Consumer Support for Trump Cannabis Policy Surges After Rescheduling

Nearly three in four cannabis consumers in legal-market states now back the Trump administration’s drug policy actions — a reversal so sharp it effectively inverts the political picture from just six months ago, when the same population was more than eight times more likely to disapprove than approve.

A new quarterly tracking poll by NuggMD, a cannabis telehealth platform that surveys its own consumer base, found that 73 percent of respondents approve or strongly approve of the administration’s cannabis actions. The survey of 484 consumers in states with legal cannabis markets was fielded May 7–26, 2026, and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 4.45 percentage points.

That compares with the last quarter of 2025 — the period before Trump directed the Justice Department to expedite marijuana rescheduling — when only 6 percent of the same consumer pool approved of the administration’s cannabis actions, 38 percent were neutral, and 56 percent disapproved.

What Consumers Are Responding To

The specific rescheduling action that drove the shift is the one the administration framed as partial and immediate: when Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued an order on April 23, 2026, it moved two categories of marijuana into a less-restricted federal classification — FDA-approved cannabis drug products, and marijuana subject to a state-issued medical license. Both had previously been classified alongside heroin and LSD as substances with no accepted medical use.

Eighty-six percent of NuggMD’s respondents said they support that action, with only 10 percent opposed. The consumer enthusiasm holds even though the order explicitly leaves recreational cannabis in its current classification — adult-use products sold outside state medical license programs remain subject to the most restrictive federal controls until the outcome of a broader DEA administrative hearing set to begin June 29, 2026.

The data also signal a strong political incentive for the administration to go further. Sixty-one percent of those surveyed said they would back the Trump White House “much more” if it moved toward full cannabis legalization. Another 12 percent said their support would increase somewhat. Only 26 percent said their opinion wouldn’t change.

NuggMD’s methodology notes that roughly half its sample uses cannabis primarily for medical reasons, and that daily consumers are over-represented relative to general state populations. The platform treats its results as a leading indicator for the broader consumer market rather than a representative snapshot of the general public.

What the Order Actually Does

The April 2026 rescheduling order has concrete effects for licensed medical operators, even without full legalization.

State-licensed medical cannabis businesses are now exempt from a federal tax provision that had previously barred them from deducting ordinary business expenses — a penalty that had made state-legal cannabis companies among the most heavily taxed businesses in the country. They are also now eligible to register with the DEA under an expedited pathway created by the order.

The order cites as its legal basis the Attorney General’s authority to align drug scheduling with U.S. obligations under an international drug treaty — a route that allowed the reclassification to take effect immediately, without a public notice-and-comment process. That procedural mechanism is now central to the litigation challenging the order.

For context, the rescheduling process started under the Biden administration. In August 2023, the Department of Health and Human Services concluded that marijuana has a currently accepted medical use and a lower abuse potential than Schedule I or II substances — findings that informed the DOJ’s May 2024 proposed rule. That process stalled in 2025 after the administrative law judge overseeing the rescheduling hearing suspended proceedings pending a procedural dispute, and then retired before it was resolved. Trump’s December 18, 2025 executive order directed the Attorney General to break the deadlock.

Resistance in Court and on the Hill

The administration’s rescheduling action is facing legal opposition from within its own party. The attorneys general of Indiana, Nebraska, and Louisiana — Todd Rokita, Mike Hilgers, and Liz Murrill — filed a petition for review on May 22, 2026 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, arguing the administration bypassed required rulemaking procedures. Their filing calls the order “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and not in accordance with law” and asks the court to vacate it. The D.C. Circuit has since consolidated that petition with a separate suit filed by anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana and a workplace drug-screening association. Named defendants in the combined case include the DOJ, the DEA, Blanche, and DEA Administrator Terrance Cole.

On the Hill, a House spending bill passed committee with a provision that would block federal agencies from taking further steps to advance the rescheduling, adding a congressional friction point to the administration’s efforts.

The June 29, 2026 DEA hearing — which will consider whether all forms of marijuana should follow medical cannabis out of the most restricted federal classification — is the next major milestone and the likely next flashpoint. Broader surveys of the American public have found majority support for cannabis legalization across party lines. What the NuggMD data show is that the consumer segment most directly affected by federal cannabis law has registered its verdict on what’s happened so far — and that a substantial share of it is watching to see how far the administration will go.