U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee next week for an oversight hearing, and the cannabis community is collectively holding its breath. The big question on everyone’s mind: will anyone actually ask her about marijuana rescheduling? And if they do, will she give a real answer or pivot to talking about the stock market?
It has been nearly two months since President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14370 on December 18, 2025, directing Bondi to complete the process of moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. That’s roughly 60 days of what can charitably be described as radio silence from the Department of Justice on one of the most significant cannabis policy directives in modern American history.
The attorney general hasn’t publicly commented on the directive. Not a press release. Not a statement. Not even a casual mention in an interview. The DOJ’s official response to press inquiries has been, essentially, “no comment.” A Justice Department spokesperson told reporters last month that there were no “comment or updates” to share. However, a DOJ official did more recently tell Salon that “DOJ is working to identify the most expeditious means of executing the EO.”
Let’s pause on that wording for a moment, because it’s doing a lot of heavy lifting. “Working to identify the most expeditious means” is a wonderfully bureaucratic way of saying “we haven’t figured out how to do this yet.” For an executive order that was supposed to fast-track rescheduling, the department seems to still be looking for the on-ramp to the fast track.
Bondi’s Track Record on Cannabis: Not Exactly Encouraging
Here’s the part that makes cannabis advocates nervous, and honestly, with good reason.
Pam Bondi opposed marijuana reform during her tenure as Florida’s attorney general. She was on the wrong side of the state’s medical marijuana ballot initiative and has historically positioned herself as someone who views cannabis through a law-and-order lens rather than a patient-access one. To add another layer of concern, she didn’t even attend Trump’s signing ceremony for the rescheduling executive order. When the President of the United States signs what could be the most consequential federal cannabis policy directive in 50+ years, and your attorney general doesn’t show up, that’s not exactly a confidence-inspiring signal.
In my personal opinion, this kind of conspicuous absence speaks volumes. You don’t skip the photo op for a policy you’re enthusiastic about implementing. You skip it when you’d rather not be associated with it. Whether that’s a fair reading or not, the optics aren’t great, and the cannabis community has every right to feel uneasy.
NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano put it diplomatically but pointedly: “Pam Bondi’s noticeable absence from the administration’s executive order signing, coupled with her prior history as a high-profile opponent of state-level marijuana reform and her ongoing failure to speak about the issue publicly, is cause for speculation.”
“Let’s hope the attorney general seizes this opportunity to provide some long-overdue clarity as to where things currently stand in what has been, thus far, a protracted and far from transparent process,” he added.
That’s about as polite a way of saying “we’re worried she’s going to drag her feet” as you’ll find in Washington.
What Rescheduling Actually Means (And Why It Matters to Real People)
For those who are newer to this conversation, let’s break down what moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III would actually mean, because the implications are significant even though rescheduling isn’t legalization.
Under the current Schedule I classification, marijuana sits alongside heroin, LSD, and ecstasy in the category reserved for substances the federal government considers to have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” That classification has been in place since 1970, and it has always been, frankly, scientifically absurd. Over 30,000 licensed healthcare practitioners across 43 U.S. jurisdictions currently recommend medical cannabis to more than 6 million registered patients. The FDA itself found credible scientific support for marijuana’s use in treating pain, nausea from chemotherapy, and anorexia related to certain medical conditions. Saying it has “no accepted medical use” while millions of patients use it medically, with doctor supervision, in programs that state governments spent years carefully designing and implementing is a contradiction that would be funny if it weren’t so consequential.
Schedule III, by comparison, includes substances like ketamine, certain codeine formulations, and anabolic steroids. These are drugs with recognized medical value and a moderate to low potential for dependence. Moving cannabis to Schedule III would formally acknowledge the plant’s medical benefits at the federal level, reduce barriers to cannabis research, and critically, allow cannabis businesses to take standard business deductions under the tax code. Currently, Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code prevents businesses dealing in Schedule I or II substances from deducting ordinary expenses like rent, payroll, and utilities. That’s an enormous financial burden that has strangled legal cannabis operations for years.
It’s worth emphasizing that rescheduling wouldn’t legalize marijuana for recreational use. It wouldn’t override state laws. It wouldn’t mean you can walk into a dispensary in a prohibition state and buy flower. But it would be a monumental symbolic and practical step, the kind that changes the trajectory of the entire national conversation around cannabis policy.
For patients who depend on cannabis-based treatments for chronic pain, or those who use specific terpene profiles to manage conditions like anxiety, sleep disorders, and inflammation, federal rescheduling would validate what they’ve known from personal experience for years. Compounds like myrcene, linalool, and limonene have been the subject of growing scientific interest, and reduced research barriers would accelerate the kind of rigorous clinical studies that could move cannabis-based medicine from the fringes into mainstream healthcare.
The Wednesday Hearing: Will Cannabis Even Come Up?
Here’s the uncomfortable reality that advocates are grappling with: the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, February 11 might not even touch on marijuana. The official hearing notice is titled “Oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice,” which is broad enough to cover just about anything. And “anything” in this case almost certainly means the Jeffrey Epstein files controversy will dominate the conversation.
Members of both parties have been vocal about the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein documents, and that topic is going to suck up a lot of oxygen in the room. Cannabis rescheduling, as important as it is to millions of patients and an entire industry, simply doesn’t generate the same kind of cable news headlines as the Epstein saga. That’s just the reality of how Washington works, and it’s frustrating.
That said, there are several members on the House Judiciary Committee who have been champions of marijuana policy reform. If even one of them uses their five minutes of questioning time to press Bondi on the rescheduling timeline, it could produce a newsworthy moment. The question is whether cannabis will make the cut when lawmakers have a limited window and a laundry list of grievances.
My honest take? The cannabis community needs champions on that committee who will prioritize asking the hard questions. Not just “where does rescheduling stand?” but more pointed questions like: “Has the DOJ begun drafting a final rule? What is the specific timeline? Are you planning to finalize the existing proposed rule from May 2024, or are you starting from scratch?” Those are the questions that would actually move the needle.
The NuggMD Poll: Overwhelming Support for Rescheduling
If Bondi or anyone at the DOJ needs a reminder of where the American public stands on this issue, a new poll from the cannabis telehealth platform NuggMD provides some pretty clear data.
About 83% of respondents said they support Trump’s executive order to reschedule marijuana. Only 7% expressed opposition, and 10% didn’t have an opinion. Those are the kinds of numbers that politicians dream about. For context, most major policy initiatives would kill for 83% approval from their core constituency.
The support isn’t surprising. Cannabis consumers, medical patients, and industry stakeholders have been waiting years for the federal government to take even this modest step toward rationality. When you’ve been told for over 50 years that a plant whose terpenes and compounds are being studied at major research institutions worldwide has “no medical value,” getting an official acknowledgment that the classification was wrong isn’t radical. It’s overdue.
The Matt Gaetz Wrinkle (Because Why Not)
In what can only be described as a delightfully unexpected plot twist, former Representative Matt Gaetz, who was Trump’s original pick for attorney general before withdrawing his nomination, posted on X last week claiming he’d been told the Drug Enforcement Administration is actively drafting a rescheduling rule and intends to issue it “ASAP.”
Now, if you’re thinking “wait, isn’t there already a proposed rule pending?”, congratulations, you understand the situation better than most people commenting on it.
There is indeed a rule already in the pipeline. The Biden administration’s DOJ issued a proposed rule to reschedule marijuana in May 2024 following a scientific review by the Department of Health and Human Services. That rule went through public comment (receiving over 42,000 submissions), had a hearing scheduled, and then got caught up in an interlocutory appeal that effectively froze the administrative process. The hearing was canceled, the proceedings were stayed, and the administrative law judge originally assigned to the case retired.
So when Gaetz says the DEA is “drafting a rescheduling rule,” it raises questions. Is the agency working to finalize the existing proposed rule? Or are they starting a brand new rulemaking process from scratch? If it’s the latter, that could mean additional rounds of public comment, new scientific reviews, and potentially months or years of additional delay. The phrasing from the DOJ about “identifying the most expeditious means” takes on a more concerning tone in this light, because the most expeditious path would simply be to finalize the existing rule, not start over.
A Congressional Research Service report published recently laid out the various legal pathways available to the DOJ, noting that the department could theoretically reject the president’s directive, restart the scientific review, or simply finalize the pending proposal. The fact that multiple pathways exist, and the DOJ is apparently still figuring out which one to take, is not the kind of clarity the cannabis community was hoping for two months after the executive order was signed.
The Broader Political Landscape
The rescheduling situation doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s playing out against a backdrop of broader federal cannabis policy developments that are worth understanding.
Two Republican senators filed an amendment last month to block the Trump administration from rescheduling cannabis entirely. While the amendment wasn’t considered on the floor, its existence is a reminder that opposition to reform exists even within the president’s own party. However, in a more encouraging development, Congress recently dropped language from a spending bill that would have blocked the DOJ from using funds to reschedule marijuana, a sign that the legislative roadblock may be clearing.
Meanwhile, the DEA told a court in January that the cannabis rescheduling appeal process “remains pending” despite the executive order, suggesting that the administrative proceedings haven’t been officially restarted yet. And Bondi herself missed a congressionally mandated deadline last month to issue guidelines for easing barriers to research on Schedule I substances like marijuana and psychedelics. When you’re already behind on deadlines related to cannabis research, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that the rescheduling process is moving at top speed.
Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) captured the prevailing mood among reform-minded lawmakers with admirable candor: “The ability of the Trump administration to speak out of both sides of their mouth is staggering. So I’m just going to wait and see right now. Obviously, there’s things that look promising, to end generations of injustice. I really want to wait and see.”
That “wait and see” approach is pragmatic, but for the millions of patients, businesses, and researchers whose lives and livelihoods are affected by marijuana’s Schedule I classification, waiting feels increasingly like a luxury they can’t afford. Every day that cannabis remains in Schedule I is another day that researchers face unnecessary barriers to studying its therapeutic potential, including the science behind terpenes and their role in the entourage effect that could unlock new treatment approaches for everything from chronic pain to epilepsy.
What Should Happen Next
Adam Smith, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, framed the situation well: “While rescheduling is far from a solution to medical access and even less so for cannabis policy overall, it would represent an acknowledgment, at long last, by the federal government of the plant’s many medical benefits. That is a step in the right direction.”
He added that “with millions of Americans using cannabis to successfully combat conditions like chronic pain, PTSD and seizures, the DOJ should move swiftly to fulfill the promise of the president’s executive order and complete the rescheduling process that has already taken far too long.”
That word “swiftly” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. And so far, “swiftly” is not the adjective anyone would use to describe the DOJ’s approach.
In my view, the Wednesday hearing represents a critical moment. Not because Bondi is likely to announce a final rule from the witness table, but because the questions lawmakers ask, or don’t ask, will signal how seriously Congress is taking the rescheduling directive. If Bondi sits through an entire oversight hearing without being asked a single question about marijuana policy, it sends a message that cannabis reform isn’t a legislative priority. If she is asked and deflects or provides vague non-answers, it signals that the DOJ may not be as committed to expeditious action as the executive order implies.
The cannabis industry, patients, researchers, and advocates deserve transparency. They deserve a timeline. They deserve to know whether the DOJ plans to finalize the existing proposed rule, start a new one, or quietly let the process stall indefinitely. What they don’t deserve is more silence.
For consumers and patients looking to better understand the science behind cannabis compounds while they wait for federal policy to catch up with reality, resources on how terpene profiles influence strain selection and what to look for when choosing cannabis products can help navigate an increasingly complex landscape. The role of specific terpenes in pain relief, anxiety management, and sleep support continues to generate promising research, even as the federal scheduling framework struggles to keep up.
We’ll be watching the hearing closely. The cannabis community will too. And if the attorney general walks out of that room without addressing rescheduling, well, that silence will speak louder than any press release ever could.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not constitute legal, medical, or financial advice. Cannabis remains a controlled substance under federal law. The rescheduling process is ongoing, and no final rule has been issued as of this writing. Readers should consult with qualified professionals regarding their specific circumstances. All factual claims are sourced from publicly available government records, official statements, and verified news reports.
