The Justice Department announced Thursday that it was immediately reclassifying marijuana from a Schedule I drug, like heroin, to a Schedule III drug, like common painkillers, a move it said would allow further research into the drug’s effectiveness as a medicine. But there is already an extensive body of research showing marijuana causes far more harm than benefits to patients, and rescheduling will turbocharge investment in an industry that hurts the very Americans President Donald Trump swore to protect.
The process to reschedule marijuana started under President Joe Biden in 2022, and, if he had been reelected, would have been completed in 2025. Some people hoped Trump would reverse Biden’s marijuana folly, but unfortunately, it appears he has only delayed it.
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A decade ago, when deep blue states such as California, Colorado, and New York legalized marijuana for recreational use, the case for more lenient policies was stronger. Since then, however, mountains of new research have been done on marijuana use, and it has all been negative.
Wherever marijuana has been legalized, both use and misuse have risen, along with related harms such as increased hospitalizations of children who ingest the candy-like edibles that many users consume. Marijuana use has also been linked to higher rates of schizophrenia, heart attacks, reduced motivation, lower educational attainment, greater unemployment, increased reliance on welfare, higher crime, diminished brain activity, and memory loss.
Considering that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced the nation’s fertility rate reached new record lows, it is also relevant that studies show marijuana is associated with higher rates of miscarriages and premature births in women, as well as infertility in men. Stacked up against all of those harms, the medical benefits of marijuana are exceedingly slim.
According to a comprehensive review of decades of research, the Journal of the American Medical Association found that: “Evidence from randomized clinical trials does not support the use of cannabis or cannabinoids for most conditions for which it is promoted, such as acute pain and insomnia.” The only benefit the study found was “a moderate effect on increasing body weight” for some HIV/AIDS patients, and even then, many other real medicines are available.
Rescheduling marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III will make it easier for corporations that sell recreational marijuana in states where it is legal to take advantage of tax breaks and banking privileges not currently available to them. The commercial marijuana industry has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into lobbying efforts to reschedule the drug, and that is not because it will make Americans healthier. These companies want to spend millions more on advertising and distribution to get as many Americans hooked as possible. The result will not be a healthier America, but a dumber, lazier, less educated populace.
Maybe there are millions of single-issue marijuana voters out there who will vote Republican because Trump made it easier for them to get high, but in general, it is Democrats, not Republicans, who support making it easier to smoke marijuana.
Among voters ages 18 to 45, 68% of former Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 supporters said marijuana legalization has produced more social benefits than costs, while 59% of Trump voters in the same age group said it has done more harm than good. In other words, the strongest supporters of legalization are committed Democrats unlikely ever to back Republicans, while Trump’s own younger supporters would see any retreat from his anti-drug, law-and-order message as a betrayal.
THE LEFT’S HATE FRAUD FACTORY EXPOSED
As more and more voters have experienced the real harms from marijuana use, support for the legalization of marijuana has fallen sharply, especially among Republicans.
Trump did not need to embrace Biden’s marijuana mistake. He should have rejected it. Marijuana normalization has brought more addiction, more social disorder, more family breakdown, and more public harm, not more freedom. Republicans gain nothing by helping the drug lobby profit. They only risk betraying the voters who trusted them.
