The Drug Enforcement Administration is expected to formally reclassify marijuana as a less restricted substance after President Biden sought the review as he courts reform advocates in his re-election bid — but critics decried the change as not going far enough.
Multiple news outlets, including the Associated Press, reported Tuesday that pot will be moved from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act, easing research into its medicinal qualities and opening the door to lawful prescriptions replacing a patchwork of state rules.
But longtime pot legalization advocates said it was a half measure — noting that Schedule III includes substances such as ketamine and codeine cough syrup, for which illicit users and dealers still face penalties.
“Moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t go far enough,” the national group Students for a Sensible Drug Policy said in a statement. “Make no mistake, Schedule III is not legalization and it is not decriminalization. It will not stop arrests, especially of young people.”
For more than half a century, marijuana’s status as a Schedule I drug alongside heroin and LSD defined it as having a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical value.
Schedule II and III drugs still are heavily restricted, and it’s unclear what immediate practical effect the symbolic breakthrough will have.
Biden authored some of the nation’s harshest federal drug laws as a senator in the 1980s and ’90s and still opposes federal legalization of marijuana for recreational use — even though 24 states, three US territories and Washington, DC, allow it, in conflict with federal law.
National legalization is widely seen as inevitable due to overwhelming public support — with Gallup finding 70% backing for pot legalization in a poll released in November.
But major companies are still sitting on the sidelines of the industry, allowing for a proliferation of independent growers and distributors without major national consolidation of the market.
Senate Majority Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is sponsoring a federal legalization bill, though it’s not expected to pass anytime soon due to reticience from fellow lawmakers.
Activists previously decried Biden’s decision to issue a mass pardon just before the 2022 midterm elections to people convicted federally of simple marijuana possession — of whom none were actually in prison — as a stunt that failed to fulfill his campaign pledge to free “everyone” in prison for marijuana.
There are roughly 2,700 still incarcerated for dealing the drug.
Still, the rescheduling will give Biden a key point to tout during his campaign against former President Donald Trump, who also tolerated state-legal enterprise while he held office.
On his final day as president in 2021, Trump released from prison seven people with life sentences for marijuana, two of whom were sent away under Biden’s 1994 crime law.
The rescheduling is a longtime policy victory for the reform movement — after activists rallied at smoke-ins outside the White House for decades demanding an administrative review of the classification.
Pot campaigners had failed to sway previous officeholders including then-President Barack Obama, a famed former member of a pot-smoking “Choom Gang” during his youth in Hawaii.
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