Why marijuana prohibitionists prefer Schedule 2 in reclassification process

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What if the promise of marijuana rescheduling is really a Faustian bargain that looks like it’s smiling?

Since the Biden presidential administration put rescheduling into motion by acknowledging the plant’s currently accepted medical use, advocates and stakeholders have been monitoring the situation largely under the assumption that there are two plausible outcomes:

Under the previous administration, that way of thinking made a lot of sense. Under the Trump administration, it does not.

Right now, the publicly available facts and evidence point toward neither Schedule 3 nor Schedule 1; rather, they veer toward Schedule 2.

Here’s why: Nobody thinks President Trump is going to suddenly decide to put his political capital to work on marijuana reform amid everything else going on.

That makes the track record of the other officials involved just as relevant now as it was during the Biden administration.

For example, unless something unexpected happens during Terrance Cole’s confirmation process to be the new DEA administrator, the agency’s full-time leader will be anti-cannabis as well.

Cole has repeatedly made his stance on cannabis clear: He favors continued prohibition and recriminalization.

That sentiment is echoed in this week’s news that Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, has been working behind the scenes to recriminalize hemp-derived THC by putting a ban on it in must-pass agriculture legislation.

The measure reportedly involves language written by Rep. Andy Harris, R-Maryland, a prohibitionist lawmaker in the House.

Even if the language as reported doesn’t stick, the party in power is spending committee time trying to figure out how to unscramble the hemp-derived egg, and that’s a bad signal for reform.

Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, could move marijuana to Schedule 3 on her own.

Unfortunately, she has also repeatedly opposed access to the plant, on the record and transparently.

In other words, there are a bunch of ideological opponents standing in the way, and every path to Schedule 3 seems to require going through them.

What’s alarming is that, if those opponents are acting rationally, then they’re looking at rescheduling not as a means to create fair, safe access but instead as a poison pill that could gut the broader legalization movement.

And that poison pill is Schedule 2.

Here’s what Schedule 2, with no carve-outs for existing state-legal markets, would entail.

Schedule 2 regulations require standardized doses, formulations and labeling.

Even if a marijuana retailer got the appropriate DEA license, it couldn’t sell flower, concentrates or edibles from state-licensed growers, nor could it source products from manufacturers that aren’t cleared by the Food and Drug Administration non-Food or are not Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP)-compliant.

Retailers also would come under new scrutiny from the FDA, DEA and Justice Department, which would have the guidance, authority and, most crucially, the mandate necessary to crack down hard on adult-use cannabis.

DEA officials would be able to set strict manufacturing quotas for cannabis production. Plant-touching businesses would not enjoy relief from Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code under Schedule 2.

To be clear: Schedule 2 could effectively end every legal, regulated adult-use market, and the DEA already seems to be telegraphing a justification for it.

The 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment repeatedly declares that:

This framing sure sounds designed to justify a move to Schedule 2 based on supposed public safety, criminal infiltration and “risk” to public health.

There is potentially enough precedent for that framing to pass a nonsense test.

One criterion for Schedule 2 is that the substance has a high likelihood of abuse that can lead to severe psychological or physical dependence.

But the threshold for that criterion is low: It doesn’t require overdose or death.

Courts and DEA precedent have established that that threshold can apply to substances where:

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Since Schedule 2 is, in fact, less restrictive than Schedule 1, prohibitionists could reduce political fallout to some degree by claiming that marijuana reform had indeed occurred and closed the loop on the issue.

Gaslighting a constituency in that way is not an effective way to govern.

But I don’t believe prohibitionists want to govern cannabis according to the science, rule of law or public interest.

I contend they want to restrict access because they’re ideologically stuck on the idea that cannabis is “bad.”

Cannabis advocates and stakeholders need to remain united in exposing the prohibitionist agenda for what it is: an anti-business, anti-freedom farce.

We know our audiences, and we must collectively make the political upside of Schedule 3 clear to all involved.

Andrew Graham is head of communications at Los Angeles-based NuggMD, the largest telehealth platform for cannabis, and oversees its in-house pollster, The Cannabis Consumer Poll. He can be reached at andrew.g@getnugg.com.