Trump To Consider Rescheduling Marijuana. That’s Good. Or Bad. Who Knows?

The Trump administration is discussing reclassifying marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, picking up an initiative that began with the Biden administration. While some industry experts are celebrating the potential benefits of eased operations, others worry that the door to legalization has only been cracked wide enough for monopolies to fit through. 

Currently, marijuana is classified in the strictest category of controlled substances, meaning there is no accepted medical use by the Drug Enforcement Administration, and a high risk of addiction. Though medical marijuana programs exist in many states, including Texas, because of the classification of the drug, it is not covered by insurance plans, including Medicaid and Medicare. However, if marijuana were reduced to Schedule III, joining the likes of ketamine and anabolic steroids, it would become recognized as medically beneficial, allowing the industry to grow exponentially.

“We are considering that, yeah,” the president said when asked about rescheduling earlier this week. “Because a lot of people want to see it, the reclassification, because it leads to tremendous amounts of research that can’t be done unless you reclassify. So we are looking at that very strongly.”

There is no timeline for rescheduling, but if the current administration has proven anything in its first year, it’s that it will move quickly in select realms.

“The real win here is for medical cannabis,” said Ryan Hunter, chief revenue officer for Spherex, a cannabis company. “Not only will those in states without medical cannabis programs gain access, but as markets evolve to recreational programs, many remedies for patients have been left behind due to the dramatically larger demand for adult-use products relative to medical products.” 

The change could mark a national shift, opening the market for millions of prescribers and patients, as well as companies looking to enter the field. But critics warn that even at Schedule III, it’s unlikely that the associated costs of operating in cannabis will get any lower, and the only companies that will be able to succeed will be major corporations. 

“That is the method of big business, and that is what is going on here, and that’s what we can expect to occur if nothing changes,” said Josh Kesselman, publisher of High Times Magazine. “Big Pharma really wants a piece of it because now you have to buy your THC pill… One way or another, that’s really what’s happening. I’m not a fan of it because my concern really is for small businesses and consumers, especially the smokers themselves. The winner in all of this is not the consumer, and it’s not small businesses. If somebody wins, it will only be Big Pharma and big cannabis.”

Currently, operating as a licensed dispensary in Texas has a several-million-dollar barrier to entry. On top of exorbitant fees, which Kesselman believes will only get larger, introducing pharmaceutical-grade approval processes also opens the door for testing requirements, lab work and a myriad of other potential hurdles that would drive up costs for smaller businesses. 

Kesselman, who also owns Raw Rolling Papers, has been operating in the smokeables industry since the ‘90s, and he says he knows exactly how this ballgame is played; it’s what happened in the tobacco industry not too long ago. He says that tobacco industry lobbyists pushed for heavy regulations from the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), knowing that large corporations would be the only ones capable of complying with the regulations, thereby whittling competition down to a handful of brands.

“I’m watching the same thing happen to cannabis,” he said. “It will be potentially helpful to some of the largest cannabis players out there, that can afford to spend $5 million per product for compliance and then pass that cost on to the consumers… But it will be devastating for small growers, small businesses, small independent dispensaries, even smaller chains, perhaps, because the goal of the big ones is to eliminate them, to make it where there’s only one or two players.”

But there are benefits to rescheduling. 

“Rescheduling cannabis would be a turning point for an industry that’s been operating under impossible conditions,” said Harrison Bard, CEO of Custom Cones USA. “Treating cannabis as a Schedule I drug has restricted banking, crushed margins through unfair tax rules, and prolonged stigma that no longer reflects reality. This change could finally legitimize cannabis as a regulated business—one with access to banking, fair taxation, and a path forward for operators who have been hanging on by a thread.”

Of course, there are also people who would like to see marijuana remain in its current classification, as the THC industry remains mostly unregulated. 

“Our concern is simple,” said One Chance To Grow, an anti-marijuana-specific youth advocacy organization. “As a Schedule III drug, it would wrongly signal to young people that it’s safe, even though today’s high-potency products pose far greater risks. This action is about tax benefits for the industry.  The country is not ready to see marijuana reclassified nationally when we still haven’t grappled with and worked out the ramifications of what happens when this drug becomes more widely available and increasingly more potent.”

Overall, aside from the ardently anti-marijuana, rescheduling is mostly bittersweet. The cannabis industry would likely boom initially, but it wouldn’t take long before the biggest players came in and squashed everyone else, says Kesselman. He believes the true solution to this conundrum is to deschedule marijuana completely. The president could reschedule marijuana with the coordination of the DEA and the FDA; however to descheduling requires Congressional approval. 

“Our concern is, once it hits Schedule III and these fat cats start making money off of it, how do you get their fat claws out of it?” said Kesselman. “The real solution is descheduling. Maybe it’s too much of a pipe dream, we’re not a fan of Schedule III because we see the future.”