Opposition’s Own Witnesses Concede Cannabis Fits Schedule III

The federal government’s two-week hearing on moving marijuana out of Schedule I was built to test a single question: whether cannabis meets the legal standard for a lighter classification. By the time the proceeding wound down, several of the opponents’ own witnesses had conceded the central point they were brought in to dispute.

The Drug Enforcement Administration’s administrative hearing on rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act was scheduled to take its final testimony on July 14, 2026, and to close no later than July 15, 2026. Over the preceding fortnight, according to accounts from inside the courtroom, several of the opposition’s expert witnesses acknowledged under the government’s cross-examination that cannabis satisfies the statutory criteria for Schedule III — the finding they had been called to contest.

A one-sided room, an unexpected record

The hearing was designed to favor the opponents. The DEA seated seven participants, and every one of them opposes rescheduling; reform groups including NORML and the Marijuana Policy Project were denied a seat. That left the DEA as the lone proponent of its own proposed rule, defending a change the agency itself has never formally endorsed.

The proposal is modest in legal terms and sweeping in practical ones. It would shift marijuana from Schedule I — the most restrictive federal tier, reserved for drugs treated as having no accepted medical use — to Schedule III, the tier that covers ketamine and anabolic steroids. It follows the Department of Health and Human Services’ August 2023 conclusion that marijuana has a lower potential for abuse than Schedule I and II drugs, has an accepted medical use, and carries only moderate-to-low physical dependence risk. Those three findings track the criteria for Schedule III almost exactly.

For the industry, a great deal rides on that narrow reclassification. Schedule III would lift the federal tax penalty that currently bars cannabis businesses from deducting ordinary expenses, and it would ease long-standing federal limits on medical research — the practical reasons operators and patients have followed the proceeding so closely.

What the opponents conceded

Across the two weeks, the opposition leaned less on denying marijuana any medical value than on attacking the government’s methodology — whether HHS applied the correct legal test to reach its conclusion. According to coverage of the proceedings, that line repeatedly softened under cross-examination.

One scientific expert called to challenge the medical-use evidence head-on acknowledged that cannabis meets the statutory test for Schedule III, and that it does not produce the fatal respiratory depression caused by opioids. A drug-testing trade association that had warned rescheduling would gut workplace testing conceded that private employers can keep testing under their own policies regardless; only the federally mandated program for safety-sensitive workers, such as truck drivers and airline pilots, would be affected.

The hearing’s final day went to the four states leading the opposition — Nebraska, Idaho, Indiana and Louisiana, all petitioners in the pending court challenge. Earlier, a state law-enforcement witness who described large cannabis seizures conceded that Schedule III status would not decriminalize the drug, end federal controls, or legalize diversion; government lawyers noted that heavily diverted Schedule II medicines such as oxycodone and Adderall have never been reclassified on those grounds.

Not every witness gave ground. A DEA pharmacologist, called under subpoena by the opponents, applied the agency’s older five-part test for accepted medical use and concluded cannabis fails it. The government declined to cross-examine her — a sign it views that testimony as aimed at a future appeals court rather than at the judge hearing the case.

Why the concession matters

The admission carries weight because the legal ground was already tilted toward rescheduling. In a 2024 opinion, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel found the DEA’s traditional five-part approach to medical use “impermissibly narrow,” and concluded that the two-part test HHS used is enough to establish accepted medical use even where a drug would not pass the agency’s older standard. The same opinion held that HHS’s scientific and medical determinations must be given significant deference throughout the rulemaking and cannot be reopened for a fresh review.

The safety case rests on similar footing. HHS compared marijuana against drugs including heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, benzodiazepines and alcohol and placed it in “the lowest ranking group” for overdose deaths. An opposition witness conceding that cannabis lacks the lethal effects of opioids reinforces the government’s argument rather than undercutting it.

What happens next

The hearing is one step in a longer process. After final briefs, Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek Julius will compile the record and issue a recommended decision; the DEA Administrator then makes the final call on whether to finalize the Schedule III rule. Whatever the agency decides is almost certain to end up in court — three consolidated petitions are already pending before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to freeze or overturn the separate April 2026 order that reclassified state-licensed medical cannabis.

That is what makes the past two weeks consequential. A reviewing court weighs the administrative record the agency assembled, and a record in which the opponents’ own experts conceded the legal test was met is a far stronger foundation for rescheduling than the lopsided witness list first suggested.