Almost, President Trump

While we applaud the Trump Administration’s announcement to continue the policy shift started by the Biden Administration to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III, rescheduling rather than descheduling continues Biden’s policy bungle. Schedule III designation disregards the overwhelming research, the science, and the history of Prohibition. Legal cannabis businesses struggle under regulations, testing, and high taxes. They must compete with violent gangs, the illicit market, and hemp-derived psychotropic cannabinoids that are widely available nationwide, even to teenagers in convenience stores and gas stations. 

The Hemp Loophole

The first Trump Administration already descheduled and legalized the cannabis plant, as long as it is legally considered “hemp,” meaning it contains less than 0.3% ∆9-THC, which has resulted in a national market for dangerous and untested psychotropic cannabinoids derived from hemp.

FDA’s Contradictions

The FDA has already approved pure ∆9-THC as a Schedule III pharmaceutical drug; it is called dronabinol (name brand Marinol). Moving botanical, natural, cannabis that contains more than 0.3% ∆9-THC to Schedule III proliferates the fallacy that it is more dangerous than hemp-derived and pharmaceutical ∆9-THC when the opposite is true. What’s worse, the FDA is woefully unprepared, understaffed, and not designated in its purview for regulating cannabis or any botanical (or they would have been regulating supplements!)

False Foundations of Prohibition

Let’s tiptoe back into American history and explore the original falsehoods at the foundation of Prohibition. Marijuana was once a legal cross-border import. Congress first passed the Marihuana Tax Act in 1937 despite strong pushback from the American Medical Association, and hemp farmers testified before Congress that they felt blindsided. President Nixon launched a war on cannabis in 1971 despite his own Schaffer Commission’s finding that cannabis was a generally safe substance that should not be listed as Schedule I.

In 1988, DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young concluded, after reviewing the available evidence, that “marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutic substances known to man.” Furthermore, over the last 30 years, voters and legislatures in most of the states have legalized medical and adult use of whole-plant cannabis because the majority of Americans now recognize these policies were not based on science and are actively harming people. 

Why Cannabis Does Not Belong in Schedule III

Schedule III drugs include ketamine, Tylenol with codeine, and anabolic steroids, which are all substances that can cause fatal overdose. Cannabis does not belong in this category. Placing a plant in Schedule III is not consistent with how we regulate other herbs with therapeutic uses or enforce regulations on adult substances like alcohol and tobacco, which are regulated by the ATF. 

The Case for Full Descheduling

Moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III, rather than completely descheduling the plant, does not address this history, the science, and the reality of how companies are manufacturing and selling cannabis and hemp today. The conflicts between national hemp and state and federal cannabis laws have become untenable and illogical, and require Congress to act to fully deschedule cannabis.

Descheduling cannabis will fix banking issues, ensure safe access, and medical insurance reimbursements, especially for veterans and patients. It will allow us to release federal prisoners who are still serving decades of time for non-violent marijuana convictions. Critically, we must support state-licensed small businesses, the backbone of the economy, and enable interstate and international commerce with low federal excise taxes and reasonable tariffs on imported cannabis and hemp. 

A Smarter Future

Let’s grow, manufacture, and sell American cannabis and hemp, regulate both similarly, and free hemp to become food, fuel, fiber, and feed as it was intended by God and Mother Nature. 

Let’s end the War on Drugs and get smart on cannabis. We can do it. It is worth it.

Dale Sky Jones

Oaksterdam University Chancellor