Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order Thursday reclassifying FDA-approved and state-licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, a move that eases federal research restrictions, opens the door to tax relief for licensed cannabis operators, and delivers on a promise President Donald Trump first made months ago. The reclassification is the most significant federal change to marijuana policy in more than half a century.
The order does not legalize marijuana under federal law, recreational or otherwise. But it does something that decades of bipartisan talk never managed: it treats state-licensed medical marijuana as a substance with recognized medical use rather than lumping it alongside heroin and LSD at the top of the Controlled Substances Act.
And Blanche made clear the administration isn't stopping here. His order also initiates what he called "a new, expedited hearing with set deadlines, to fully reschedule marijuana." That hearing, Breitbart reported, is now scheduled for June 29 before the DEA, setting a concrete timetable for broader reclassification that prior administrations never delivered.
Schedule I is the federal government's most restrictive drug category. Substances placed there are deemed to have no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. For years, marijuana sat in that category alongside drugs like heroin, creating a legal absurdity: more than three dozen states had legalized some form of medical cannabis while the federal government officially classified it as having zero medical value.
Moving marijuana to Schedule III changes the federal posture in three practical ways. First, it eases the regulatory barriers that have made cannabis research difficult and slow. Second, it allows state-licensed medical marijuana businesses to claim federal tax deductions previously barred under Section 280E of the tax code, a provision that has cost the legal cannabis industry billions. Third, it reduces certain federal penalties associated with Schedule I substances.
Fox News Digital reported that Blanche framed the move squarely as a healthcare and research initiative, not a step toward full legalization.
In a statement, Blanche said:
"The Department of Justice is delivering on President Trump's promise to expand Americans' access to medical treatment options. This rescheduling action allows for research on the safety and efficacy of this substance, ultimately providing patients with better care and doctors with more reliable information."
The distinction matters. This is not the sweeping federal decriminalization that progressive activists have demanded. It is a targeted, research-oriented reform that respects the existing state-level medical marijuana frameworks while keeping the federal ban on recreational use intact. That is a common-sense position, and one that prior administrations, including the Biden administration, talked about but never completed.
The contrast with the previous administration is worth noting. The Biden White House made marijuana rescheduling a talking point but never got it across the finish line. The New York Post reported that Trump publicly complained officials were "slow-walking" the rescheduling process and ordered the Justice Department on December 18 to make the change. Trump himself put it plainly at the time: "I promised to be the president of common sense. That is exactly what we're doing."
That December directive set the wheels in motion. Blanche's Thursday order is the formal execution of that promise, a concrete action, not a press release or a campaign pledge left to gather dust.
The pattern is familiar. Across a range of issues, the Trump administration has moved aggressively through legal and executive channels to deliver results that predecessors only promised.
Curaleaf Chairman and CEO Boris Jordan called the reclassification "the biggest legislative change for cannabis in 55 years," the Washington Examiner reported. Whether or not one shares the industry's enthusiasm, the scale of the shift is hard to dispute.
The marijuana reclassification came just days after Trump signed a separate executive order on Saturday aimed at expediting the review of psychedelic drugs as potential medical treatments. The two actions together represent the most significant federal reconsideration of drug scheduling in decades, and both are rooted in the same logic: let the science move forward, and stop letting bureaucratic inertia block treatments that could help patients.
Trump signed the psychedelic executive order in the Oval Office on Saturday, April 18, 2026. He described the action as delivering "historic reforms to dramatically accelerate access to new medical research and treatments based on psychedelic drugs."
The president specifically cited the potential benefits for veterans suffering from traumatic brain injuries and severe mental health conditions. He pointed to a 2024 Stanford University study involving 30 special operations veterans with traumatic brain injuries who underwent ibogaine treatment:
"In many cases, these experimental treatments have shown life-changing potential for those suffering from severe mental illness and depression, including our cherished veterans."
Trump said those veterans "experienced an 80 to 90% reduction in symptoms of depression and anxiety within one month." He added that while research had been underway for some time, "usually with things like this, nothing ever happens, no matter how the research ends up, but we're changing that."
The executive order, Trump said, would "clear away unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles, improve data sharing among the FDA and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and facilitate fast rescheduling of any psychedelic drugs that become FDA approved." That last provision is significant: it ties future scheduling changes to FDA approval, maintaining a science-based guardrail rather than simply throwing open the doors.
The administration's willingness to act on veterans' mental health through unconventional treatments stands in contrast to the broader institutional resistance that has stalled such reforms for years. While Democratic-led states have spent their energy fighting the administration in court on other fronts, the White House has been quietly building a policy record on healthcare access that cuts across traditional partisan lines.
Ibogaine, the treatment Trump highlighted, is not a household name, but it has drawn growing attention from researchers studying PTSD and substance-use disorders. A paper published in the journal Chronic Stress described ibogaine as a "psychoactive indole alkaloid which is extracted from the Tabernanthe iboga rainforest shrub and has been used for centuries in Central Africa for initiatory rituals."
The same paper noted that ibogaine treatment "is reported to alleviate a spectrum of mood and anxiety symptoms and is associated with self-reported improvements in cognitive functioning in individuals with substance-use disorders." It added that during treatment, ibogaine "allows the evocation and reprocessing of traumatic memories and occasions therapeutic and meaningful visions of spiritual and autobiographical content, which are of central relevance in addressing PTSD-related psychological content."
These are not fringe claims from advocacy groups. They come from peer-reviewed research, exactly the kind of evidence that should inform federal drug policy. The administration's approach of clearing regulatory barriers while insisting on clinical trial standards reflects a pragmatic middle ground that neither party has historically been willing to occupy.
The June 29 DEA hearing will be the next major milestone. That proceeding could determine whether the broader reclassification of marijuana moves forward beyond the current categories of FDA-approved and state-licensed products. The Associated Press reported that the administration is restarting the broader marijuana reclassification process through that hearing, a signal that Thursday's order may be the first step, not the last.
Open questions remain. The exact scope of "state-licensed marijuana" under the order has not been fully detailed. Which specific products and formulations qualify for Schedule III treatment is still being defined. And the legal interplay between federal scheduling and the patchwork of state cannabis laws will take time to sort out.
But the direction is clear. The Trump administration has done what years of congressional debate, campaign promises, and executive hand-wringing failed to accomplish. It moved. The Justice Department under this administration has shown a willingness to act decisively on issues that prior leadership treated as too politically complicated to touch.
The Washington Times noted that the change does not make marijuana federally legal in any form, a point worth repeating for anyone inclined to mischaracterize the move. This is a measured, research-driven reform. It respects state frameworks. It prioritizes patients and veterans. And it holds the line on federal law while clearing the bureaucratic underbrush that has blocked progress for decades.
For the millions of Americans who rely on state-licensed medical marijuana, and for the veterans who may benefit from psychedelic-assisted therapies, the question was never whether reform was needed. The question was whether anyone in Washington would actually do it. While critics continue to focus on process complaints and partisan grievances, the administration just answered with action.
Washington talks. This White House signed the paper.
