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Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Thursday criticized the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) decision to downgrade state-approved medical marijuana to a less dangerous drug.
“Marijuana today is much more potent than just ten or twenty years ago, leading to increased psychosis, anti-social behavior, and fatal car crashes,” Cotton wrote on the social platform X.
“Arkansans don’t want more dangerous drugs obtained more easily,” he continued. “A change to marijuana’s drug classification is a step in the wrong direction.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order on Thursday morning to reclassify marijuana from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s strictest Section I regulatory level to the lower Section III classification.
The order does not legalize marijuana under federal law, but it does apply to the 40 states that have approved the drug for medical use. It also provides a major tax break to licensed medical marijuana dealers in these states and affirms the right of medical researchers to purchase from these dealers for their studies.
The move has also received pushback by Kevin Sabet, the chief executive of Smart Approaches to Marijuana.
“We are now confronted with the most pro-drug administration in our history … Policy is now being dictated by marijuana CEOs, psychedelics investors and podcasters in active addiction — it is a travesty and injustice to the American people of unprecedented proportions,” Sabet said in a Thursday statement shared on X.
The Marijuana Policy Project’s (MPP) executive director, Adam J. Smith, welcomed the news, calling it a “historic move toward sanity in cannabis policy” in a statement shared with The Hill.
“We hope that this will open the door to more medical research, inspires states to guarantee access to safe, regulated cannabinoids for patients who desperately need them, and that the regulated industry might finally be treated more fairly under the federal tax code,” Smith wrote.
“But a move to Schedule III stops short of the systemic change we need. It does nothing to end hundreds of thousands of possession arrests each year, nor does it do anything to fix the untenable, ongoing disconnect between federal prohibition and the regulated state markets under which more than half of American adults live,” he continued. “While we welcome this important step, the federal government should treat cannabis the same way it treats alcohol, which means descheduling cannabis entirely.”
The DOJ’s order followed an executive order signed by President Trump last December, in which he urged officials to expedite the reclassification of marijuana.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai defended the Trump administration’s decision against outside criticism in a statement to The Hill.
“The Justice Department’s reclassification of cannabis in accordance with President Trump’s executive order is a welcome step to increase critical research into possible medical applications of cannabis,” Desai wrote.
“The Trump administration continues to implement a Gold Standard Science-based approach to shape health policymaking and deliver for American veterans and patients,” he added.
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