Senator Presses Trump AG on Cannabis Rescheduling

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Todd Blanche wants the permanent Attorney General job, and that means sitting for written questions from senators who aren't inclined to let vague answers slide. Sen. Alex Padilla of California used his round to press Blanche on the one question the administration has spent months dodging: does the Justice Department intend to go beyond the narrow medical marijuana carve-out it granted in April, or is that as far as this White House's cannabis policy ever goes? Blanche's response was the bureaucratic equivalent of a shrug. He'd give it "careful consideration" and confer with "all relevant stakeholders" -- but only after confirmation, and only in some unspecified future.

The timing makes the dodge more conspicuous than it might otherwise be. Testimony in the DEA's long-running rescheduling hearing wrapped up just a week before these written answers landed, meaning Blanche is being asked to commit to a direction before the administrative record that's supposed to inform that direction is even finalized. Add in a fresh round of polling showing consumer confidence in the administration's cannabis follow-through sliding, and you've got a policy area where the paperwork is moving but the substance isn't.

What Padilla Actually Asked Blanche

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Padilla's questions weren't softballs. He asked Blanche point-blank whether he'd support rescheduling marijuana for adult nonmedical use, and separately whether DOJ would move to reduce federal penalties tied to simple possession or unlicensed sales. Both are questions with real stakes for the roughly half the country living in states with legal adult-use markets, since federal scheduling still technically criminalizes what those state laws permit. Blanche didn't bite. His written answer promised only that he'd think it over carefully, after talking to DEA staff and unnamed stakeholders, assuming the Senate confirms him.

The April Rule That Started the Fight

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On April 23, 2026, Blanche signed off on moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act -- but only for two specific categories: FDA-approved cannabis-derived drug products and marijuana obtained through state-licensed medical programs. Everything else, including recreational purchases in adult-use states and any medical marijuana obtained outside a state-licensed system, technically remains Schedule I under federal law. The rule took effect five days later, on April 28.

DEA's Rescheduling Hearing Wraps Testimony

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While Blanche's written answers to Padilla were making headlines, the parallel process that's supposed to actually determine marijuana's federal scheduling status was reaching its own milestone. Formal hearing proceedings before a DEA administrative law judge kicked off June 29 at DEA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, and testimony wrapped July 15.

Federal Land Prosecutions and the Wyoming Dispute

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Padilla didn't stop at rescheduling. He also pushed Blanche on a September 2025 DOJ guidance memo that rescinded Biden-era policy on cannabis enforcement, a change that's since become a live dispute in at least one state with a lot of federal land.

Where This Leaves Cannabis Consumers and the Industry

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Every quarter, Marijuana Moment and NuggMD run a tracking poll on consumer sentiment toward federal cannabis policy, and the latest numbers aren't kind to the administration.

Strip away the procedural language and Blanche's answers to Padilla say something fairly simple: DOJ isn't going to lead on cannabis policy, it's going to wait and see what the DEA hearing record produces and react to that. That's a defensible institutional posture for an agency that's supposed to follow administrative process rather than get ahead of it, but it's a far cry from the "expanding access" framing DOJ used to sell the April medical-only rule. If the department genuinely believed in that framing, there was nothing stopping Blanche from at least sketching out a position on adult-use rescheduling contingent on the hearing's outcome. He didn't.

The real fight, at this point, isn't about whether marijuana belongs on Schedule III at all -- DOJ conceded that much in April. It's about how far down the schedule it eventually goes and for whom, and that question now lives entirely inside a DEA administrative process most consumers will never read a word of. Anyone trying to gauge personal legal risk should treat that federal process as background noise rather than a signal to change behavior. State law is still what governs day-to-day possession, purchase, and cultivation in the places where cannabis is legal, and federal rescheduling, however it resolves, won't retroactively make anything legal that a state hasn't already authorized. The added wrinkle, especially for anyone near national parks or other federal land, is that enforcement posture there can diverge sharply from the state law surrounding it -- which makes checking both layers, not just one, worth the five minutes it takes.