Trump Says Medical Marijuana Is ‘The Best Of All The Alternatives’ For People Suffering With Illnesses

President Donald Trump highlighted the medical benefits of marijuana on Thursday, hours after the Department of Justice announced it is moving ahead with a cannabis rescheduling proposal.

“A lot of people are suffering from big problems, which this seems to be the best answer,” the president said in the Oval Office. “They’re very happy about it. So the rescheduling is starting, and that’s a big thing, rescheduling. They kept saying, ‘what about the rescheduling.'”

Trump noted that his administration’s actions on cannabis rescheduling came after his friend Howard Kessler told him about how he used medical marijuana.

“He had some medical difficulties, and he came upon this by accident, in a way,” the president said. “He had to go through a lot of different medications, and he said this was the one that was much better than anything else. And so he experienced that. He didn’t benefit by it, other than from the standpoint that he lives a much better life now.”

“So hopefully you don’t need it,” he said. “But if you do need it, I hear it’s the best of all the alternatives.”

Heidi Overton, deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, also spoke at the event in the Oval Office on Thursday.

“Today is another promise made, promise kept day,” she said. “This is a giant move forward to implement your promise. That’s actually a campaign promise that you made where you’re going to move into Schedule III to increase the research on these medical products, and I just wanted everyone to know that when you make promises, you keep them.”

“We will begin implementation right away of this order. It does not legalize marijuana. It makes it it makes it easy for the researchers to actually study and understand medical marijuana, especially in populations that are using it,” she said.

“We know that one in 10 seniors right now used medical marijuana in the past year, and they report that it really helps them, but we don’t have the science or the understanding to guide the patients and the doctors,” Overton said. “And so both patients and doctors are flying blind without knowing how they interact with other medications, because the research has been difficult to do.”

“Your promise today says those state licensed medical marijuana products are now on schedule III, and we expect the research to significantly increase so that we can understand how to guide patients and doctors in this effort,” she said “And there will be additional actions that will come this summer to do an expedited hearing, for an administrative hearing, by the Department of Justice for all of marijuana to move into Schedule III.”

Trump complained last weekend that federal officials were “slow-walking” following through on his cannabis order.

“You’re going to get the rescheduling done, right, please? Will you get the rescheduling done, please?” Trump said during a signing ceremony for a separate order on psychedelics, seeming to speak to a Department of Justice or White House official during an event in the Oval Office on Saturday. “You know, they’re slow-walking me on rescheduling. You’re going to get it done, right?”

Trump in December signed an executive order directing the Department of Justice to expeditiously finish the process of moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Thursday announced that rescheduling is finally happening through a process that will happen in phases.

Under an order signed by Blanche, marijuana products regulated by a state medical cannabis license will immediately move to Schedule III, as will any marijuana products that are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Then, beginning on June 29, there will be a new expedited administrative hearing process to consider the broader rescheduling of cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III. The Federal Register filing on the hearing says it “will conclude not later than July 15.”

DOJ is ending a prior administrative hearing process on the rescheduling proposal that stalled near the end of the Biden administration amid litigation from pro-reform parties that alleged improper agency communications and witness selection decisions.

Rescheduling won’t federally legalize cannabis, but it will remove certain Schedule I research barriers, while benefitting state-licensed marijuana businesses by allowing them to take federal tax deductions they’re currently barred from under an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) code known as 280E.

Meanwhile, “any form of marijuana other than in an FDA-approved drug product or marijuana subject to a state medical marijuana license remains a schedule I controlled substance, and those who handle such material remain subject to the regulatory controls, and administrative, civil, and criminal sanctions, applicable to schedule I controlled substances set forth in the CSA and DEA regulations,” Blanche wrote.

For now, DOJ is establishing “an expedited review process for entities holding state medical marijuana licenses who seek registration as a marijuana manufacturer, distributor, or dispenser” in order to become federally compliant under Schedule III.

In order to align with an international drug control treaty “requirement that a government agency serve as the exclusive purchaser of cannabis production,” DOJ is rolling out a process by which the federal government will technically purchase marijuana from producers and then sell it back to them or related entities.

“Registered manufacturers must store crops in a facility to which DEA maintains access until that transaction is complete, and each manufacturer registration must specify the areas in which cultivation is permitted,” Blanche’s filing says.

The order also allows researchers to legally obtain marijuana products from state-licensed businesses to be used in studies, for the first time.

There has been some uncertainty about how DOJ would navigate the issue. While the department faced a mandate from the president, top officials have been notably silent on the issue in the months since receiving that directive—even as the White House touted Trump’s order as an example of a policy achievement during the first year of his second term.

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