For the first time in generations, a major overhaul of federal drug policy appeared imminent.
During his final year in office, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. moved to downgrade marijuana from the government’s most restrictive class of drugs.
The change would not legalize recreational cannabis under federal law, but would remove it from a category that includes heroin and make it easier for scientists to study marijuana’s therapeutic uses.
Donald J. Trump, then a candidate for president, endorsed the idea last September, shortly before the presidential election, saying it stood to “unlock the medical uses of marijuana.”
But a few months into Mr. Trump’s new term in the White House, the push to move cannabis to a less restrictive category has effectively ground to a halt.
Resistance from the Drug Enforcement Administration, which oversees the federal drug classification system, slowed the process during the Biden administration, according to leading supporters and critics of the effort, and set the stage for a time-consuming legal fight.
So far, the Trump administration has shown no sign of seeking the looser cannabis regulations Mr. Trump, as a presidential candidate, had backed. Instead, his administration released a drug policy blueprint last month making no mention of marijuana, and nominated a critic of cannabis legalization to run the D.E.A.
The White House did not respond to an email asking whether Mr. Trump continues to support downgrading marijuana, and a D.E.A. spokeswoman declined to comment for this story.
With years left in Mr. Trump’s term, experts said it’s impossible to predict whether he would move cannabis into a less restrictive drug category, reducing criminal penalties for those convicted of marijuana violations and starting to align federal policy more closely with that of a long list of states that have legalized the drug. But those most involved in the effort to reschedule cannabis say the window of opportunity seems to have narrowed considerably.
Anthony Coulson, a former senior D.E.A. agent who remains close to former colleagues, said that agency leaders, who historically have opposed moving marijuana to a less strict drug category, pursued a drawn-out process that effectively thwarted Mr. Biden’s goal. The agency’s approach led to legal challenges from groups that wanted more lenient cannabis regulations, further slowing the process.
“Cannabis reform appears to be all but dead in this administration,” said Mr. Coulson said, who favors cannabis rescheduling but opposes legalizing its recreational use. “To use a Trump term, it was rigged not to succeed.”
The Biden Push
The push by Mr. Biden to change cannabis policy began in 2022, when he issued a blanket pardon to people convicted in federal court of simple possession, saying that “too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana.”
That year, Mr. Biden ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to “expeditiously” reassess whether marijuana belonged in a category of drugs that the government deemed to have no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.
The designation of marijuana in that category, known as Schedule I, dates back to the Nixon era and means that the plant is more tightly controlled than fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine.
Nearly a year later, the federal health agency recommended that cannabis be downgraded to Schedule III, a category that includes anabolic steroids and testosterone, drugs the government deems as having clear medical uses and a lower risk profile.
“The vast majority of individuals who use marijuana are doing so in a manner that does not lead to dangerous outcomes to themselves or others,” the agency said in a report it sent to the D.E.A., which oversees the federal drug classification system.
Critics of a downgrade argue that it might encourage more people to use a drug that can be addictive and harmful. They also say that a downgrade would not solve the fundamental inconsistency of marijuana regulation in this country, since recreational use — even under Schedule III — would remain illegal under federal law.
Supporters, though, say that cannabis never belonged in Schedule I. Downgrading cannabis, they said, would remove barriers to medical research, lower criminal penalties and make marijuana businesses eligible for federal tax deductions and broader banking services.
The D.E.A. Steps In
The D.E.A. signaled reluctance soon after the Department of Justice formally proposed moving marijuana to Schedule III in May 2024.
The memo outlining the rationale for the change was signed not by Anne Milgram, then the head of the drug agency, as would have been standard, but by Mr. Biden’s attorney general, Merrick B. Garland.
Proponents of rescheduling saw that as an inauspicious sign, particularly because a critic of loosening cannabis regulations, Kevin Sabet, the president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, had posted on social media that D.E.A. contacts had given him an early heads-up about Ms. Milgram’s decision not to sign the memo. Dr. Sabet described it as a sign of the agency’s reservations.
The Justice Department solicited comments from the public, as is customary, and received nearly 43,000 letters. Roughly 70 percent voiced support for easing marijuana policy, according to an analysis by the Drug Policy Alliance, which favors decriminalizing drug use.
One letter, signed by several former D.E.A. administrators, urged Ms. Milgram to add an optional hearing before a judge rather than to have the agency simply move marijuana to Schedule III.
In August, Ms. Milgram announced that the D.E.A. would convene a hearing in December. The agency chose a roughly even number of supporters and opponents of loosening marijuana policy to participate in the hearing, but critics soon complained that the agency had not created a level playing field.
The D.E.A. turned down requests from officials in Colorado and New York, which have legalized cannabis, but allowed Nebraska and Tennessee, states run by conservatives who oppose loosening marijuana laws, to take part in the hearing.
Two groups — Hemp for Victory, a veterans group, and Village Farms International, which sells cannabis products — soon demanded that the D.E.A. be disqualified from overseeing the process.
They pointed to Dr. Sabet’s social media posts as evidence that agency officials had been helping rescheduling opponents behind the scenes, and argued that such communications were unlawful.
The legal challenge led the D.E.A.’s top judge, John J. Mulrooney, to delay the hearing. In a ruling issued in January, he declined to remove the D.E.A. from the process, but expressed concern about signs the agency had been “selectively assisting and granting access” to critics of rescheduling.
“If true, viewed in the best light, these allegations demonstrate a puzzling and grotesque lack of understanding and poor judgment from high-level officials at a major federal agency,” the judge wrote.
In legal filings, government lawyers have said there was no evidence that the D.E.A. had “made up its mind against rescheduling,” and D.E.A. lawyers denied having engaged in unlawful communication, arguing that such assertions “at best can be categorized as gossip.” In an interview, Dr. Sabet said that his communications with D.E.A. officials had been proper.
Trump’s Turn
No new hearing date was set by the time Mr. Biden left office.
“We got stuck moving at the slow speed of government, which was also marred, potentially, by some opposing it from within,” Dr. Rahul Gupta, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Biden administration, said in an interview.
In the first few months of the Trump administration, backers of looser cannabis regulations say they see few signs that rescheduling marijuana will come soon.
The president’s new pick to lead the D.E.A., Terry Cole, left little doubt about his stance on cannabis in a social media post last year, when he alluded to the Reagan-era antidrug campaign, “Just Say No.” During a confirmation hearing last month, Mr. Cole said that he would make a top priority of assessing where the rescheduling process stands, but he declined to say whether the agency still intended to reschedule marijuana.
Matt Gaetz, a longtime ally of the president, said in an interview that Mr. Trump supported rescheduling cannabis when his political campaign was aggressively courting voters younger than 30, a group that overwhelmingly backs legalization. At the time, Mr. Trump also supported a measure allowing recreational use in Florida, where Mr. Gaetz, who favors legalizing marijuana, was a former congressman.
But Mr. Gaetz said he believed the president opposed all drug use.
“President Trump has a deep personal aversion to anything that dulls the senses,” said Mr. Gaetz, who withdrew from consideration to be attorney general earlier this year amid scrutiny over sex trafficking and drug use allegations, which he has consistently denied.
The president’s views on cannabis have softened somewhat in recent years, Mr. Gaetz said, but Mr. Trump, a teetotaler, remains “totally intolerant” of any policy shift that “he believes will increase drug use.”
Still, advocates on both sides of the rescheduling debate seemed uncertain about what may come next.
Sue Thau, a public policy consultant representing Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, said it was impossible to know whether the Trump administration might resume efforts to reclassify marijuana, a move she said is ill-advised.
“This would basically put an industry that hasn’t been regulated on steroids and would give more people who don’t understand the inherent risks of high-potency marijuana the idea that the federal government considers this medicine,” she said.
For their part, supporters of rescheduling have turned to an unconventional tactic. American Rights and Reform, a political action committee that supports legalizing cannabis, recently launched an elaborate television ad campaign aimed at news shows Mr. Trump is known to watch.
One ad warns that Canadian cannabis companies are getting an unfair advantage, which Mr. Trump could address, the ad says, by rescheduling the drug.
Another aims to appeal to Mr. Trump’s assertion that some federal workers undermine presidents, a phenomenon he calls the “deep state.”
“Joe Biden’s D.E.A.’s deep state kept cannabis illegal,” the ad says. “President Donald Trump has beat the deep state before and now Trump can finish what he started.”
Ernesto Londoño is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest and drug use and counternarcotics policy.
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