Why Trump’s DEA May Never Finish the Marijuana Rescheduling Job

August 20, 2026

Photo by kaleb tapp via Unsplash.

Two years. That's how long marijuana rescheduling has been grinding through the federal bureaucracy since the DOJ and DEA first proposed moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III back in May 2024. The process just cleared an 11-day evidentiary hearing in front of DEA's chief administrative law judge, and on paper that sounds like real progress toward the finish line. It isn't, or at least not the finish line most cannabis businesses and patients have been picturing.

Here's the wrinkle worth sitting with: in December 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14370, directing the Attorney General to move marijuana to Schedule III expeditiously. Strong language, clear intent, full reform implied. But when the actual DOJ order landed in April 2026, it didn't do that at all. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's order only covered FDA-approved marijuana products and state-licensed medical marijuana -- a fraction of what the executive order seemed to promise. That gap between rhetoric and rulemaking is the whole story here, and it's why a growing chorus of legal observers thinks broader reform may quietly die on the vine even as the administrative machinery keeps churning. The legal authority to reschedule marijuana in full already exists, according to the Justice Department's own Office of Legal Counsel. The administration just hasn't chosen to use it.

A Two-Year Slog Through DOJ and DEA

Photo by Olena Kholina via Unsplash.

The rescheduling saga has been less a straight line than a stop-and-start slog. It began in earnest in May 2024, when the DOJ and DEA jointly published a notice of proposed rulemaking to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I -- the category reserved for drugs deemed to have no accepted medical use -- down to Schedule III, alongside substances like ketamine and anabolic steroids. That proposal triggered a formal hearing process starting in August 2024, but it stalled almost immediately. By January 2025, the hearing was stayed amid disputes over who actually qualified as a legitimate participant, a procedural fight that ate up months without resolving the underlying question.

The Narrow Order That Raised Red Flags

Photo by Lance Reis via Pexels.

Then came Blanche's order on April 23, 2026, and it's here that the rescheduling story took its sharpest turn. Rather than reclassifying marijuana wholesale, the order placed only FDA-approved marijuana products and state-licensed medical marijuana into Schedule III. Everything else -- adult-use cannabis, the vast majority of what's actually sold in dispensaries nationwide -- stayed put in Schedule I. The order did set an expedited hearing process to examine broader rescheduling, kicking off June 29, 2026, so the door wasn't slammed shut entirely. But the reasoning Blanche offered for stopping short is what's drawing scrutiny.

Inside the Hearing -- and What Happens Next

Photo by Michael D Beckwith via Unsplash.

The broader hearing that Blanche's order set in motion actually happened, and it wasn't a token exercise. Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek C. Julius presided over 11 days of testimony running from June 29 through July 15, 2026 -- a substantial evidentiary record by the standards of DEA administrative proceedings, which have historically moved at a crawl. Julius set August 17, 2026 as the deadline for post-hearing briefs and closing arguments, and the parties filed their final submissions a day later, on August 18.

The Political Headwinds Working Against Full Reform

Photo by Sebastian Schuster via Unsplash.

Policy momentum doesn't happen in a vacuum, and the political signals surrounding this hearing have been consistently lukewarm toward anything beyond medical reform. Trump himself has never publicly called for loosening federal restrictions on adult-use marijuana. His public statements and the executive order he signed track a medical framing -- FDA-approved products, state medical programs -- not a broader descheduling or full Schedule III shift that would meaningfully change how recreational cannabis is treated under federal law.

The Legal Challenges Piling Up in DC

Photo by David Guerrero via Pexels.

Even the narrower medical-only order hasn't escaped legal trouble. It's already being challenged at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where petitioners argue Blanche's order violates the Administrative Procedure Act and exceeds the authority the Controlled Substances Act actually grants the Attorney General. Related cases -- including Nebraska v. DOJ and New Directions Addiction Recovery Servs. v. Trump -- are working through the courts on overlapping theories, adding more uncertainty to a process that was already anything but predictable.

Line up the executive order against the actual DOJ order and the disconnect is hard to explain away as bureaucratic caution. Trump directed expeditious full rescheduling; Blanche delivered a medical-only carve-out and cited treaty concerns the government's own lawyers had already dismissed two years prior. Read together, that looks less like a delay tactic and more like a landing spot -- an administration that may be entirely satisfied stopping at medical reform rather than extending Schedule III status to marijuana broadly.

Even if Judge Julius's eventual recommendation favors full rescheduling, that recommendation doesn't bind DEA Administrator Terry Cole, who holds final authority and no deadline forcing his hand. Layer the pending D.C. Circuit litigation on top of that, and it's entirely possible the process stalls or gets partially unwound regardless of what Cole ultimately decides.

For anyone with money, a business plan, or a personal stake riding on rescheduling, the smart move is watching Cole's ruling and the D.C. Circuit docket rather than treating full Schedule III status as inevitable. And in the meantime, cannabis remains governed state by state -- so check your own state's medical and adult-use laws before assuming anything at the federal level changes what's legal where you live.