NORML Asks DEA to Reverse Its Exclusion From Rescheduling Hearing

The federal hearing that could decide whether all of marijuana moves out of the strictest tier of U.S. drug law opens June 29, 2026 — and as the roster stands, not one of the seven participants speaks for the people who actually use cannabis. The country’s leading cannabis-consumer advocacy group is now mounting an emergency effort to get into the room before the proceeding begins.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) filed an “emergency request for reconsideration” with the Drug Enforcement Administration on Friday, June 19, 2026, asking the agency to reverse its decision to shut the group out of the hearing on the Trump administration’s proposed cannabis rescheduling. NORML board chair and counsel Joseph A. Bondy addressed the request to DEA Administrator Terry Cole, warning that the proceeding’s record would be incomplete, and the public interest harmed, if it leaves out the consumer perspective.

Why DEA shut reform groups out

The DEA selected seven participants for the hearing, and every one of them opposes loosening federal cannabis restrictions. The roster includes a drug-testing trade association, an anti-legalization group, a state investigative bureau, four states including Nebraska and Idaho, and individual physicians and pharmacists. No supporter of reform who asked to take part was selected; the Drug Policy Alliance and a pro-reform cannabis trade association were turned away alongside NORML.

DEA’s rationale turns on a single procedural threshold. Under the agency’s notice of hearing, only an “interested person” may take part — defined as someone “adversely affected or aggrieved” by the proposed rule. DEA told reform groups they fail that test: because they support moving cannabis off Schedule I, the agency reasoned, they cannot be harmed by a rule that does exactly that.

NORML calls that a misreading of its position. The group does want cannabis out of Schedule I, but it does not accept Schedule III as the correct federal endpoint. Its stance is that marijuana should come off the controlled-substances list entirely and be regulated under a cannabis-specific framework built around consumer safety, product testing, honest labeling, and youth prevention. On that view, NORML argues, it is directly adverse to the proposed rule, not aligned with it.

“Schedule III may be better than schedule I. But it is not complete relief,” Bondy wrote. A move to Schedule III, he argued, would treat marijuana as a medical product while leaving the millions of adults who buy from state-licensed stores federally unrecognized and exposed to continuing criminal and collateral consequences.

What the hearing will actually decide

The June hearing is the broader half of a two-track rescheduling effort. In April 2026, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued an order that immediately moved two narrow categories — marijuana in FDA-approved medicines and marijuana sold under a state medical license — from Schedule I to Schedule III. Everything else, including the state-licensed adult-use market that makes up the bulk of legal sales, stayed in Schedule I.

The hearing is meant to settle the larger question the April order left open: whether all marijuana should move to Schedule III. That makes the proceeding the main event for adult-use operators and consumers, who saw nothing change for them in the spring. A DEA administrative law judge will run the hearing, which is set to conclude no later than July 15, 2026.

For NORML, the absence of any consumer-facing participant is the core problem. With only opponents at the table, the evidentiary record the judge builds — testimony, exhibits, and cross-examination — would reflect one side of a question the agency is supposed to weigh on the merits. The group says excluding it would cause procedural harm that could not be undone once the hearing closes.

What happens next

NORML’s request now sits with Cole, and the window is short: the hearing begins in days. The agency has not said whether it will revisit the roster.

This is not the first time NORML has been left out. The group filed to participate in the earlier rescheduling hearing the Biden administration launched and was not selected then either. That proceeding collapsed in early 2025 over allegations of improper communications and flawed witness selection, and the Justice Department scrapped it in April before starting over.

The reform itself is also under attack in court. State attorneys general, legalization opponents, and a drug-testing group and a pharmaceutical company have all filed challenges that a federal appeals court has consolidated, several of them seeking to halt the process outright. Some of those same opponents now hold the seats NORML is trying to reach.

If DEA declines to reopen the list, the hearing that could reshape federal cannabis policy will proceed with consumers represented only to the extent the government chooses to speak for them.