<\/path><\/svg><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe schedule finally moved, and then it stalled in the way Washington stalls a file it does not want to finish. President Biden ordered a scientific review in 2022. HHS recommended Schedule III in 2023. DEA published a proposed rule in 2024. On December 18, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at expanding medical marijuana and cannabidiol research. On April 23, 2026, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued an order immediately placing FDA-approved marijuana products, and state-licensed medical marijuana products, into Schedule III. DEA set an expedited hearing on the larger question: whether marijuana as a whole, not just those two buckets, should move with them.<\/p>\n
That hearing ran from June 29 to July 15, 2026, at the DEA facility in Arlington, Virginia, before Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek Julius. The agency came in as the proponent of Schedule III. The seven \u00ab\u00a0interested persons\u00a0\u00bb it seated as parties all opposed the move. NORML and other reform groups were told they had not shown they were \u00ab\u00a0adversely affected.\u00a0\u00bb NORML’s answer was the obvious one. It wants the plant off Schedule I entirely, under a cannabis-specific statute, so a half-step to Schedule III does aggrieve its members. Julius declined to reopen the participant list. The room was therefore a hearing about medical acceptance in which the people who have spent decades arguing for medical acceptance were largely locked outside, and the people seated at the table were there to keep the old classification.<\/p>\n
Inside the room, government attorneys argued that cannabis has a currently accepted medical use for pain, nausea, and anorexia, that millions of patients already use it under state programs, and that its risks line up with substances already sitting in less restrictive schedules. One government attorney, James Schwartz, said the part the patent had been saying since 2003: cannabis can no longer remain in Schedule I. Opponents leaned on impaired driving, youth access, and the claim that a Schedule III label would be read as a federal blessing. Post-hearing briefs were due August 17, 2026. On August 21, Julius ordered 294 mostly technical corrections to a 2,533-page transcript and said the cleaned record would be posted. By August 26 the cleaned record was live on DEA.gov<\/a>. DEA’s own closing ask was that Julius \u00ab\u00a0expeditiously recommend\u00a0\u00bb a move from Schedule I to Schedule III.<\/p>\nThen a report that does not evaluate cannabis became the reason the recommendation did not arrive.<\/p>\n
On September 23, 2026, the Government Accountability Office published GAO-26-108623<\/a>, a review of how DEA and FDA schedule drugs. Of 95 substances the auditors looked at across six calendar years, DEA’s final decision matched the HHS recommendation for all 84 substances that had a final rule by December 31, 2025. The other 11 were still under temporary orders. The auditors also found gaps. DEA does not have written policies that spell out roles, responsibilities, and procedures for the scheduling work, including how staff collect data, how they handle new-drug scheduling, and how they weigh an HHS recommendation. FDA does not have procedures that tell its own scientists how to run an eight-factor analysis or how to judge \u00ab\u00a0potential for abuse.\u00a0\u00bb GAO’s worry is continuity. When the process lives in people’s heads, it walks out the door when they do. The report mentions marijuana. It does not conduct a cannabis-specific eight-factor analysis, it makes no finding on accepted medical use, and it recommends nothing about where the plant belongs. Its three recommendations are bureaucratic: DEA write the policies, FDA write the policies, and FDA and NIH update a memorandum of understanding. The agencies concurred.<\/p>\n\n
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