Both Sides File Notices for DEA Marijuana Rescheduling Hearing

Advocacy groups on opposite ends of the marijuana debate have both filed notices to participate in the DEA’s upcoming rescheduling hearing, with a May 25, 2026 filing deadline now closed. NORML and Smart Approaches to Marijuana are both seeking formal participant status in proceedings scheduled to begin June 29, 2026, which will consider whether all marijuana should be transferred to Schedule III under federal law. The acting attorney general will select witnesses and an administrative law judge from the pool of applicants; the hearing must conclude by July 15, 2026.

What the hearing will decide

When Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed the April 23, 2026 rescheduling order, he moved state-licensed medical cannabis and FDA-approved marijuana products immediately to Schedule III. That reclassification is already in effect. The June 29 hearing, announced as part of the same action, addresses the harder remaining question: whether all marijuana — including adult-use cannabis sold in states with recreational markets — should also be moved out of Schedule I.

Under Schedule I — the most restrictive federal classification — a substance is treated as having no accepted medical use and high abuse potential. Moving all marijuana to Schedule III would extend reclassification to the tens of millions of adults using cannabis legally under state recreational laws, closing the gap left by the current partial rescheduling, which protects state-licensed medical patients but not adult-use consumers.

Two filings, two different goals

Neither NORML nor SAM is arguing that Schedule III is simply the right answer.

NORML’s position is that Schedule III remains insufficient for adult cannabis consumers. In its filing, the organization argues that Schedule III is a medicalized framework — it creates pathways for FDA-approved products and research, but doesn’t address the legal status of adults who consume cannabis in state-regulated recreational markets without claiming patient status or seeking a prescription. Joseph A. Bondy, chair of NORML’s board and the group’s counsel, argued that no other organization likely to participate represents adult-use consumers, leaving the hearing record incomplete without them.

“Adult cannabis consumers do not become patients because federal law lacks a better category for them,” Bondy said. “They are participating in state-regulated adult-use systems enacted by voters and legislatures.”

NORML’s preferred outcome is descheduling — removing marijuana from the federal scheduling system entirely and replacing it with a regulatory framework built specifically for cannabis. The filing requests seats for NORML founder R. Keith Stroup, Deputy Director Paul Armentano, and a witness with direct expertise in state adult-use systems.

Smart Approaches to Marijuana, by contrast, filed to oppose moving marijuana to Schedule III at all. SAM CEO Dr. Kevin Sabet said the group would not “sit on the sidelines while the federal government hands Big Marijuana its biggest political win in history,” calling the proposed rescheduling scientifically unfounded.

A first, if it holds to schedule

The June 29, 2026 hearing, if it proceeds as planned, would mark the first time a federal administrative law judge actually receives evidence and expert testimony on marijuana’s scheduling status.

The underlying rulemaking traces to October 2022. The Biden administration set a first round of hearings for late 2024, but those proceedings collapsed in early 2025 after litigation over witness selection and procedural challenges. The Justice Department formally terminated those proceedings in April 2026, simultaneously announcing the Blanche order and a new, deadline-bound process.

The hearing is not the only venue where this question is being contested. The House Appropriations Committee recently advanced a funding rider that would bar the DEA from completing a broader Schedule III transfer — a measure that, if it survives the budget process, could preempt the hearing’s findings before they’re finalized. At the same time, the DEA has been extending its registration framework to businesses along the supply chain to accommodate industries operating under the partial rescheduling already in effect.

How the acting attorney general assembles the witness list from the pool of applicants will determine what the hearing record looks like — and what evidentiary basis the DEA draws on when it reaches its final scheduling determination.