A long-awaited change in drug policy could bring scientists one step closer to understanding the harms and benefits of marijuana, the most commonly used federally illegal substance.On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that moved to reclassify cannabis from a Schedule I to a Schedule III substance, following through on a regulatory shift first pushed during the Biden administration.“Decades of federal drug control policy have neglected marijuana’s medical uses,” the order says. “That oversight has limited the ability of scientists and manufacturers to complete the necessary research on safety and efficacy to inform doctors and patients.”AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWhile the reclassification is intended to bolster medical marijuana research and won’t legalize cannabis at the federal level, the move comes at a time when use in the United States is at a high. Gallup data from 2023 and 2024 estimates that 15% of adults smoke marijuana, up from 7% in 2013.The poll, which didn’t differentiate between medical and recreational consumption, showed the highest use (19%) among young adults 18 to 34, a group for whom studies have found cannabis to have damaging psychiatric effects. For example, a study published Tuesday in the journal Pediatrics found that using marijuana as little as once or twice a month was linked to emotional distress and worse school performance among teens.Medical marijuana is typically prescribed to ease chronic pain; control nausea and vomiting, often in people receiving chemotherapy for cancer; and bring about an appetite in people with certain medical conditions. It’s unclear whether rescheduling cannabis will affect funding for recreational marijuana research.Scientists like Ziva Cooper are hopeful the reclassification could revolutionize public health through more comprehensive marijuana research.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“It is extremely difficult to study cannabis, aka marijuana, for both the potential adverse effects as well as therapeutic effects,” said Cooper, director of the Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The industry is developing at a very fast pace, and so consumer behavior is developing along with that industry.“It’s very hard for us, as scientists, as people who are interested in public health, to be able to keep up with the changes, in part because the research is difficult.”Schedule I is the strictest of the five controlled substance categories recognized by the Drug Enforcement Administration, reserved for drugs “with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” including ecstasy, heroin, LSD and peyote. Schedule III drugs, which include ketamine, testosterone and anabolic steroids, have “a moderate to low potential for physical and ps …
