Why the Biden administration plan to reclassify marijuana matters

President Joe Biden’s first dramatic move on marijuana policy came in 2022, when the Democrat announced one of the most sweeping pardons in modern American history: The incumbent president took executive action to pardon thousands of people convicted of marijuana possession under federal law.

It became a point of real pride for the White House — as evidenced by Biden bragging about the policy in his State of the Union address. What’s more, in the same remarks, the president said he was “directing my cabinet to review the federal classification of marijuana.”

Evidently, Biden meant it. NBC News reported this week:

It was Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services that concluded, after a year and a half of bureaucratic review, that marijuana should be reclassified from the strictest Schedule I, covering drugs such as heroin and methamphetamines, to Schedule III, which includes things like Tylenol with codeine and testosterone.

Now, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department are endorsing the move, marking the first time that federal officials have acknowledged potential medical benefits to marijuana and opening the door to therapeutic research.

It is, as an Associated Press report noted, the biggest policy change from federal officials on the issue “in more than 50 years.”

What’s more, a Politico report added that rescheduling “will make it easier to research cannabis, something that scientists and public health officials have wanted for years. It also will move cannabis businesses out from under section 280E of the federal tax code, which prohibits them from writing off most basic business expenses and makes it exceedingly difficult to turn a profit.”

To be sure, this is a major breakthrough, though the shift in policy is not exactly imminent: NBC News’ report added, “After the proposal is published in the Federal Register, there will be a 60-day public comment period. The proposal will then be reviewed by an administrative law judge, who could decide to hold a hearing before the rule is approved.”

In other words, reformers will have to be patient for a little while longer.

Nevertheless, this is, by any fair measure, a dramatic policy development and a progressive success story. But as a political matter, one of the most amazing things about the president’s latest move is how uncontroversial it is.

Indeed, it was easy to imagine Republicans responding to this week’s news with apoplectic broadsides about the seriousness of “gateway drugs.”

But that didn’t happen. A few GOP officials, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, offered mild rebukes in response to the administration’s move, but they were understated and bore no resemblance to the kind of hair-on-fire reaction we would’ve seen a generation ago.

In fact, for the most part, leading Republican voices simply don’t seem to care. The White House seems to realize that Biden can do the right thing on the issue without paying a political price — in part because GOP officials can read the polls and understand that tired clichés about marijuana don’t work the way they used to.

It’s extraordinary to see how much the landscape has changed in recent years. A decade ago, the total number of states allowing recreational marijuana use was zero, and at the national level, elected officials wanted nothing to do with reform proposals.

Now, 24 states have legalized cannabis for adult use; 37 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized medical marijuana; and the Biden administration is moving forward with reclassification plans with minimal pushback from its GOP detractors.

For decades, the United States’ “war on drugs” only moved in one punitive direction. As the latest developments help prove, it’s a new day.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.