Why Rescheduling Cannabis Falls Short
Donald Trump’s executive order is a move in the right direction, but descheduling marijuana is what public safety truly demands.
Yesterday, President Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to move forward with the rescheduling of marijuana, and it represents a notable acknowledgment that federal cannabis policy has fallen out of step with science, state law, and public reality. The order instructs the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services to complete the process of rescheduling marijuana’s classification under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), while simultaneously expanding federal support for medical marijuana and cannabidiol research.
It is a meaningful shift — but an incomplete one. Rescheduling marijuana is progress. Descheduling it is what public safety and law enforcement actually require.
Under the administration’s directive, marijuana is expected to be moved from Schedule I — a category reserved for substances deemed to have no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse — to Schedule III, alongside drugs such as ketamine and certain anabolic steroids. This change would correct one of the most indefensible features of federal drug law: treating cannabis as legally equivalent to heroin or LSD. It would also ease barriers to medical research and acknowledge what physicians and patients have long recognized: Marijuana has legitimate therapeutic applications.
But rescheduling does not legalize marijuana at the federal level. Cannabis would remain a controlled substance under the CSA, subject to federal criminal penalties, regulatory constraints, and enforcement discretion. That distinction matters. Rescheduling preserves prohibition, changing the packaging, not the policy.
This half measure is increasingly disconnected from the law on the ground. As of late 2025, 40 states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for medical use, while nearly half the states and D.C. permit adult, recreational use. Yet federal law continues to insist that marijuana is a controlled substance — a contradiction rescheduling does not resolve.
For law enforcement, this incoherence is not abstract. Police officers are asked to enforce laws that change dramatically across state lines, often within short distances. Activity that is lawful, regulated, and taxed in one state may still implicate federal criminal law in another. Rescheduling leaves this fragmented system intact, forcing officers and departments to navigate overlapping and sometimes conflicting legal mandates.
Partial measures also entrench black‑market activity rather than diminish it. As long as marijuana remains federally prohibited, illicit actors retain structural advantages over licensed businesses. Illegal growers and distributors do not pay taxes, comply with safety standards, or navigate regulatory hurdles. They exploit federal restrictions on banking and interstate commerce, all of which would remain under rescheduling, allowing them to undercut legal markets and funnel profits into criminal networks. This outcome directly undermines public safety goals.
Law enforcement bears the burden of this dysfunction. Officers continue to devote time and resources to marijuana‑related enforcement that yields little safety benefit, while violent crime, organized retail theft, fentanyl-trafficking, and clearance‑rate crises demand attention. Police departments nationwide face staffing shortages, rising response times, and mounting service demands. Maintaining a federal prohibition framework — even a softened one — wastes limited law enforcement resources that would be better directed toward genuinely dangerous criminal activity.
Taxpayers pay for this inefficiency as well. Continued federal prohibition requires sustained spending on enforcement, prosecution, regulatory oversight, and incarceration tied to marijuana offenses. These costs persist despite overwhelming public opposition. Surveys show that nearly 90 percent of Americans support legal marijuana in some form, cutting across party lines, age groups, and regions. Maintaining a federal enforcement regime so widely rejected is not only politically disconnected, but also fiscally irresponsible.
Recent reporting highlights how limited the administration’s action ultimately is. The executive order directs federal agencies to carry out a rescheduling process that could take months to complete and does not immediately alter marijuana’s legal status while rulemaking is underway. Even after rescheduling, core issues remain unresolved: interstate commerce restrictions, banking barriers, punitive tax treatment, and continued exposure to federal prosecution in contexts that overlap with state‑legal activity. For law enforcement, this means continued uncertainty — not clarity — about enforcement priorities.
Rescheduling also raises federalism concerns. States have spent years constructing regulatory systems tailored to local conditions, voter preferences, and public‑safety needs. Federal rescheduling leaves those systems operating under a persistent legal cloud, discouraging coordination and inviting continued federal intervention. Rather than respecting state governance, rescheduling keeps Washington deeply entangled in a policy space most states have already chosen to regulate rather than criminalize.
Descheduling offers a cleaner, more rational alternative. Removing marijuana from the CSA altogether would align federal law with state policy, eliminate incentives for black‑market activity, and provide law enforcement with clear, uniform rules of engagement. It would also allow police agencies to refocus on their core mission: preventing violence, dismantling organized criminal enterprises, and protecting victims — not enforcing a federal prohibition that most communities no longer support.
Importantly, descheduling does not mean the absence of rules. It would not eliminate regulation or oversight. States would continue to control licensing, age limits, impaired‑driving laws, and public‑health safeguards. What descheduling would eliminate is the outdated federal framework that treats marijuana as a criminal priority despite decades of evidence to the contrary.
President Trump’s executive order deserves recognition for confronting a failed status quo and acknowledging the medical legitimacy of cannabis. It reflects political reality and scientific consensus in ways federal policy long resisted. But incrementalism has limits. Rescheduling eases some burdens while leaving the core problem intact: a federal prohibition that undermines public safety, wastes law‑enforcement resources, fuels illicit markets, and contradicts the will of the American people.
If the goal is genuine public safety, rescheduling cannot be the final step. Descheduling is not radical. It embodies pragmatic governance, smart policing, and respect for federalism. Progress has begun. Finishing the job through full federal descheduling is what public safety now demands.