What to know about a federal order reclassifying medical marijuana as a less dangerous drug

President Donald Trump’s administration has reclassified medical marijuana, which is already licensed in most states, as a less dangerous drug.

The order signed Thursday by the nation’s acting attorney general is a first step toward broader federal acceptance of one of the nation’s most commonly used drugs.

The action could facilitate new research on medicinal uses and make the marijuana industry more profitable. But it does not legalize marijuana under federal law.

Here are some things to know about the issue:

Possessing marijuana is a federal crime punishable by fines and prison time. Selling or cultivating marijuana is a more serious offense, punishable by prison sentences of five years to life, depending on the quantity of the drug. That will not change under the new Department of Justice order.

Rather, the order changes the way that state-licensed medical marijuana is regulated by the federal government.

It shifts medical marijuana from a Schedule I controlled substance — alongside drugs such as heroin and LSD that have a high potential for abuse and no recognized medical use — to the less strictly regulated Schedule III, alongside substances such as ketamine and some anabolic steroids. Schedule III drugs are defined as having moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.

Marijuana that’s sold for recreational purposes — even in states that legally allow it — will remain a Class I drug under Thursday’s order. But the Department of Justice has scheduled a hearing June 29 to consider a general reclassification of marijuana to Schedule III.

Federal income tax deductions for business expenses aren’t available to enterprises involved in “trafficking” any Schedule I or II drug.

Changing medical marijuana to a Schedule III drug could save millions of dollars for businesses licensed to sell it by allowing them to claim tax deductions for expenses such as advertising, marketing, rent and labor costs associated with sales.

But many licensed businesses sell cannabis both for medical and recreational purposes, making it hard to distinguish which costs could be tax-deductible.

“In a lot of ways, it’s kind of nonsensical because these medical products are the same cannabis, the same methods of creation,” said Chicago attorney Irina Dashevsky, who oversees cannabis-related business for the Greenspoon Marder law firm.

“From a business perspective, there’s a lot of complications,” added Rachel Gillette, a Denver attorney who leads that cannabis industry practice at the Holland & Hart law firm. “It just makes it extremely messy.”

Also unclear is whether the tax deductions will apply only from the date of the order. The Justice Department has recommended that the Treasury Department apply them retroactively to the full tax years for which businesses operated under a state medical marijuana license.

Public views of marijuana generally have grown more positive over time, though not among everyone. Support for marijuana legalization rose from just 23% in 1985 to 64% last year, according to polling from Gallup.

That’s down slightly from 70% support just a couple years earlier, primarily because of declining enthusiasm among Republicans. Support among Republicans for legalizing marijuana dropped from 55% to 40% since 2023, Gallup said. By comparison, support shifted only slightly among Democrats, from 87% to 85% during that same period, and inched down from 69% to 66% among independents.

More than 20 Republican U.S. senators, several of them staunch Trump allies, signed a letter last year urging the president to keep marijuana a Schedule I drug. They asserted that marijuana remains dangerous and argued that reclassifying it would “undermine your strong efforts to Make America Great Again.”

The medical use of marijuana already is allowed in 40 states and Washington, D.C. Over the past dozen years, the number of jurisdictions legalizing recreational marijuana for adults rose rapidly to 24 states and Washington, D.C.

As more states have embraced marijuana, more people have used it.

More than 64 million Americans ages 12 and older — 22% of people — used marijuana during the previous year, according to a 2024 national survey by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. That was up from 19% of people in 2021.

Reclassifying marijuana could cause that figure to grow.

Dr. Smita Das, an addiction psychiatrist at Stanford University, said cannabis use disorder has been on the rise in the U.S.

“We’ve already had kind of a decrease in risk perception related to cannabis over the years with the state legalization, both for medical and recreational purposes, and this will probably just add to that,” Das said.

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Associated Press medical writer Laura Ungar contributed to this report.