{"id":602105,"date":"2026-04-23T18:48:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T18:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/602105\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T18:48:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T18:48:15","slug":"trump-admin-reclassifies-state-licensed-medical-marijuana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/602105\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump admin. reclassifies state-licensed medical marijuana"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0\u00a0ALANNA DURKIN RICHER<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0GENE JOHNSON<\/a><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump\u2019s acting attorney general on Thursday signed an order\u00a0reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana<\/a>\u00a0as a less-dangerous drug, a major policy shift long sought by advocates who said cannabis should never have been treated like heroin by the federal government.<\/p>\n

The order signed by Todd Blanche does not legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use under U.S. law. But it does change the way it\u2019s regulated, shifting licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I \u2014 reserved for drugs without medical use and with high potential for abuse \u2014 to the less strictly regulated Schedule III. It also gives licensed medical marijuana operators a major tax break and eases some barriers to researching cannabis.<\/p>\n

Trump told his administration in December to work as quickly as possible to\u00a0reclassify marijuana<\/a>. On Saturday, as the Republican president signed\u00a0an unrelated executive order<\/a>\u00a0about psychedelics, he seemed to express frustration that it was taking so long.<\/p>\n

Blanche said Thursday that the Department of Justice was \u201cdelivering on President Trump\u2019s promise\u201d to expand Americans\u2019 access to medical treatment options. \u201cThis 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,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Blanche\u2019s action Iargely legitimizes medical marijuana programs in the 40 states that have adopted them. It sets up an expedited system for state-licensed medical marijuana producers and distributors to register with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.<\/p>\n

It makes clear that cannabis researchers won\u2019t be penalized for obtaining state-licensed marijuana or marijuana-derived products for use in their work, and it grants state-licensed medical marijuana companies a windfall by allowing them, for the first time, to deduct business expenses on their federal taxes.<\/p>\n

Any marijuana-derived medicine approved by the Food and Drug Administration is similarly listed in Schedule III, it said.<\/p>\n

The order represents a major policy shift for the U.S. government, which has continued its longstanding marijuana prohibition \u2014 dating to\u00a0the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 even as nearly all the states have approved cannabis use in some form. Two dozen states plus Washington, D.C., have authorized adult recreational use of marijuana, 40 have medical marijuana systems, and eight others allow low-THC cannabis or CBD oil for medical use. Only Idaho and Kansas ban marijuana outright.<\/p>\n

The regulation of medical marijuana has come a long way since California became the first state to adopt it in 1996, Blanche wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday the vast majority of States maintain comprehensive licensing frameworks governing cultivation, processing, distribution, and dispensing of marijuana for medical purposes,\u201d Blanche wrote. \u201cTaken as a whole, they demonstrate a sustained capacity to achieve the public-interest objectives … including protecting public health and safety and preventing the diversion of controlled substances into illicit channels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marijuana or marijuana-derived products that are not distributed through a state medical marijuana program will continue to be classified in Schedule I. The Trump administration is launching a new administrative hearing process beginning in June to consider the broader rescheduling of marijuana.<\/p>\n

Schedule III drugs are defined as having moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence. Some critics of the industry have suggested that legalization in the states has led to stronger and stronger cannabis products, which need to be researched rather than categorized less strictly than before.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, had\u00a0proposed to reclassify marijuana<\/a>, eliciting nearly 43,000 formal public comments. The Drug Enforcement Administration was still in the review process when Trump succeeded Biden in January, and Trump ordered that process to move along as quickly as legally possible.<\/p>\n

Blanche\u2019s order sidestepped the review process by relying on a provision of federal law that allows the attorney general to determine the appropriate classification for drugs that the U.S. must regulate pursuant to an international treaty.<\/p>\n

It was unclear how the order might affect operations in states where licensed recreational marijuana shops also sell to medical patients. In Washington state, which in 2012 became one of the first states to legalize the adult use of marijuana, 302 of 460 licensed stores have endorsements allowing them to sell tax-free cannabis products to registered patients.<\/p>\n

Many Republicans oppose loosening marijuana restrictions. More than 20 Republican senators, several of them staunch Trump allies, signed a letter last year urging the president to keep the current standards.<\/p>\n

Trump has made his crusade against other drugs, especially fentanyl, a feature of his second term,\u00a0ordering U.S. military attacks<\/a>\u00a0on Venezuelan and other boats the administration insists are ferrying drugs. He signed another executive order declaring fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Johnson reported from Seattle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By\u00a0\u00a0ALANNA DURKIN RICHER\u00a0and\u00a0GENE JOHNSON WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump\u2019s acting attorney general on Thursday signed an order\u00a0reclassifying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-602105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}