On Thursday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order moving state-licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). That places it in the same category as ketamine and Tylenol with codeine. Under the CSA, Schedule I is reserved for drugs with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse, such as heroin and ecstasy, while Schedule III drugs are recognized as having legitimate medical applications and a low to moderate risk of dependence.

The White House framed this move as expanding research access and improving patient care. What it actually delivers is a tax windfall for licensed cannabis, a federal blessing for a public health experiment gone wrong, and a break with the voters Donald Trump claims to represent.

Justifying rescheduling as a boon to research is a weak argument, considering such efforts have already been made. In 2022, Congress passed and President Biden signed the Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act. This act has already made marijuana research far easier. Yet recent evidence suggests medical marijuana is largely a false messiah, offering little benefit and sometimes worsening anxiety and insomnia through withdrawal. As Dr Michael Hsu noted in a November 2025 JAMA paper, the evidence remains “insufficient” for most indications. Claiming that rescheduling will unlock proof of benefit is a recycled, zombie argument from the Obama era.

What rescheduling will do is free cannabis companies from Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code, which currently bars businesses trafficking in Schedule I substances from claiming standard tax deductions. Reclassification means that the cannabis industry — worth at least $32 billion — will suddenly enjoy the same write-offs as any other business. Senator Ted Budd (R-NC), who led 21 Republican colleagues in a letter urging Trump to reverse course, called rescheduling “a shortsighted policy decision” that would put “more money in the pockets of marijuana companies.” He wasn’t wrong.

The deeper problem is that Trump’s decision treats a holdover from years of Democratic administrations as if it were a success story deserving of federal endorsement. The progressive legalization push rested on two foundational claims: that marijuana is essentially harmless, and that criminalization had produced mass incarceration of innocent smokers. Both were wrong.

On harm: in 1992, fewer than 1 million Americans used marijuana daily. Today, that figure is 18 million. Daily marijuana use now eclipses daily alcohol consumption. According to the CDC, three in 10 cannabis users have a use disorder, and the drug is linked to impaired attention, memory, decision-making, learning and reaction time.

Meanwhile, marijuana use has surged, along with ER visits linked to it. A 2024 survey found 11 million people drove under the influence of cannabis, comparable to drunk-driving. Widespread adult use has also normalized it for teenagers, who are more vulnerable to addiction and harm. The industry has compounded this problem by exploiting Farm Bill loopholes to flood the market with potent synthetic THC products, often marketed in brightly colored edibles designed to drive repeat use.

As for the incarceration myth, this was always a misreading of the data. The US Sentencing Commission found that as of January 2022, almost no federal prisoners were serving time solely for simple marijuana possession. The slim number of people behind bars on marijuana charges was overwhelmingly traffickers — often with firearms violations alongside — not the caricature of the college student caught with a joint.

The national reckoning with marijuana, even acknowledged by the New York Times editorial board, is why Trump’s decision seems poorly timed. Oregon, which passed the nation’s most sweeping drug decriminalization law in 2020, had its legislature roll it back just four years later by wide bipartisan margins. In 2025, over 74,000 voters signed a petition to create a ballot measure to repeal the legalization of marijuana. Similar efforts are taking place in other states, too.

There is a version of the conservative case for marijuana rescheduling that treats it as a states’ rights matter, or as harm reduction compared with harder drugs. Those arguments deserve a hearing. But they do not justify federally placing cannabis in the same scheduling tier as Tylenol with codeine or delivering a tax bonanza to an industry whose business model depends on maintaining and expanding addiction. Far from a neutral policy change, rescheduling is likely to expand marijuana use while further obscuring its medical justification.