Politics
Bipartisan Congressional Lawmakers Push Trump To Reschedule Marijuana As He Announces It’s Under Review
Bipartisan congressional lawmakers are urging President Donald Trump to federally reschedule marijuana after he announced that a decision on the issue would come within weeks.
On Monday, Trump was asked about the proposal to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). The president didn’t commit to seeing through the Biden administration-initiated process, which he had pledged to do during last year’s campaign, but instead said he saw both sides of the debate and would be reviewing the reform.
In response, two House lawmakers—Reps. Dina Titus (D-NV) and Greg Steube (R-FL)—implored the president to act.
“Marijuana is considered by the fed govt the same as heroin. Its reclassification would be a major step forward for research and business in states like NV where it is legal,” Titus, co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, said.
“I urge President Trump to keep his campaign promise,” she said.
Steube said it “makes zero sense that federal law treats marijuana the same as heroin and LSD. It is even more ridiculous that cocaine is technically classified as less restrictive than marijuana.”
While the administrative process is ongoing, the congressman also said he’d be moving this week to reintroduce a bill to reclassify marijuana to Schedule III legislatively.
“This is a common-sense change that will finally allow real scientific research into its medicinal value and ensure our drug laws reflect reality,” he said. “I urge my colleagues and the Trump administration to get it done.”
Steube was also behind the first cannabis reform bill of the current 119th Congress, filing legislation in February that would protect military veterans from losing government benefits for using medical cannabis in compliance with state law.
Titus, for her part, also signed a letter last. year alongside 20 other lawmakers urging the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to “promptly remove marijuana from Schedule I,” while recognizing that the agency may have been “navigating internal disagreement” on the issue.
After the Biden administration started the rescheduling process, the congresswoman commented that it “made no sense that marijuana was classified the same as heroin and LSD,” adding that reclassifying the drug “will help researchers study the medical benefits of cannabis and legal businesses combat the unregulated black market.”
As for where Trump lands on the issue, there’s lingering uncertainty.
While he endorsed rescheduling on the campaign trail, he made his first public remarks on the proposal since taking office during a press conference on Monday.
“Some people like it. Some people hate it—people hate the whole concept of marijuana, because it does bad for the children [and] it does bad for people that are older than children,” the president said. “But we’re looking at reclassification, and we’ll make a determination over the next few weeks—and that determination, hopefully, will be the right one.”
Meanwhile, a new political committee that shares the same treasurer as Trump’s own super PAC is pushing the president to follow through on rescheduling marijuana, releasing an ad that highlights his previous endorsement of the reform on the campaign trail.
The treasurer of the PAC, Charles Gantt, is the same person named as treasurer of Trump’s political committee, MAGA Inc., which recently reported receiving $1 million from a marijuana industry PAC that’s supported by multiple major cannabis companies.
That committee, the American Rights and Reform PAC, separately released ads in May that attacked former President Joe Biden’s marijuana policy record in an apparent attempt to push Trump to go further on the issue.
Separately, a post that recently circulated on social media appears to show that MAGA Inc., which is also referred to as also called Make America Great Again Inc., itself created an ad that touts Trump’s support for “commonsense reform” such as removing cannabis from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and letting states set their own policies.
The ad ends with the narrator saying “Donald Trump for president,” however, indicating that it may have been prepared prior to the 2024 election.
The owner of the major gardening supply company Scotts Miracle-Gro recently said Trump has told him directly “multiple times” since taking office that he intends to see through the marijuana rescheduling process.
Trump’s former acting head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) also recently predicted that the administration will soon “dig in” to the state-federal marijuana policy conflict, emphasizing the need to “eliminate confusion, not create it” amid the rescheduling push.
Meanwhile, Terrence Cole, who was sworn in last month as the new administrator of the DEA, declined to include rescheduling on a list of “strategic priorities” the agency that instead focused on anti-trafficking enforcement, Mexican cartels, the fentanyl supply chain, drug-fueled violence, cryptocurrency, the dark web and a host of other matters.
That’s despite the fact that Cole said during a confirmation hearing in April that examining the government’s pending marijuana rescheduling proposal would be “one of my first priorities” after taking office.
Last week, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer predicted that Trump would not legalize marijuana, though that is a separate issue from the current rescheduling proposal under consideration.
Meanwhile, a strategic consulting and research firm associated with Trump—Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, LLC—conducted a survey of registered voters that showed a majority of Republicans back a variety of cannabis reforms.
Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.
