Experts say Donald Trump’s recent executive order on cannabis rescheduling is unlikely to make a meaningful difference for those most vulnerable to cannabis-related criminal charges, which the president has ramped up in various ways during his second term.
Under the Biden administration, the Department of Health and Human Services recommended that cannabis be removed from schedule I, a category reserved for substances with “no accepted medical use”, to schedule III, a category that includes substances eligible for FDA approval as medications. Last month, Trump urged the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, to speed up the process in his executive order, citing 2023 FDA findings supporting cannabis’s potential “to treat anorexia related to a medical condition, nausea and vomiting, and pain”.
