When President Donald Trump recently issued an executive order to reschedule marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act, he achieved what every other president before him could not: changing federal policy on the drug to reflect the scientific and medical reality.
For decades, marijuana has been classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning the government considers it to have “no currently accepted medical use” and “a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug under medical supervision.” That simply is not true for marijuana.
In 2023, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted rigorous scientific and medical evaluation and found there is “credible scientific support for the medical use of marijuana.” Today, more than 30,000 licensed healthcare practitioners are authorized to recommend medical use of marijuana.
Those facts didn’t stop The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Editorial Board and a few others from publishing tired old ‘reefer madness’ tropes in the wake of a historic policy advancement from President Trump. The editorial claimed that President Trump’s decision was just a play for the “stoner vote” and that rescheduling might send the wrong message to young people. But prohibitionists like WSJ Editorial Board miss the point entirely, hanging on to outdated stereotypes about stoners living in mom and dad’s basement.
The fact is that rescheduling marijuana is both widely popular and a smart policy decision. A 2025 Pew Research survey found that nine-in-ten Americans are in favor of medical marijuana. That broad support has led 40 states – including deep red states like Texas, Florida and Georgia – to allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Unlike the WSJ Editorial Board, President Trump knows the American people overwhelmingly support rescheduling. That’s why a YouGov poll of 31,000 adults conducted after the president’s rescheduling announcement found that 70% of respondents approve of his decision.
President Trump is once again applying common sense to an area where prior administrations and the deep state have failed the American people. We all know intuitively that marijuana isn’t the same as heroin and ecstasy, drugs that share Schedule I status with marijuana. But President Trump is the first president to recognize that and officially change our policy to fit reality.
Rescheduling is needed because Schedule I status has blocked the very research we desperately need to fully delineate the medical benefits of marijuana while identifying potential risks and applications to be avoided.
Researchers face overwhelming barriers when studying Schedule I substances. They must obtain costly DEA licenses, implement extensive security measures, and navigate strict limits on how much marijuana can be produced for research purposes. As Ryan Vandrey, a Johns Hopkins professor, notes, "Medical research has effectively been under lock and key. Schedule I makes large, placebo-controlled trials incredibly difficult. Without that data, policymakers are being asked to make decisions in the dark." The result? Many talented researchers simply avoid the field entirely.
This research vacuum has real consequences. According to President Trump's executive order, chronic pain affects nearly one in four U.S. adults and more than one in three seniors. Six in ten people using medical marijuana report doing so to manage pain, yet doctors lack FDA-approved guidance on appropriate prescribing. Only 56 percent of older Americans using marijuana have discussed it with their healthcare providers, putting patients at risk of drug interactions and adverse events.
In response to the lack of adequate research on marijuana, the National Academy of Sciences released a report in 2024 calling for “the promotion of research on the health effects of cannabis” and found that the “assurance of equitable access to safer cannabis products would improve the public health response to cannabis policy in the United States.” But Schedule I status prevents that research from happening. If the Wall Street Journal really cares about youth health, they should want to make it easier for this research to happen. That’s why President Trump’s decision to reschedule is so smart. It’s the best way we are going to improve public health and keep kids safe.
President Trump's executive order acknowledges what federal drug policy has long denied: the current system has impeded research on a substance that millions of Americans use medically. The choice is not between research and youth protection. It is between maintaining a failed policy that has generated neither scientific understanding nor effective regulation, and finally allowing researchers to do their jobs. Moving marijuana to Schedule III will not resolve all questions about marijuana, but it will enable the rigorous investigation that should have begun decades ago.
The American Nurses Association (ANA) and the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology (AANA) just endorsed President Trump’s decision to reschedule marijuana. They and millions of Americans know this is the best decision to improve public health. The WSJ Editorial Board can choose to stick their heads in the sand, but President Trump and the rest of us will not.
Chip Paul is the founder of Neighborly Wellness Clinic, a nonmedical wellness clinic, and founder of TrueMedX, Neighborly Nutrition, and EndoAnalysis. He has been published in the American Journal of Endocannabinoid Medicine.
