The Rescheduling Circus- Notes from the Cannabis Rescheduling Hearing You Might Have Missed

Let’s start with the headline nobody in Washington wants to print: marijuana is still illegal. Not “illegal-ish.” Not “illegal with an asterisk.” Federally, under the Controlled Substances Act, cannabis remains a Schedule I narcotic, officially grouped with heroin and LSD, officially declared to have no accepted medical use. That fact hasn’t moved an inch this year, despite a summer’s worth of DEA hearings, legal filings, and breathless coverage suggesting otherwise.