin, reserved for drugs with "high potential for abuse" and "no currently accepted medical use" — to Schedule III, where it joins Tylenol with codeine. Cannabis has sat in Schedule I since 1970.
The move doesn't legalize marijuana. It's still federally illegal. A 30-day window opens after publication in the Federal Register before the order takes effect, and the order can be legally challenged and delayed. Blanche also called a hearing for June to consider reclassifying marijuana more broadly.
The policy path here is long and slow: the Biden administration initiated the review in 2022, the Department of Health and Human Services recommended the change in 2023, the DEA requested hearings in 2024, and then indefinitely postponed them. Trump directed the administration to begin the reclassification process last year, and this is the result.
Morgan Fox of NORML called the change mostly "symbolic" but said it "allows us to have policy conversations that don't start and end with that definition." Polls consistently put support for full legalization above 66%, Fox noted. The reclassification lands just five days after Trump signed a separate order opening up federally funded psychedelic research, according to the BBC.
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