When is marijuana redistricting legal? The timeline is unclear and risks remain.

A day after President Donald Trump’s long-awaited executive order directing federal authorities to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, the $32 billion legal marijuana industry is raising an important question: When?

Trump’s executive order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to reclassify marijuana “in the most expeditious manner consistent” with federal law. But on a realistically accelerated timeline, it could be months before the promised research benefits and tax breaks materialize, legal experts say. MJBizDaily.

“I wish I could give you something like an exact number, but there’s a lot of wisdom here,” said Matthew Cavedon, director of the Project on Criminal Justice at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington, DC.

“I can’t say how long that will take because there is no set time,” added Shane Pennington, a noted administrative law expert and partner at Blank Rome.

However, there is at least some idea of ​​the bureaucratic and legal procedures that must be followed. And at least some credit is owed to former President Joe Biden, who introduced the first marijuana reform process that Trump moved on Thursday.

However, if any steps are skipped or corners are cut, there are serious risks that could delay the complete restructuring, legal experts warn.

There is ‘no deadline’ for marijuana to be rescheduled

Pennington represented the parties in rescheduling the marijuana hearing before a US Drug Enforcement Administration judge that was temporarily suspended the night before Trump’s inauguration.

That hearing was part of the marijuana reform process that began under Biden in October 2022.

Trump’s process is built on that by noting the August 2023 Health and Human Services finding that cannabis is currently being used medically in the US.

However, Trump went further than Biden and ordered agencies to make the change rather than simply revise federal policy.

Still, “The thing is, they’re going to have a bureaucratic gauntlet to run,” Pennington said.

In theory, Bondi could cancel the hearing — granting an appeal of the hearing — and publish a final rule in the Federal Register reclassifying cannabis as a Schedule 3 drug in five days.

“Five days, not business days,” Pennington said.

Lawsuits against marijuana redistricting have been upheld

But once Bondi does that, there’s another hurdle to clear: the courts.

Supporters have long anticipated lawsuits challenging the final rule.

Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a prominent legal challenger to the Biden administration, has already retained former Attorney General Bill Barr to represent it in court, according to Kevin Sabet, the organization’s president and CEO.

“As we speak, we are preparing to file a lawsuit against the administration to block this law, in case it ends up ending,” Sabet said in a video posted to X. And Barr, who led the Justice Department in Trump’s first term, “has assured me that we have a very good case,” Sabet said.

SAM’s conflict is not known, but observers predict that it may challenge the restructuring on procedural grounds and say that the federal administrative law was not followed.

This is a program that struggled last year, after the DEA submitted 43,000 public comments on this question, some of which requested that the hearings be suspended.

If Bondi moves too fast, one unfriendly judge in an obscure district may be required to impose a rescheduling period — and delay 280E exemptions and everything else forever, Cavedon said.

‘You want this to go fast,’ but…

And there is a worse situation.

If a federal judge rules that the process is bogged down and marijuana redistricting ends up in the cases legal opponents have vowed to bring, it could be another two or three years before Plan 3 becomes a reality, Cavedon added.

That’s why the industry may want the rollback to happen as quickly as possible, it may be better if it’s done carefully – and properly.

“You want this to go quickly and, frankly, after so many decades, it has to,” Cavedon said.

“This doesn’t have to be a difficult thing, but you don’t want the DOJ to call you right away and have this end up in court because another judge decided you didn’t do your homework.”

Chris Roberts can be reached at chris.roberts@mjbizdaily.com.