The Trump administration is preparing to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act as soon as today, according to reporting from Axios. This would mark the most significant federal cannabis policy shift in decades. It is not legalization. Here’s what you need to know right now.

As of publication, cannabis rescheduling has not been officially announced. No final rule had been publicly issued. This story will be updated as developments occur.

The Trump administration is prepared to move forward with cannabis rescheduling, Axios reported Wednesday, citing an administration official familiar with the matter. MJBizDaily confirmed the reporting through two sources close to the process. “Today’s the day,” one source told the outlet, while adding that “some process” still remains ahead.

The move follows a December 18 executive order in which President Trump directed the attorney general to complete the rescheduling process “in the most expeditious manner possible.” Trump himself complained just days ago, during a Saturday signing ceremony for a separate psychedelics order, that federal agencies were “slow-walking” him on cannabis. “You’re going to get the rescheduling done, right, please?” he said, apparently addressing a DOJ or White House official in the Oval Office.

The rescheduling process has a longer history. The Biden administration launched a formal review in 2022. In 2023, Health and Human Services concluded that cannabis has accepted medical use and recommended Schedule III. The DEA process stalled. Hearings were delayed. Nothing was finalized before Trump took office for his second term.

What Schedule III actually means

Cannabis is currently classified as Schedule I, the same category as heroin, LSD and ecstasy — defined as having no accepted medical use. Schedule III drugs, such as ketamine and anabolic steroids, are recognized as having medical value but remain controlled. The reclassification would move cannabis into that category. State-legal markets would likely continue operating much as they do now, though legal tensions with federal law would remain. Federal prohibition would remain in place.

The 280E question — the real immediate stakes

For cannabis businesses, the most concrete near-term impact is the potential end of IRS code 280E. Because cannabis remains Schedule I or II, plant-touching businesses currently cannot deduct ordinary business expenses — rent, payroll, utilities — from their federal taxes. That has been devastating for independent operators. If finalized, rescheduling to Schedule III would remove that restriction and could provide major tax relief across the industry.

What comes next

The rescheduling process is not a single signature. The Drug Enforcement Administration still has to complete the rulemaking process, which could include a new administrative hearing. Legal challenges from opponents of cannabis reform are expected. Two Republican senators filed an amendment in January to block rescheduling, though it was not adopted. A Congressional Research Service report has noted that the DOJ could, in theory, reject or delay the president’s directive by restarting the scientific review process.

The process is being overseen by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who said during his confirmation process that he would “give the matter careful consideration after conferring with all relevant stakeholders.”

Rescheduling is movement. It is not freedom.

High Times, December 2025

High Times has covered the rescheduling debate extensively. We called this moment before it arrived, and our position has not changed. Schedule III is a meaningful step for the industry, particularly on taxes. It is not the end of federal prohibition, it does not repair the damage done by the war on drugs, and it does not free a single person still incarcerated for cannabis. The fight for full descheduling and legalization continues.

For deeper context, read our full coverage: Cannabis Rescheduling Questions Answered | What the Executive Order Doesn’t Do | Why Schedule III Could Be a Trap | Rescheduling Is Just the Opening Move

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President Trump signed an executive order on April 18 directing the FDA to fast-track review of psychedelic therapies and committing $50 million to ibogaine research. The psychedelics community is cautiously optimistic, and watching closely.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Saturday directing federal agencies to accelerate research into psychedelic therapies and committing $50 million through HHS to support state-backed psychedelic research, with ibogaine as the primary immediate beneficiary. The signing took place in the Oval Office on April 18, with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., podcast host Joe Rogan, veterans advocate Marcus Luttrell and Representative Morgan Luttrell among those present.

“I’m pleased to announce historic reforms to dramatically accelerate access to new medical research and treatments based on psychedelic drugs,” Trump said at the signing, as reported by The New York Times. Of ibogaine specifically, Trump added: “I never heard anything about it in the past. It was almost like, taboo. It’s not taboo anymore.”

FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said decisions on the drugs could come as soon as this summer, telling those assembled that drugs aligned with national priorities could get approved “in weeks, not a year or a year-plus,” according to CNN.

How Joe Rogan helped make this happen

Rogan, who backed Trump in 2024 and has devoted significant airtime to advocates for ibogaine’s use in treating veterans, described the moment from the Oval Office. He said he had sent Trump information about ibogaine, and that the response came back almost immediately: “Sounds great, do you want FDA approval? Let’s do it.” Rogan called it “literally that quick.”

What the order actually does

The executive order names ibogaine specifically and directs the FDA to prioritize eligible psychedelic therapies that have received Breakthrough Therapy designation, while broader compounds including psilocybin, LSD and MDMA may benefit under the order’s broader review framework. According to Reuters, federal officials said the reforms would pave the way for reclassification of substances following successful clinical trials. The federal funding will most immediately benefit Texas, which had already committed $50 million of its own to ibogaine research but recently failed to secure matching funds from a private drug developer.

Veterans at the center of the push

The signing was flanked by veterans advocates, including Marcus Luttrell and his brother, Representative Morgan Luttrell, a Texas Republican. Representative Michael McCaul joined Luttrell in vowing to pursue legislation to make the changes more durable. “We will continue working in Congress to build on the president’s leadership and expand access to this life-saving treatment,” the two said in a joint statement. “Our veterans answered the call for us. Now we must deliver for them.”

Ibogaine has drawn particular attention from veteran groups because of its reported efficacy in treating PTSD and opioid use disorder. Mexico currently has ibogaine treatment centers that have long attracted U.S. veterans who cannot legally access the treatment at home.

MAPS: opportunity and responsibility

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which has been conducting ibogaine research for over a decade, welcomed the executive order while stressing that speed cannot come at the expense of rigor.

“As federal agencies are directed to reduce barriers to clinical research and accelerate drug approvals for psychedelic substances, it is critical that these efforts remain grounded in transparent, evidence-based processes,” said Ismail L. Ali, J.D., co-executive director of MAPS. He noted that MAPS will publish a publicly available Investigator’s Brochure for ibogaine this summer, providing a comprehensive literature review of the compound’s known clinical and non-clinical data.

Ali also raised a critical concern about supply: because iboga is a limited natural resource, mass production of ibogaine carries real risks for the people, traditions and land where iboga is grown in Gabon. “As it is incorporated into medicine, we call for alignment with global public health principles, including cultural respect, sustainability, and community engagement,” he said.

“People living with addiction and trauma deserve our urgent attention, not just incremental change. We have both an opportunity and a responsibility.”

Betty Aldworth, Co-Executive Director, MAPS

Betty Aldworth, MAPS’s other co-executive director, was blunt about the stakes. “Today, people desperate for healing are traveling abroad or self-medicating with impure substances and little support,” she said, adding that acceleration of approval timelines must be paired with regulated access, provider training and robust insurance coverage. “When we ignore that evidence, we put our communities and future at risk.”

The clinical perspective

Tom Feegel, CEO of Beond, a clinical neurohealth center focused on ibogaine-assisted protocols, called the order a historic inflection point, though he emphasized that execution is everything.

“The opportunity now is not hype — it is execution: rigorous science, disciplined safety standards, physician-led protocols, and real-world outcomes data.”

Tom Feegel, CEO, Beond

“Ibogaine is not a conventional intervention,” Feegel said. “It works at the level of brain chemistry and neural signaling, opening a window of neuroplasticity where meaningful change becomes possible when guided by the right advanced clinical frameworks.” He stressed that ibogaine must be delivered in medically supervised environments with cardiac monitoring, careful screening and therapeutic integration, not as a standalone treatment.

The science and the caution

Ibogaine remains a Schedule I controlled substance in the United States. Early research, including a Stanford observational study on 30 special forces veterans, showed significant reductions in PTSD, depression and anxiety symptoms. But the compound carries real cardiac risks, including abnormal heart rhythms, and several deaths have been associated with its ingestion, though causation is not always definitively established.

Psilocybin and LSD have both received FDA breakthrough therapy designation in recent years. MDMA was declined by the FDA in 2024 for PTSD treatment, pending additional clinical trials after concerns were raised about the integrity of prior studies.

Scientists have expressed concern that the administration’s emphasis on speed could lead to bypassing rigorous research benchmarks and put patients at risk, according to CNN’s reporting.

Part of a broader pattern, with an important caveat

This is Trump’s second psychedelic-adjacent executive order in four months. In December 2025, he directed the attorney general to move forward with reclassifying cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III. The DEA has still not completed that reclassification. Executive orders direct agency action but do not guarantee it.

Whether this order moves faster than the cannabis rescheduling directive will depend entirely on follow-through from the FDA and DEA. The FDA Commissioner’s promise of decisions “in weeks” will be watched closely by researchers, veterans, operators and the broader psychedelics community.

The bipartisan resonance of Saturday’s signing is real and notable. Representative Lou Correa, a California Democrat, applauded the action publicly. Rogan, who has been openly critical of some of Trump’s other policies, was present and credited. That unusual alignment may give the order more political durability than it would otherwise have.

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As federal cannabis rescheduling looms on the horizon and more states across the country begin rolling out regulations for legal psychedelic therapy, health officials have increasingly been targeting a centuries-old psychoactive plant from Southeast Asia with newly introduced measures of prohibition. 

Kratom is a leafy green botanical native to Southeast Asia that acts on the opioid receptors and is noted for its ability to offer pain relief and euphoria to the more than 2 million Americans who are estimated to use it each year. It is this ancient plant medicine that is being increasingly scrutinized as a key issue in the often contradictory framing of drug policy reform.

While many have looked to the current administration for movement on federal cannabis rescheduling and broader natural medicine policy reform, increasing restrictions on hemp products and rising scrutiny of kratom suggest that drug policy may be shifting in more complex—and in some cases more restrictive—directions. Since it has not been federally scheduled under the Controlled Substances Act, kratom has emerged as a prominent product in the legal psychoactive plant market.

The 7-OH Crackdown and Its Ripple Effects

Kratom contains several active alkaloids, most notably mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH). While 7-OH occurs naturally in trace amounts, regulators have raised concerns about newer products that concentrate or synthesize this compound at much higher levels.

Over the last year, health authorities have launched a crackdown against 7-OH products in the wake of a series of unsettling reports about the addictiveness and potential dangers of the synthetic opioid. In communications from federal agencies, 7-OH has been described as significantly more potent than morphine in certain contexts, particularly when isolated or synthetically enhanced.

While 7-hydroxymitragynine occurs naturally in trace amounts in kratom, many of the products drawing regulatory scrutiny are synthetically concentrated versions.

The rising pushback against synthetic 7-OH products has cast a pall upon the kratom market itself, with health authorities across various counties currently considering restrictions against the sale and distribution of kratom products alongside their synthetic derivatives. 

As of March 25, 2026, the state of Connecticut has implemented a ban against kratom products and required stores to remove any remaining inventory from shelves. The domino effect of prohibition is poised to spread across state lines, signaling an escalation of the war on plant medicine. 

Kansas has a similar bill that has passed legislation and is awaiting the governor’s action to be signed into law. Several other states and counties are also currently moving the needle on the natural leaf kratom market regulation or proposed prohibition in the wake of the 7-OH product bans. 

“The press often conflates 7-OH with kratom, and as a result, we’re seeing increasing prohibition against natural leaf kratom,” says kratom industry operator Soren Shade of Top Tree Herbs.

“If existing kratom regulations can be overturned and replaced with bans, it’s actually easier for marijuana regulations to get overturned and replaced with bans too,” he continues.

Local Bans and the Fight Over ‘Third Spaces’

Such is also the case in Nassau County, New York, where lawmakers passed a bill banning the sale of all kratom products and synthetic counterparts in March. As of last week, new legislation has been introduced in neighboring Suffolk County—a district that makes up two-thirds of Long Island—to potentially ban kratom products, signaling a domino effect in the region. 

“The propaganda surrounding natural kratom leaf is reaching ‘Reefer Madness’ levels again,” says Travis Doupe of The Mock Pit, a non-alcoholic bottleshop that sells kratom in Huntington Station, New York. 

Kratom is a staple of the kava bar scene in New York that serves as a ‘third space’ for people to congregate together and enjoy alternatives to alcohol. Kava is a mild psychoactive root traditionally used in the South Pacific islands to induce relaxation and promote social bonding. Together, kava and kratom have become the backbone of a rising trend towards public venues offering alcohol alternatives for people who want to socialize and relax without the hangover. 

While New York public health officials have raised concerns about the addictiveness of kratom and its reported potential liver toxicity, a community of kratom users and small business owners is working to educate the public about the utility of the plant and its role in helping to shape the alcohol alternative market. 

“What we’ve built is a beautiful community of people who can meet, work, and relax away from a bar setting. In 2026, it’s sad to think they are suppressing this vibe and trying to ban a safe and natural plant,” continues Doupe. 

Other members of the kratom community in New York see the potential ban of kratom as classic government overreach. For these small business owners who have helped shape the alcohol alternative movement by creating ‘Third Spaces’ offering legal psychoactive plants like kratom and kava tea, the specter of a crackdown on kratom products poses the threat of undermining the local community connections and values they champion.

“Nassau County’s ban on the sale of kratom supersedes both state and federal regulations. County Executive Bruce Blakeman is threatening up to one year of jail time for selling a plant that is 100 percent legal in the rest of New York State,” says Eric Ott of Roots Kava Bar in Long Island. 

“In a state where cannabis was legalized, and psilocybin therapy frameworks are being considered, one of the biggest counties in the state is considering a ban on kratom. The war on plants that we thought was over is actually coming back masked as public safety in an overreach response to cracking down on totally unnatural synthetic drugs like 7-OH,” says Robert Lattig of Roots Kava Bar.

A Shifting Landscape for Drug Policy Reform

Recent political movements have signaled potential openness to expanding access to natural medicines and alternative therapies. However, the evolving regulatory landscape around kratom suggests that progress may not be uniform across all substances.

The crackdown against 7-OH, being extended to potentially ban the sale and distribution of kratom at large in various counties, showcases the domino effect of shifting public and political opinion on natural healing modalities. 

In an era when the War on Drugs has faced increasing criticism for its historical and political implications, kratom has become, for some, a test case for how governments approach emerging and existing psychoactive substances.

Whether these developments represent a temporary course correction or a longer-term shift remains to be seen. But as cannabis legalization expands and psychedelic policy evolves, the trajectory of kratom regulation may offer an early signal of where broader drug policy is headed next.

This article is from an external, unpaid contributor. It does not represent High Times’ reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.

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Psychedelic legislation is moving through more state capitols simultaneously than at any point in history. The question is not whether reform is coming. It is whether it will be done right.

In March 2026, Oregon signed into law significant modifications to its psilocybin services program, the first regulated psychedelic access system in the country, now three years into operation and already being revised. In the same month, trigger laws advancing the potential medical use of psychedelics gained ground in South Dakota, Mississippi and West Virginia. New Jersey had signed a $6 million, two-year psychedelic research initiative into law in January. New Mexico’s medical psilocybin program, the first to pass through a state legislature rather than a ballot measure, was already operational. In Alaska, organizers were gathering signatures for a 2026 ballot initiative that would decriminalize and regulate psilocybin, mescaline and DMT under a “grow, gather, gift” model.

This is not the psychedelic reform movement of 2020. It is faster, more geographically diverse, more bipartisan and considerably more complicated. And the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the organization that has been navigating this landscape longer than almost anyone, has spent the last year trying to make sure the movement does not make the same mistakes it watched the cannabis industry make.

What’s actually moving in 2026

The legislative map looks nothing like it did two years ago. The activity is no longer concentrated in coastal blue states. Trigger laws, which automatically reschedule psychedelic substances at the state level if and when the federal government acts, are spreading through legislatures that would have been unthinkable territory for this conversation in 2022. Mississippi, West Virginia and South Dakota are not Oregon. That is the point.

Veterans are a significant driver of that bipartisan spread. A bill in Utah that passed both chambers on March 4, 2026, the first in the country to receive unified endorsement from all three leading veteran psychedelic advocacy organizations, authorizes a Utah-based mental health institute to conduct a clinical study on psychedelic-assisted therapy for veterans with treatment-resistant PTSD. Utah has one of the largest veteran populations in the country and a veteran suicide rate more than double the national average. Texas, which authorized $50 million for ibogaine research in 2025, is now executing that mandate through in-state medical research teams after no external drug developer submitted a suitable proposal. Mississippi’s own ibogaine bill was signed into law on March 26, explicitly coordinating its research consortium with the Texas-anchored multistate network.

At the ballot level, Alaska is mounting a serious push. The proposed Natural Medicine Act would go further than Oregon or Colorado by allowing individual practitioners to facilitate outside of licensed healing centers, a provision designed specifically for the state’s rural geography, where a healing center model simply does not work.

The cannabis lesson, applied

MAPS released its Policy Guidebook earlier this year as a nonpartisan framework for exactly this moment, with more than a dozen states expected to consider psychedelic legislation or ballot measures in 2026 and no consensus yet on what responsible reform looks like at scale. The document is blunt about what the movement is trying to avoid.

As the guidebook notes, there is a growing sense among practitioners and advocates that the psychedelic industry “should not repeat the mistakes made in the rollout of the cannabis industry.” Those mistakes, corporate capture of markets that were supposed to prioritize equity, licensing barriers that effectively excluded the communities most harmed by prohibition, a medical framework that created access for the wealthy while leaving everyone else in the same legal gray zone, are live concerns as psychedelics move toward mainstream legitimacy.

The guidebook is candid about something cannabis advocates rarely said out loud at the time: most psychedelic use happens outside of clinical or regulated settings, and it always will. Designing policy only for the regulated market means designing policy for a minority of actual users. MAPS explicitly calls for frameworks that serve people in unregulated environments, through harm reduction, substance testing access, peer support and decriminalization of personal use, rather than treating the underground as a problem to be eliminated.

“Increasing access to consumers in the global north can exert downward economic pressure in other parts of the world. We recognize the historical invisibility and exploitation of Indigenous people in the American narrative.”

MAPS Policy Guidebook, 2026

The tensions that don’t have easy answers

Oregon’s experience is instructive. Its psilocybin services program was the first in the country, but early implementation revealed problems that required legislative correction. Facilitators with dual professional licenses were initially barred from using skills from their other licensure during sessions, creating an absurd situation where a licensed psychologist had to pretend not to be one while sitting with a client in a psychedelic state. Oregon fixed that in May 2025, with the fix taking effect in January 2026. The lesson is not that Oregon got it wrong. It is that even the most carefully designed program requires adaptation once it meets reality.

The question of training standards remains genuinely unresolved. Oregon and Colorado each require a minimum of 120 to 200 hours of education for facilitators. Whether that is remotely sufficient, or whether it is off by an order of magnitude, is still being debated by practitioners with decades of experience. Traditional and Indigenous knowledge systems do not map neatly onto state licensing frameworks, and no one has solved that problem yet.

Then there is the backlash. Massachusetts, which voted down a broad psychedelic ballot measure in 2024, now has a separate initiative in circulation that would repeal the state’s recreational marijuana legalization entirely, a reminder that reform momentum can reverse. The psychedelic movement is watching.

What comes next

Federal rescheduling of psilocybin and MDMA remains unresolved, but the state-level activity is not waiting for Washington. The trigger law strategy, seeding state-level readiness so that federal action can be implemented quickly, is the clearest sign that advocates are no longer betting everything on a single federal move.

What MAPS is arguing, and what the most sophisticated reform efforts in 2026 reflect, is that the endgame is not a single national policy. It is a patchwork of overlapping frameworks, medical, decriminalized, regulated adult use, community-based, that together serve the full range of how people actually engage with these substances. Getting those frameworks to coexist without undermining each other is the political and legal challenge of the next several years.

The movement has a roadmap now. Whether it can hold to it as the money and the politics get louder is the open question.

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A long trail of corruption cases, oversight failures, and drug-war contradictions has left the DEA with a credibility problem, even as it continues to influence how cannabis is scheduled, researched, and regulated in the United States.

Four decades of corruption scandals and an expanding global mission raise a fundamental question: Is the DEA fighting drugs, or protecting an outdated model of drug enforcement?

The Drug Enforcement Administration wants the public to believe a simple story: heroic agents battling cartels, protecting American families from deadly substances, and making communities safer. It is a compelling narrative, one the agency has sold to Congress, the public, and presidents of both parties for more than half a century.

But if we look closely at the DEA’s actual record, a different picture emerges. One where some agents have laundered millions of dollars alongside the traffickers they were supposed to target. One where corruption investigations touching dozens of people resulted in just a single government conviction. One where overseas operations have repeatedly raised questions about mission creep and weak oversight. And one where, despite vast resources and decades of authority, the overdose crisis reached catastrophic levels and remains severe even as recent data shows some improvement.

Most troubling of all for cannabis readers, this same agency continues to exert decisive influence over marijuana policy in the United States, shaping how weed is scheduled, researched, and regulated. An institution whose credibility has been repeatedly damaged by corruption scandals and weak accountability still helps decide what Americans can legally consume, prescribe, or study.

An institution whose credibility has been repeatedly damaged by corruption scandals and weak accountability still helps decide what Americans can legally consume, prescribe, or study.

The Pattern That Won’t Go Away

Let’s start with what is documented, not what is merely suspected.

In 2021, former DEA special agent José Irizarry was sentenced to more than twelve years in federal prison for a sprawling corruption scheme. Operating primarily overseas, Irizarry admitted to laundering approximately $9 million through sham enforcement operations, using the money for luxury cars, a mansion in Cartagena, Tiffany jewelry, and what he described to the Associated Press as a decade of “luxury overseas travel, fine dining, top seats at sporting events and frat house-style debauchery.”

Irizarry’s operation, known as “Team America,” was not portrayed by him as a solo act. In interviews before entering prison, he told the AP that dozens of federal agents, prosecutors, informants, and cartel members were involved in or around the scheme, selecting cities for laundering operations “mostly for party purposes or to coincide with Real Madrid soccer or Rafael Nadal tennis matches.”

Here is what makes Irizarry’s case extraordinary: he talked. At length. To the FBI, to federal prosecutors, and to reporters. He provided names, dates, and details. Federal investigators reportedly questioned up to two dozen current and former DEA agents and prosecutors based on his disclosures.

And yet, despite this sprawling investigation, Irizarry remains the only government employee convicted in connection with the Team America scheme. Judge Charlene Honeywell, who sentenced him in Tampa, appeared to share the public’s confusion, pointing out that other agents, corrupted by what she called the “allure of easy money,” needed to be investigated, and adding that Irizarry was “the one who got caught, but it is apparent to this court that there are others.”

The Justice Department declined to comment. The DEA issued a statement calling Irizarry “a criminal who violated his oath.”

Then came the internal discipline that barely registered in the headlines: at least a dozen agents and officials were reportedly disciplined, forced into retirement, or pushed out. A St. Louis division chief allegedly used DEA funds to rent a New York apartment for a romantic partner. An Atlanta supervisor resigned after lying to FBI investigators. Special Agent Danielle Dreyer was fired in late 2022 for what internal records described as “outlandish behavior” at a DEA party in Cartagena involving drug use and sexual misconduct.

That Cartagena incident had wider ripples. Assistant U.S. Attorney Marisa Darden, who attended the gathering, later withdrew from consideration for a federal prosecutor nomination after scrutiny from the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General.

And Cartagena, it turns out, has its own history with the DEA.

Sex Parties and Impunity

In 2015, a Department of Justice Inspector General report revealed that DEA agents stationed in Colombia had participated in “sex parties” with sex workers hired by drug cartels, the very organizations they were supposed to be investigating. The parties took place over several years in government-leased quarters, with a host-country police officer helping arrange the events.

According to the IG report, agents’ laptops, BlackBerry devices, and other government equipment were present at these gatherings, creating what the report described as “potential security risks” and exposing agents to “extortion, blackmail, or coercion.”

The penalties were suspensions ranging from two to ten days.

The penalties were suspensions ranging from two to ten days.

Then-DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart, who faced intense congressional questioning over the scandal, retired weeks later. Some agents received bonuses and awards despite being under investigation, a detail that emerged in a follow-up IG report that same year. Representative Jason Chaffetz called it “astounding that employees who should have been prosecuted, fired, or at a minimum, severely disciplined for their misconduct, were instead given undeserved promotions and bonuses.”

This scandal did not appear out of nowhere.

A Long Record of Misconduct

In the 1980s and 1990s, DEA agents in New York were convicted for stealing cash and drugs from evidence lockers and reselling seized narcotics. In California, federal prosecutors secured convictions against DEA-affiliated officers who protected traffickers in exchange for bribes.

The deeper problem is not that every allegation has been proved in court. It is that the agency’s history shows a recurring pattern of corruption, weak oversight, and institutional tolerance for misconduct that would destroy the credibility of most other regulators.

The Unwinnable War

What makes Irizarry’s confession particularly damaging is not just the corruption he described. It is his explanation for why it happened.

“You can’t win an unwinnable war. DEA knows this and the agents know this,” he told the Associated Press. “There’s so much dope leaving Colombia. And there’s so much money. We know we’re not making a difference.”

“You can’t win an unwinnable war. DEA knows this and the agents know this.”

“The drug war is a game,” he continued. “It was a very fun game that we were playing.”

“The drug war is a game.”

The numbers make his cynicism harder to dismiss. Recent CDC provisional data predicts 71,542 overdose deaths for the 12 months ending in October 2025, down 17.1% from the previous year. That decline matters. So does the fact that the country is still enduring an overdose toll that remains historically devastating, with synthetic opioids continuing to dominate the crisis.

Former federal prosecutor Bonnie Klapper, who worked on narcotics cases, told the Associated Press that oversight of DEA money laundering operations had been virtually nonexistent. “In the vast majority of these operations, nobody is watching,” she said. “In the Irizarry operation, nobody cared how much money they were laundering. Nobody cared that they weren’t making any cases. Nobody was minding the house. There were no controls.”

“Nobody was minding the house. There were no controls.”

Mission Creep Abroad

The DEA’s overseas operations have also raised repeated questions about mission creep, particularly in politically sensitive theaters like Venezuela, where financial stings, interdiction efforts, and broader geopolitical objectives can start to blur together. That does not mean every operation is illegitimate. It does mean the public has reason to ask where narcotics enforcement ends and foreign-policy maneuvering begins.

Cannabis in the Crosshairs

This brings us back to weed.

For more than fifty years, the DEA has classified cannabis alongside heroin as a Schedule I substance, meaning no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse under federal law. That classification now sits in obvious tension with reality. Forty states, three territories and the District of Columbia allow medical cannabis, while 24 states, two territories and D.C. allow adult-use.

In 2022, President Biden directed the Department of Health and Human Services and the DEA to review marijuana’s scheduling. HHS recommended moving cannabis to Schedule III, acknowledging it has “currently accepted medical use” and a lower abuse potential than Schedule I substances. The DEA proposed the change in May 2024, but the process became mired in procedural battles and remains unresolved.

In December 2025, President Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to expedite rescheduling, but the issue is not only whether rescheduling is eventually completed. It is also why an agency with the DEA’s record should have such a central role in shaping cannabis policy in the first place.

Consider what rescheduling doesn’t do: it doesn’t legalize weed for recreational or medical use. It doesn’t resolve conflicts between state and federal law. It doesn’t answer the deeper question of whether cannabis belongs in the Controlled Substances Act at all.

What it does do is remove Section 280E of the tax code, which currently prevents cannabis businesses from deducting ordinary expenses like rent and payroll. That change could dramatically improve the economics of legal operators. But the broader issue here is not just tax relief. It is legitimacy.

An agency with a long record of documented corruption cases, weak discipline, and repeated oversight failures still helps determine access to a plant that millions of Americans use legally under state law. It helps shape which researchers can study cannabis and under what conditions. It influences public messaging and policy framing. And it retains a gatekeeping role that makes less and less sense in a country where cannabis policy is increasingly being decided by voters, legislatures, doctors, and markets rather than narcotics agents.

The DEA’s own history shows what can happen when enforcement agencies operate in moral-panic mode with inadequate accountability: corruption spreads, civil liberties narrow, and public-health goals become harder, not easier, to achieve.

Institutional Inertia vs. Democratic Accountability

In response to the Irizarry scandal, the DOJ commissioned an “external review” of DEA foreign operations across 69 countries. Completed in March 2023 at a cost of $1.4 million, the report mentioned Irizarry once, in a single paragraph with a footnote acknowledging an ongoing grand jury investigation.

Bonnie Klapper called the review “underwhelming,” noting it failed to recommend structural changes that would prevent another Irizarry. DEA Administrator Anne Milgram pledged to implement all seventeen recommendations. Public evidence of major structural reform remains thin.

Senator Chuck Grassley publicly criticized DOJ and DEA leadership in April 2023 for stonewalling document requests related to overseas operations and corruption allegations. A House Judiciary Committee hearing in July 2023 nominally addressed DEA oversight but largely sidestepped the Team America scandal.

That is the recurring pattern: scandals emerge, officials express concern, internal reviews recommend modest reforms, and the agency continues operating with broad authority and preserved policy influence. There is no public proof of some grand unified cover-up. There is, however, a great deal of evidence of institutional inertia.

Continuing to let the DEA dominate cannabis policy makes about as much sense as letting the tobacco industry write smoking regulations.

The Path Forward

Cannabis regulation should be shaped by public-health experts, addiction specialists, economists, and democratic institutions, not primarily by an enforcement agency whose credibility has been repeatedly damaged by misconduct and weak oversight.

There are practical steps available. Transfer greater authority over cannabis scheduling and research to the FDA and HHS, agencies whose core mission is health rather than policing. Establish independent oversight of DEA foreign operations with real enforcement power, not just inspector general reports that fade from the headlines. Require the DEA to demonstrate measurable public-health outcomes, not just seizure totals and arrest statistics. And most importantly, start a serious national conversation about whether the drug-war framework itself has become part of the problem rather than the solution.

DEA defenders will say these are isolated incidents, that most agents are dedicated professionals, and that the agency still does critical work against dangerous trafficking networks. That may be partly true. But “isolated incidents” spanning four decades, multiple administrations, overseas operations, repeated corruption scandals, and minimal accountability constitute a pattern that deserves scrutiny.

When an institution charged with enforcing drug laws repeatedly proves unable or unwilling to police itself, it loses any convincing claim to moral authority over what substances Americans can use, research, or prescribe.

For additional context on the DEA’s role in the ongoing rescheduling process and what Schedule III classification would mean for cannabis businesses and research, visit the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at Moritz College of Law.

Editor’s note: This piece draws on public reporting, official records, and linked source material. Where allegations remain disputed or unadjudicated, that is stated in the text.

This article is an opinion piece from an external contributor. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of High Times. The article has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Photo: Staff Sgt. Karen Person, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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Trump just pushed out the attorney general he ordered to expedite marijuana rescheduling and replaced her, for now, with former personal lawyer Todd Blanche. Industry sources say the Schedule III push is still moving, but for cannabis readers the bigger question remains the same: even if it happens, what exactly does rescheduling solve?

Pam Bondi is out, Todd Blanche is in, and the immediate question for cannabis is whether that changes the fate of marijuana rescheduling.

On Thursday, Trump announced that Bondi was out as attorney general and that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche would serve as acting AG, with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin reportedly under consideration for the permanent job. Bondi’s exit comes less than four months after Trump signed his December 18 executive order directing the attorney general to move marijuana to Schedule III “in the most expeditious manner possible.”

If you are looking for the quick answer, it seems to be: probably not much, at least not right away.

MJBizDaily reported Thursday that several sources close to the process do not expect Bondi’s firing to delay rescheduling, and one observer told the outlet that movement could still come within 30 to 60 days. Brian Vicente told MJBiz that Trump “has been clear in his directive” and that the administration appears to be taking steps to make the process legally and procedurally sound. The same report says Blanche is already familiar with the issue, with Jushi executive Trent Woloveck calling him “a big net positive” who has been involved in conversations around drafting the final rule.

So if the question is whether Bondi’s exit kills rescheduling, the answer right now looks like no.

But for High Times readers, that was never the only question.

The bigger one is whether Schedule III was ever the clean win some people wanted to pretend it was. High Times has already made this point repeatedly over the last few months: rescheduling may matter, but it does not legalize cannabis federally, it does not create interstate commerce for the products currently sold in state markets, and it does not automatically deliver criminal justice reform, expungements or some magical new era of freedom. It may help certain operators, especially on taxes, but it also opens the door to deeper federal control and raises the same old question of who gets folded into the new system and who gets left outside it.

That posture matters here because Blanche’s arrival does not really change the underlying contradiction. If anything, it sharpens it.

Blanche is not just another DOJ bureaucrat. He is Trump’s former personal lawyer, now elevated to one of the most important roles in the government, at least on an acting basis. So even if rescheduling keeps moving, the politics around it get even stranger. This is not some neutral, technocratic process floating above the chaos. It is still a Trump project, still tied to a White House that has sold cannabis reform as medicine rather than liberation, and still likely to face legal challenges the second a final rule drops. MJBiz noted that SAM, which already sued over the administration’s new hemp CBD reimbursement pilot, is expected to use similar tactics against rescheduling itself.

And that gets to the part too many headlines skip. The issue is not only whether Blanche speeds things up, slows them down or signs off on whatever is already in motion. The issue is what happens after that. Even if the administration finalizes Schedule III, the real-world benefits may not arrive quickly. MJBiz notes that legal challenges could still delay anything tangible, including hoped-for tax relief, and High Times has already cautioned that even the tax piece is not guaranteed to work as cleanly as some operators would like.

So yes, Bondi is gone. Yes, Blanche is in. And yes, the people close to the process are signaling continuity, not collapse.

But continuity is not clarity.

Trump’s December order still stands. DOJ still appears to be moving. The White House is also moving on related cannabinoid policy, including the new CMS hemp reimbursement pilot that launched this week and immediately triggered a lawsuit from prohibitionist groups. That broader pattern suggests the administration is still trying to show forward motion on cannabis and hemp, even while wrapping it all in tight medical language and heavy qualifiers.

That is why the most honest read is probably the simplest one: Bondi’s exit changes the cast, not the core uncertainty.

The people around the process just got reshuffled. The political weirdness increased. The skepticism should stay exactly where it was.

Because even if weed rescheduling is still on track, the real question has not changed at all: progress for whom, and on whose terms?

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A limited federal hemp CBD and THC reimbursement program just launched, and anti-marijuana groups are already in court trying to block it. The fight is about access, federal authority and who gets to decide whether cannabinoids belong in patient care.

For all the noise around cannabis in Washington, this is one of the more interesting things the federal government has done in a while, and it happened with surprisingly little fanfare.

On April 1, a new federal program quietly began allowing certain participating care models to furnish up to $500 a year in eligible hemp-derived products for approved patients. The products can include CBD and a limited amount of THC, as long as they stay within the rules CMS laid out: non-inhalable, hemp-derived, no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC, no more than 3 milligrams per serving of tetrahydrocannabinols in orally administered form, no synthetic cannabinoids, and full compliance with state and local law.

And almost immediately, the backlash showed up.

On March 31, just before launch, Smart Approaches to Marijuana and nine other anti-marijuana organizations filed a lawsuit trying to stop the program before it got off the ground. Their complaint argues that CMS acted unlawfully, skipped required administrative steps and is venturing into dangerous territory by allowing access to non-FDA-approved cannabinoid products through a federal health program.

That clash is the real story here. Not just that the federal government opened a new hemp reimbursement pathway, but that the minute it did, prohibitionist groups went to court to shut it down.

To be clear, this is not broad Medicare coverage for everybody’s favorite gummies. It is narrower than that. The new Substance Access Beneficiary Engagement Incentive, or BEI, applies only inside certain CMS Innovation Center models: ACO REACH, the Enhancing Oncology Model, and the Long-term Enhance ACO Design Model, with the first two starting today and LEAD set to come online in 2027. Patients also cannot buy products at retail and submit receipts. CMS says the products must be furnished directly by a qualified physician affiliated with a participating organization, under an approved implementation plan and with required oversight.

Still, even with all those caveats, this is a meaningful federal shift.

For years, cannabinoid access at the federal level has lived in a weird place: politically useful, medically debated, heavily restricted and constantly hedged with bureaucratic language. This new program does not blow that up. But it does create something concrete. If a participating organization elects the BEI, gets CMS approval and follows the rules, it can furnish up to $500 annually per eligible beneficiary in approved hemp-derived products to help with symptom control. That is not a slogan. That is policy.

Marijuana Moment, which detailed the framework last month, noted that the plan allows a certain amount of THC, not just CBD, and that the agency tied the program to the Trump administration’s December executive order on marijuana rescheduling and hemp-derived cannabinoid access. The same report also made clear that this is a heavily structured system, not a federal free-for-all. Participating organizations need CMS approval, products must come from legally compliant and high-quality sources, and third-party testing is required for potency, contaminants and microbial hazards.

The anti-marijuana groups suing over the plan are trying to turn those limitations into grounds for killing it. In the lawsuit, SAM and the other plaintiffs argue that CMS never published a proper proposed rule for public comment, that the program conflicts with an earlier agency rule on cannabis products and that the initiative exceeds the agency’s legal authority. They also claim the move would affect Medicare recipients’ healthcare relationships without going through the right process.

Also read: Why You Shouldn’t Trust the Anti-Weed Lobby Smart Approaches to Marijuana

The politics of that are not subtle. Kevin Sabet, SAM’s CEO, used the lawsuit rollout to call hemp-derived products “snake oil” and argue that what CMS is allowing are not real medicines but loosely regulated products sold at gas stations and convenience stores. That line may play well in anti-cannabis circles, but it also conveniently ignores what CMS actually wrote: these products cannot just be pulled off a random retail shelf, they must be furnished through participating organizations, and they must meet specific production, testing and safety requirements.

That is part of why the lawsuit feels bigger than a narrow legal fight. What is really being tested here is whether the federal government is allowed to build even a tightly supervised, limited-access cannabinoid pathway without the old prohibition reflex kicking in.

And if you zoom out, the timing is impossible to ignore.

This launch lands while the federal government is still dealing with the aftermath of Trump’s December order directing the attorney general to move quickly on marijuana rescheduling, while CMS is revisiting cannabinoid policy in insurance-related settings, and while FDA and HHS are also moving through their own CBD compliance and enforcement discussions. None of that adds up to federal legalization. But it does suggest the government is looking for narrower, more controlled ways to integrate cannabinoids into the healthcare system without admitting the larger war has already been lost.

Also read: Anti-Cannabis Group SAM Says New York Weed Is Failing. The Data Says Otherwise.

There is also a deadline hanging over all of it. CMS says if federal hemp law changes later this year, including under the FY2026 Agriculture Appropriations Act, it will adjust the definition of eligible hemp products accordingly. That matters because the planned federal hemp restrictions expected in November could drastically shrink the kinds of products that remain legal. So even this newly launched program may have a countdown clock baked into it.

Which makes the whole thing feel even more like a snapshot of where cannabinoid policy sits in America right now: forward motion, but only in a narrow corridor. Access, but only under tight supervision. Federal recognition, but only with enough qualifiers to keep everyone pretending they are still in control.

Still, for patients inside the eligible models, and for the industry watching whether Washington can move even one inch without tripping over itself, today matters.

The federal government just started reimbursing certain hemp-derived CBD and THC products.

And the anti-weed groups did exactly what you’d expect: they ran to court.

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Author Ed Rosenthal traces how international pressure criminalized a plant long woven into Indian life, and why he believes it is time to bring ganja back under regulation. Follow Ed on Instagram.

Introduction: Returning to India With Purpose

When I first visited India in 1981, cannabis cultivation was still legal in certain regions. During that trip, I photographed a large, government-regulated ganja farm—an experience that left a lasting impression. The plants were grown openly, harvested responsibly, and taxed by the state.

Today, cultivation is no longer legal anywhere in India. Yet cannabis remains widely available throughout the country—typically of poor quality, harvested prematurely before flowering, and sold through unregulated channels. Prohibition has not eliminated cannabis use; it has simply ensured inferior products while generating no public benefit.

On earlier trips, I came to India as a tourist. This time, I returned with a purpose: to support the growing re-legalization movement and to help spark what civil rights leader John Lewis once called “good trouble.” At a recent meeting with activists, I was asked to outline clear reasons why India should re-legalize ganja. That outline is now circulating throughout the country.

What follows is a practical, historically grounded case for reform.

Cannabis and India — A Deep Historical Relationship

Cannabis is not foreign to India. The plant originated in Central and South Asia and has grown naturally in the Himalayan foothills for millions of years. Humans have used cannabis on the subcontinent for at least 10,000 years—for food, fiber, medicine, ritual, and pleasure.

For centuries, ganja and charas were cultivated, traded, regulated, and taxed. Cannabis use was woven into daily life, Ayurvedic medicine, and religious practice long before modern drug laws existed.

Learn more about Himalayan Landrace Cannabis and India’s Genetic Legacy

How Cannabis Became Illegal in India

Cannabis prohibition in India did not arise from indigenous culture or medical evidence. It was the result of international pressure.

In 1961, India signed the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, agreeing to ban cannabis within 25 years. This commitment led to the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act of 1985, which criminalized the cultivation, sale, and possession of cannabis flowers and resin.

The Bhang Exception

One notable exception remains: bhang, made from cannabis leaves, was excluded from the ban due to its religious and cultural significance. This legal distinction exposes a contradiction—one part of the plant is accepted, while another is criminalized, despite similar effects and shared history.

Why India’s Cannabis Laws Are Ineffective

Cannabis Is Widely Available Despite Prohibition

After nearly four decades of prohibition, ganja and charas remain easy to obtain across India. Criminalization has failed to reduce demand or supply. Instead, it has pushed cannabis into an unregulated underground market.

Poor Quality and Premature Harvesting

Because cultivation is illegal, growers often harvest plants early to reduce risk. The result is cannabis of poor quality, low potency, and inconsistent effects. Prohibition has degraded the plant itself.

Enforcement Encourages Corruption

When a widely used plant is illegal, enforcement becomes selective. This fosters bribery and corruption while diverting law enforcement resources away from serious crimes. Over time, the law loses credibility.

Public Health and Safety Considerations

In legal cannabis markets, products are tested for pesticides, heavy metals, and microbial contamination. In India’s unregulated market, consumers have no such protections.

Prohibition also produces unintended consequences. When cannabis becomes scarce due to enforcement actions, some users turn to alcohol—an intoxicant associated with greater social and health harms.

Regulation allows risk to be managed responsibly.

Economic and Scientific Opportunities

Lost Tax Revenue and Rural Opportunity

India forfeits significant revenue by keeping cannabis illegal. A regulated market could generate tax income, create agricultural jobs, and support rural economies—especially in regions where cannabis grows naturally.

Protecting India’s Landrace Cannabis Genetics

India is home to unique landrace cannabis varieties—genetically distinct plants shaped by geography, climate, and centuries of open pollination. These landraces contain rare cannabinoid and terpene profiles with potential medical and scientific value.

Under prohibition, these genetics are neither studied nor protected, and are often exported illegally with no benefit to India.

Barriers to Medical Research

Indian pharmaceutical companies are currently restricted to immature cannabis plants with low cannabinoid content. Legal access to mature flowers would enable meaningful research and allow India to compete globally in cannabis-based medicine.

Cultural and Religious Significance

Cannabis has long played a role in Indian religious traditions, particularly in connection with Shiva and festivals such as Holi and Shivaratri. While bhang remains legal, the continued prohibition of ganja forces traditional users into unsafe, unregulated markets.

Re-legalization would acknowledge cultural reality rather than deny it.

What Sensible Cannabis Regulation Could Look Like

A practical regulatory framework could include:

• Licensed cultivation and distribution
• Mandatory testing and labeling
• Age-restricted sales
• Taxation to support public health and education
• Protection for traditional and religious use
• Inclusion of small farmers and cooperatives

This is not radical policy—it is responsible governance.

Ganja in India — A Historical Record

Ganja in India is a photographic and historical record of a legal cannabis farm during my 1981 visit. At that time, ganja was cultivated openly, regulated by the government, and taxed.

Photo: Ed Rosenthal

The book documents a moment in Indian history that is now largely forgotten—a reminder that legalization is not a new idea, but a return to a system that once worked.

Conclusion — A Return to Reason

India’s cannabis prohibition has failed to eliminate use, protect public health, or reduce harm. Instead, it has produced inferior products, empowered illegal markets, and erased economic opportunity.

Re-legalizing ganja would not be a leap into the unknown. It would be a return to regulation, tradition, and common sense—guided by history, science, and lived experience.

FAQ — Cannabis Legalization in India

Is cannabis completely illegal in India?

Cannabis flowers and resin are illegal under the NDPS Act, but bhang made from leaves remains legal in many states.

Why was ganja banned in India?

India criminalized ganja primarily due to international pressure following the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

What are landrace cannabis varieties?

Landraces are genetically distinct cannabis plants that evolved naturally in specific regions over centuries. India’s Himalayan landraces are among the most unique in the world.

Could legalization benefit India’s economy?

Yes. Regulation could generate tax revenue, support rural agriculture, reduce enforcement costs, and enable scientific research.

Did India ever regulate cannabis legally?

Yes. Cannabis cultivation was legal and taxed in parts of India until the mid-1980s, including during Ed Rosenthal’s 1981 visit.

This article originally appeared on Ed Rosenthal’s website and is published here with permission.

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Maine built one of the most vibrant, patient-driven medical cannabis markets in America. Now a contamination panic, a powerful tracking company and a regulatory crackdown threaten to squeeze it into something else entirely.

There is a farm in Maine where a woman grows cannabis outdoors, off-grid, on land certified organic by the state’s own agricultural authority. She runs a two-person operation. Her plants see the sun. Her records are audited under USDA organic handling standards. She sells directly to patients who know her name. In nearly every meaningful sense, she is doing what the legalization movement promised cannabis could be.

In Augusta, the state capital, there are people who would like to make what she does either illegal or economically impossible. They have a contamination study, a governor who calls the program “the wild, wild West,” a public health coalition of a dozen organizations, and a contract with METRC—the seed-to-sale tracking titan—behind them. They also have a regulator whose professional history runs through the same consulting orbit that helped bring the tracking software to Maine’s adult-use market. The same man who helped shape the adult-use rules that made METRC mandatory now argues it should be imposed on a medical program that has functioned without it for twenty-six years.

The Program The Community Built

Maine has historically been progressive about weed. The state decriminalized possession in 1976. Voters approved medical cannabis by a 61.4% margin in 1999, making Maine the fifth legal medical state. What grew from that was a caregiver program, consisting of small cultivators growing for patients they knew personally, operating under the same kind of trust-based, record-keeping framework you’d find in Maine’s shellfish, dairy or other agricultural industries.

The program expanded through fits and starts. A 2009 ballot initiative established a dispensary framework, initially capped at eight. In 2018, LD 1539 eliminated the list of qualifying conditions entirely—allowing physicians to solely use their professional criteria—and allowing caregivers to open retail storefronts, hire employees, and operate as full commercial businesses. In February 2019, Governor Mills created the Office of Cannabis Policy to “consolidate oversight.” That June, Maine expanded reciprocity to allow visiting patients from other states to purchase simply by showing their home-state credential. The state now accepts medical credentials from 29 states plus Washington, D.C.

Lizzy Hayes is a registered caregiver in this program. She grows exclusively outdoors, off-grid, and her farm holds Clean Cannabis Certification from the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, verifying compliance with USDA organic standards—including seed-to-sale tracking through audited records. She describes the program as one that developed slowly and organically, with tracking done through paper recordkeeping and testing required only to verify claims made on labeling. The regulators, she notes, already have statutory authority to audit-test operators and inspect both facilities and records.

The numbers tell you the market’s own verdict. As of 2025, 112,547 patients were registered—roughly 8% of Maine’s population, one of the highest per-capita rates in the country, nearly tripled from the 41,858 certifications that existed in 2017. The program supports 1,539 caregivers and over 5,000 employees. In 2021, medical cannabis generated $371 million in sales versus just $81 million for adult-use. Even in 2023, medical ($280 million) still outpaced recreational ($217 million). Year after year, Mainers with access to both programs have renewed their medical cards and chosen the caregiver market. OCP Director John Hudak himself admitted surprise, acknowledging that most people assumed medical would have been absorbed by adult-use by now, as has partially happened in many other states.

So, what’s their secret?

Mark Barnett, founder and policy director of the Maine Craft Cannabis Association, operates a combined coffee shop and dispensary in Portland’s Old Port. He frames what Maine has built in terms that should embarrass every other state program in the country.

“We have by far the highest quality regulatory environment for our medical cannabis program, as evidenced by the amazing number of participants, business participants in that program who are two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year or less in total turnover. True craft businesses, true micro businesses, all the things that folks like to point out as what we should be supporting—Maine is already doing it and has been doing it since ’99.”

The smallest registration type allows cultivation of six plants—the most accessible entry point in any legal cannabis program in the country. The largest caregiver canopy caps at 500 square feet. Between those poles, an estimated 237 caregivers operate retail storefronts. According to the OCP’s own 2025 annual report, administrative actions impacted just 1% of all registered caregivers, and the vast majority of violations were resolved through technical assistance rather than fines or revocations. In the language of agricultural regulation, that is a well-functioning program.

In the language of Maine’s current governor, that’s a problem.

Colorado Consultants

When Maine voters approved recreational cannabis in 2016 by a narrow 51% margin, the state hired a consulting group to draft the implementation framework. The group included Andrew Freedman, Colorado’s first cannabis policy director; Lewis Koski, former director of Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division; and John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. During the period Koski was contracted with Maine, he took a position at METRC—the biggest seed-to-sale tracking company in the US—where he now serves as Chief Strategy Officer. METRC’s parent company is Franwell, Inc.

The adult-use program that was then deployed in Maine was heavily inspired by the one in Colorado, requiring METRC tracking and mandatory batch testing—the standard template that has been replicated as states adopt legal cannabis. Maine’s medical program, by contrast, remained a grassroots industry with a low barrier to entry, treated more like other regulated agricultural sectors.

The adult-use rules that emerged included mandatory batch testing across seven analyte categories, and a compliance infrastructure that now costs licensees $40 per month plus RFID tag fees ($0.25 per package, $0.45 per plant), third-party integration software ($100–$500/month), and the less visible costs of dedicated compliance labor and system downtime. The state’s original six-year METRC contract was at that time valued at $540,000. The medical program had none of this. It continued under its trip-ticket, transaction-log, and audit-inspection framework—a system that, as Hayes notes, records the date, time, location, registration numbers, and description of every cannabis transfer, and which she argues is sufficient to conduct a recall.

“To get that passed at the last minute, they added municipal control of licensing. They kind of cracked down or doubled down on the thing that would eventually become METRC—which is the requirement for seed-to-sale tracking, which is kind of the Voldemort of the cannabis industry. No other industry has to deal with anything like that at all,” says Barnett.

And he underlines that the cannabis community was not asked whether it supported those additions. That was a deal made at the last minute. Closed doors. And this then led to the attempt to transpose those same rules onto the medical program that had been working for two decades. Advocates responded by passing LD 1242, a bill that stripped the executive branch’s ability to impose rules on the medical program without originating legislation through the full legislature, with public hearings and elected accountability. The OCP could no longer rewrite the medical program in the dark.

That shield held for years but it’s now being eroded.

The Fox in the Cannabis Office

John Hudak, Ph.D., was appointed director of Maine’s Office of Cannabis Policy in late 2022. He had been one of the founding members of the consulting group—alongside Freedman and Koski—contracted to help draft Maine’s adult-use law and, more critically, the administrative rules that gave it operational shape. Those rules ran to hundreds of pages and included the METRC mandate that the cannabis community had opposed throughout the process.

“Like so much stuff in cannabis, the disaster and the damage isn’t in the statute that enables it. It’s in the rule. And then the executive branch, which gets to enforce the rule and which generally has a much easier time making rules than passing bad statute—that’s where the damage happens because people stop paying attention,” said Barnett.

Hudak’s appointment set off alarms not because of his credentials—he is a published policy scholar with a doctorate—but because of concerns about disclosure, process, and public trust. He had co-founded a consulting venture with Lewis Koski, who went on to become a METRC executive. As OCP director, Hudak then negotiated an expanded contract with METRC valued at $890,000—a significant increase over the original $540,000 deal—without recusing himself. When certain legislation explicitly sought to strip back elements of METRC’s role, the result under Hudak’s leadership was, somehow, a larger METRC contract.

After pressure from lawmakers—notably Rep. David Boyer (R-Poland)—the Maine Government Oversight and Accountability Committee launched an investigation. The findings landed in disputed territory.

“If you look at it and you look at the facts of the case… He helped bring METRC in in the first place—but over the years of his administration, despite the legislature and the public clearly trying to remove METRC from our program, he’s re-signed them, expanded the contracts with them, given them more of our taxpayer money,” explains Barnett.

The OPEGA report reviewed the concern raised by Boyer regarding the appearance of a conflict of interest between Hudak and METRC. OPEGA found that Hudak did not have ownership or equity in Freedman & Koski, found no evidence that Lewis Koski was involved in the METRC contract amendment negotiations, and concluded that the facts did not support a conclusion that disclosure or abstention was required by statute in relation to the amendment. OPEGA did, however, recommend that DAFS adopt more formal guidance and documentation procedures for conflicts of interest in procurement. Alexis Soucy, OCP’s Director of Media and Stakeholder Relations, told High Times that the Government Oversight Committee voted unanimously on November 19, 2025 to accept those findings.

Hudak was not formally charged with violating the state’s corruption statute. Whether the OPEGA investigation constitutes vindication or a soft landing depends on who you ask. What is not in dispute is the timeline: Hudak co-founded a firm with the man who became METRC’s Chief Strategy Officer, then as regulator expanded that company’s contract by 65% without recusal, in a process that generated enough concern for legislators to request a formal oversight review.

Meanwhile, METRC itself is under separate scrutiny. In April 2025, former METRC executive Marcus Estes filed a whistleblower lawsuit in Oregon federal court alleging the company knowingly ignored compliance violations in California that facilitated cannabis diversion—the very problem seed-to-sale tracking is supposed to prevent. The Oregon case was dismissed in June 2025, but not on the merits: Judge Karin Immergut ruled that because the same claims were being litigated in a separate Florida case, dismissal rather than transfer was appropriate, reported MJBizDaily. As of June 2025, the Florida case remained ongoing after mediation failed.

In August 2025, METRC announced a partnership with its primary competitor, BioTrack, a move that critics say further consolidated the regulatory technology market. METRC disputes the monopoly label, noting that each contract is the result of state-level competitive procurement.

So, based on the available information, someone could reasonably connect the dots as follows: a regulator whose prior professional relationships raised conflict concerns, overseeing a contract he expanded over legislative objections, pushing to impose that same system on a program that has functioned without it for a quarter-century—while the company itself faces federal allegations that its system failed to prevent the very kind of diversion it is supposed to track.

The 42% Headline

In November 2023, the OCP released the study that reshaped the political terrain. Director Hudak had dispatched field investigators to collect 120 samples from medical cannabis sellers. Apparently, 42% contained at least one contaminant that would have failed adult-use testing thresholds. The headline almost wrote itself. Hudak even went all the way with a Press Release that unequivocally reads: “This data indicate that Maine’s medical cannabis program needs a comprehensive solution to reform and modernize the system in order to protect Maine’s patients.”

Flower failed at an even higher rate of 44.6%. The most alarming finding involved myclobutanil at 58,600 parts per billion—293 times the adult-use threshold. Myclobutanil releases hydrogen cyanide gas when combusted. Investigators also found 26 samples failing for pesticides across 11 different compounds, 4 for heavy metals including arsenic, cadmium, and lead, and 30 for yeast and mold.

The study gave Governor Janet Mills the ammunition for her January 2025 budget address, where she declared the state could no longer “encourage the wild, wild West of medical cannabis.” It armed the Alliance for Responsible Cannabis in Maine—a coalition of bipartisan lawmakers and roughly 12 public health organizations including the Maine Medical Association, Maine Osteopathic Association, and Maine Public Health Association—with the language of patient safety. Matt Wellington of the Maine Public Health Association framed Maine as “the only state out of more than 30 states with medical cannabis programs that does not require and enforce testing.”

The study was a silver bullet, as nobody can dismiss myclobutanil at 293 times the threshold. But the operators who live inside the program saw something specific in the study’s construction. One hundred and twenty samples were collected from a program with more than 1,800 registrants. The results were aggregated across categories with wildly different risk profiles. Barnett argues the framing was designed to produce a headline.

“What they did was they essentially misrepresented the results of what they had done without doing it on the adult-use program. And the vast majority of them were total yeast and mold,” a biologically occurring phenomenon, particularly among flowers that might be showcased on shelves for a couple of weeks.

Grouping that alongside cyanide-producing pesticides without disaggregating the results by category is a framing choice to serve a policy agenda. Moreover, the study was never replicated on the adult-use side, despite the fact that Maine’s own adult-use market had its own contamination scandal: in October 2025, thousands of Yani vape cartridges were found tainted on retail shelves—in the program with METRC and mandatory batch testing. It was a consumer complaint that caught the problem.

Then, in January 2026, the OCP issued its first-ever Medical Cannabis Patient Advisory, for MarijuanaVille dispensary in Waterville—five strains of cannabis concentrates contained unsafe levels of eight different pesticides, including bifenthrin at more than 190 times the acceptable level. The OCP explicitly stated it could only issue an advisory, not a mandatory recall, and that “limited inventory recordkeeping requirements in the medical program hinder OCP’s ability to identify sources of contamination.”

This is where the argument scrambles—and where the two sides diverge on the basic facts. Hayes and medical program advocates maintain that audit testing is already written into the program rules, and that the OCP has simply declined to implement it for eight-plus years. OCP disputes this. Soucy told High Times that the claim is “simply incorrect,” arguing that the original statutory authority for testing provisions (22 MRS § 2430-A) was repealed in December 2018, and that current inspection authority under § 2430-K is not the same thing.

“The medical program statute does not specify the requirements necessary for the Office to implement a mandatory contaminant testing program,” Soucy said. “Absent statutory changes specifying that certain levels of certain substances are harmful contaminants that should not be in cannabis, OCP is limited in what it can do with any audit test results.”

Yet the OCP itself conducted the 2023 study using precisely the audit-testing methodology that operators have been requesting—pulling samples from shelves, sending them to labs, publishing the results. Soucy acknowledged as much, stating that “OCP conducted audit testing and generated the report to bring data to the open question of whether the medical cannabis supply chain was contaminated.”

The question that follows is: if the office has the capacity to audit-test when it wants to build a case for new regulation, why was that same capacity never operationalized as an ongoing patient safety program?

Their Way or The Highway

A full-panel test in Maine runs approximately $500. A mid-sized caregiver growing 37 varieties—not unusual in a craft market built on genetic diversity—faces testing costs alone approaching $25,000 per year. Add the $40 monthly METRC fee, RFID tags for every plant and package, integration software, and the data-entry labor required on a two-person farm, and the compliance cost on a business doing $200,000 in annual sales becomes unbearable.

So basically compliance costs will make the minimum capital required to operate surge dramatically.

The Paul McCarrier testimony before the VLA Committee estimated total annual METRC and testing compliance costs for a mid-sized operation at $119,440 to $187,440. These figures were not confirmed or disputed by METRC on the record.

That’s likely why Hayes thinks that “these regulations will result in an enormous loss of product diversity. Right now, if you have patients who want a specific plant, one that is less commercially viable, we are able to still produce that for them. But if a single plant grown for that patient now can’t be transferred without a $500 testing bill, it just becomes impossible to maintain that type of personalized medicine.”

Or, just as likely, current and new operators will divert their production into the illicit market, therefore damaging the whole legal cannabis ecosystem in the state.

What a spokesperson did tell High Times was that “While track-and-trace technology alone cannot fully prevent diversion or contamination, systems like METRC are designed to create accountability by helping regulators identify irregularities, facilitate recalls, verify testing compliance, and investigate illegal activity within licensed markets.”

While METRC alarms have triggered numerous busts and recalls in different states, another reality check is that no agricultural industry in America—not alcohol, not dairy, not tobacco—operates under comparable real-time surveillance requirements. Even pharmaceutical serialization under the federal Drug Supply Chain Security Act, the closest analogue, applies only to finished products.

The Surveillance Infrastructure Nobody Is Discussing

There is an entire dimension of the METRC debate that almost never surfaces in legislative hearings or press coverage, and it has to do with the data.

METRC is not only a compliance tool but also a surveillance infrastructure that warehouses granular, monetizable consumer behavior data—purchase patterns, product preferences, consumption frequency, medical conditions by inference—with a dominant provider that operates across numerous jurisdictions and serves hundreds of thousands of users and tens of thousands of licensed operators.

Barnett raises a question that should concern every cannabis consumer in America, not just Maine’s caregivers.

“We’re talking about monetizable consumer behavior being warehoused … and has, to my knowledge, almost no regulation of how it handles that data. In an age where we’re seeing state and federal governments abuse Americans’ consumer data like never before, how can we justify such invasive data harvesting with no safety guardrails? When will we see the Trump administration start using METRC data to target non-citizens for deportations?”

ICE already uses commercial databases, utility records, and DMV data for enforcement operations. Cannabis purchase data—linked to individual identities through state-mandated tracking—would be an intelligence asset of obvious value to an administration that has made interior enforcement a public banner.

Every METRC transaction creates a record that ties a named individual to a federally illegal substance. The system that is sold as consumer protection is, simultaneously, a federally accessible record of participation in a Schedule I market.

METRC stated that “there have been no reported issues related to data privacy, retention, sharing, or law enforcement access” and that the company operates under strict contractual requirements set by each state regulator.

The National Record: What METRC Delivered

If the track record in other states vindicated METRC, the argument for imposing it on Maine would be considerably stronger. It does not.

California deployed METRC statewide. Active cultivation licenses dropped 43% between 2021 and 2024—from 8,493 to 4,805. Despite METRC, an estimated 60% of cannabis consumed in California still comes from the unregulated market—approximately 11.4 million pounds of illicit production versus 1.43 million through legal channels. Eradication efforts accounted for an estimated $544 million worth of unlicensed cannabis seized, capturing roughly 5% of annual illicit output by value.

Oklahoma implemented METRC in May 2022 after fierce resistance, including operator lawsuits and a temporary restraining order. Active licenses fell 27% within one year. A moratorium on new licenses followed. Colorado—where METRC was born in 2011—passed legislation in 2024 eliminating its RFID tag requirement effective January 2027. The state’s METRC contract expires in 2026, and industry observers report METRC is not assured of renewal. Colorado is now considering moving to the audit-testing model that Maine’s medical operators have been requesting for years.

A 2023 MJBizDaily investigation found that cannabis operators nationally report track-and-trace expenditures offering minimal return, with hidden costs—integration software, compliance staff, error correction, system downtime—compounding far beyond visible fees. In that report, the system appears to be widely questioned by cannabis operators that already operate under this standard. Looking at the stats, its “value proposition”—preventing cannabis from leaking in or out of legal markets—is at least dubious.

The Floor Fight Ahead

Two bills defined the 2025 legislative session on this issue. LD 104, introduced at OCP’s request, would have imposed testing and tracking on the medical program. The Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee killed it in May. LD 1847, sponsored by Rep. Anne Graham (D-North Yarmouth), survived. It mandates testing for potency, mold, arsenic, lead, and PFAS; requires seed-to-sale tracking mirroring the adult-use system; establishes THC potency caps on medical edibles; and includes an exemption for growers under 30 plants—though their products must carry an “untested” label.

LD 1847 was carried over to the 2026 session and is now in VLA Committee work sessions, with competing amendments circulating and a committee vote expected in the coming weeks.

The advocacy community, which defeated similar bills in 2018, 2021, 2023, and 2025, is not unified on tactics. Some operators with dual medical and adult-use licenses see a version of testing as survivable. Others view any mandate beyond the audit model as the beginning of the end.

The medical community’s counter-proposals consist of annual inspections of all operators (the OCP does not currently inspect everyone annually), increased recordkeeping requirements sufficient to demonstrate recall ability, and audit testing—the model where the regulator pulls products from shelves rather than requiring every grower to pay for pre-sale batch testing. VLA Committee Chair Sen. Craig Hickman (D-Winthrop), himself an organic farmer, proposed a version of this model.

In the next few weeks, the VLA Committee will vote LD 1847 out for floor debate.

The craft cannabis community is organizing mass action against what it calls the continued assault on the program. The OCP’s METRC contract is expiring. And 112,547 patients are stakeholders on whether the best grassroots market, and last cannabis garden in America will be chopped down into an enclosing regulatory corset, or pushed into illicit activities again.

Until then, Maine’s garden is still growing. For now.

Editor’s note: This article contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information and is not intended to assert undisclosed facts. This story includes responses from Maine’s Office of Cannabis Policy and METRC. Allegations described in cited whistleblower litigation remain allegations unless and until proven in court. Readers are encouraged to review the underlying materials and draw their own conclusions.

<p>The post The Last Garden: Maine’s Medical Cannabis Program Under Siege first appeared on High Times.</p>

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As a federal ban nears, alcohol industry power players are pushing to keep hemp THC beverages alive through a regulatory system they already know well.

Big Alcohol has spent years watching hemp THC beverages eat into its territory. Now that a federal crackdown is on the horizon, the industry is not asking Congress to leave the category alone. It is backing a version of regulation that would bring hemp THC drinks closer to its own system.

As reported by IgniteIt’s A.J. Herrington, the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America has launched a campaign calling for intoxicating hemp beverages to be regulated under a federal framework modeled on alcohol, rather than wiped out by the ban set to take effect on November 12, 2026.

On paper, that sounds like progress. And to be clear, support for fighting bans and replacing them with workable regulation matters. The hemp beverage industry needs allies in Washington, and right now it cannot afford to be picky about where that support comes from. But read a little closer and this also looks like a push to shape the category in ways that would give established alcohol players more influence over its future.

WSWA is not just opposing prohibition. It is pushing a full alcohol-style system with federal supplier and distributor licensing, taxes, testing requirements, trade practice rules and state-by-state control over where products can be sold. That does not mean the group is wrong to oppose a ban. It does suggest that the industry sees an opportunity to help write the rules for a fast-growing market before somebody else does.

That shift did not happen in a vacuum. Last year, federal legislation signed by President Donald Trump imposed a 0.4 milligram total THC per container limit on hemp-derived consumer products, a threshold that would effectively wipe out much of the current hemp beverage market. By then, THC drinks had already started showing up in major retail channels and were being closely watched by alcohol companies as a growing competitive threat.

That is the context that matters. Hemp THC beverages did not suddenly become respectable in the eyes of alcohol wholesalers because of some newfound commitment to cannabis reform. They became harder to ignore because consumers have shown there is real demand for a legal, low-dose alternative to alcohol, and because industries tend to get interested when a new category becomes too big to dismiss.

Total Wine & More has also filed to lobby on hemp-derived drinks, another sign that established alcohol players no longer see the category as a fringe curiosity. They see it as a business. The question now is whether Congress will create a regulated lane forward, or whether a ban will kick in first and collapse the legal market before the rules are rewritten.

That is where the politics get especially revealing. The old debate around hemp intoxicants was framed as a choice between public safety and an unregulated free-for-all. But the real split now is more specific. It is about whether hemp beverages survive as an independent cannabis-adjacent category, or whether they get folded into an alcohol-style system that favors large distributors, major retailers and companies with the money to navigate federal licensing, tax compliance and state-level access fights.

Some state and local officials are already struggling with that exact question. In February, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson vetoed a city ordinance that would have banned intoxicating hemp products, arguing that the proposal was premature and should not move ahead without a clearer statewide framework. Other jurisdictions have moved in the opposite direction, tightening restrictions or imposing their own regulatory systems as lawmakers scramble to catch up with a market that has moved much faster than the law.

That leaves hemp beverage brands in a familiar position. They need influential allies fighting bans and backing regulation. But they also have reason to be wary of any system that leaves too much control in the hands of incumbent alcohol interests.

For cannabis consumers, that should sound familiar too. Support is support, and in a moment like this it matters. But there is a difference between protecting a category and positioning yourself to dominate it.

So yes, Big Alcohol is joining the fight over hemp THC drinks. The industry’s support could help stop a damaging ban and move the conversation toward regulation. But it also signals a desire to shape, and possibly control, what comes next. Hemp operators may welcome the help. That does not mean they should hand over the whole market.

Photo: Shutterstock

<p>The post Big Alcohol’s Push to Save Hemp THC Drinks Comes With a Catch first appeared on High Times.</p>

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