Marijuana products are shown at a dispensary in Santa Ana, Calif., Thursday, April 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) The Drug Enforcement Administration will soon begin hearings on a proposal to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. This is more than a bureaucratic reclassification. If approved, it would represent a federal determination that all cannabis products — including marijuana flower, pre-rolls, vape cartridges, concentrates, edibles, and tinctures — have a currently accepted medical use.
Before making one of the most consequential drug policy decisions in decades, Americans should ask a simple question: Is this conclusion based on scientific evidence or on politics?
The question of legalizing recreational marijuana is one of personal ideology. Reasonable people can disagree about whether adults should be allowed to use marijuana, just as Americans disagree on the legality of gambling, flavored nicotine vapes and alcohol.
On the other hand, whether a substance qualifies as a medicine is a scientific fact that can be proven or disproven.
Drugs become medicines by demonstrating safety, efficacy, manufacturing consistency, known dosing, and an acceptable risk-benefit profile through rigorous scientific evaluation. The marijuana sold as medicine in state-legal dispensaries meets none of these criteria.
The issue is not whether certain marijuana derivatives have medical uses. Over 40 years ago, the FDA approved a purified form of tetrahydrocannabinol — the psychoactive chemical in cannabis — as a medication. Today, three different cannabinoids are FDA-approved. The question at hand is whether there is proof that crude cannabis is a safe and effective pharmaceutical. At present, the evidence does not support that conclusion.
Simply put, weed is not medicine.
Lacking evidence from randomized, controlled trials, the Department of Health and Human Services points to the existence of state medical marijuana programs as evidence of broad acceptance by the medical community. But a closer look tells a different story. For example, data from Colorado — where such records are kept — show that only a tiny fraction (0.1 percent) of healthcare practitioners with prescribing authority was responsible for more than 70 percent of all medical marijuana certifications. Meanwhile, roughly 98 percent of eligible practitioners issued no marijuana certifications at all.
That is not widespread medical acceptance.
Another argument for rescheduling is that marijuana’s current classification creates unnecessary barriers to research. In fact, President Trump’s executive order directing the attorney general to complete the Schedule III rulemaking ‘in the most expeditious manner’ permitted by law was entitled Increasing Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research. If research barriers exist, they should be addressed directly. However, research proving a drug to be an effective medicine normally precedes the drug being classified as medicine. To do otherwise is putting the cart before the horse.
In any event, cannabis research has hardly been stifled. Roughly 4,000 scientific papers appear annually, and the NIH database now indexes more than 53,000 cannabis publications.
Rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III would send the wrong message to the public. Many people would understandably conclude that marijuana is a validated treatment. In fact, with the presence of state medical programs, this erroneous message has already taken root. In my work as a medical review officer reviewing drug test results, I have spoken with parents who, believing that marijuana is medicine, accepted their teenagers’ use of cannabis as a treatment for anxiety.
Meanwhile, data from more than 11,000 participants in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study — the largest long-term study of brain development in U.S. youth — showed reduced acquisition of memory, attention and thinking skills in teenaged users compared to non-users.
Today’s marijuana is not the marijuana of previous generations. Due to the increased THC potency, I have seen cases of cannabis-induced psychosis and cannabis hyperemesis syndrome — illnesses that did not exist when I was in medical school 40 years ago.
The debate over marijuana has become deeply polarized, with advocates often overstating benefits and opponents overstating harms. Policymakers should reject both extremes and put science ahead of politics.
Dr. Russell Kamer is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at New York Medical College, a board member of the International Academy on the Science and Impact of Cannabis and a practicing physician of 30 years.
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