Bipartisan Majority Of Americans Support Rescheduling Marijuana And Say It Has Medical Value, New Poll Finds After Trump Takes Action

Federally rescheduling marijuana is no longer a fringe fantasy—it’s the center of the table

Federally rescheduling marijuana isn’t just some Beltway parlor trick anymore; it’s the rare policy idea most Americans would actually raise a glass to. Days after President Donald Trump told his attorney general to fast-track moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act, a fresh YouGov survey confirmed what any barfly with ears already knew: people are done pretending this plant belongs in the same vault as heroin. Seventy percent say “yes” to rescheduling. Only sixteen percent object. The rest are shrugging into their sleeves. It’s not legalization, not yet, but it’s a big cultural exhale—an overdue nod to medical value, a jailbreak for research, and a lifeline for legitimate operators drowning under punitive tax rules. In the cold fluorescence of federal policy, where progress usually moves like a slow stew on low heat, this is the smell of something finally beginning to simmer.

The numbers, straight up

• Approval of reclassifying cannabis to a less restrictive schedule: 70% approve (42% strongly, 28% somewhat), 16% oppose, 14% unsure.
• Bipartisan support: Democrats 78% approve, Independents 69%, Republicans 66%.
• Adult-use legalization: 54% say it should be permitted. Democrats 68% support, Independents 55%; Republicans split 41% in favor, 41% opposed.
• Medical value: 76% say marijuana “definitely” or “probably” has legitimate medical uses (Democrats 84%, Independents 74%, Republicans 73%).
• Methodology: 31,080 U.S. adults, surveyed December 19–22, with a margin of error of +/- 0.8 percentage points.

What do those figures taste like in the real world? Think of it as the country finally leveling with itself. Voters who can’t agree on lunch agree on this. Rescheduling to Schedule III doesn’t flip the switch to legal cannabis, but it pries open the lab door and kneecaps the worst of 280E tax purgatory—those contortions that force compliant businesses to act like they’re moving contraband in plain sight. It means researchers can work with fewer shackles. Doctors can speak without sounding like they’re auditioning for a crime drama. And in the living rooms where pain, anxiety, or addiction live, the idea that cannabis can, as the president put it, make people feel much better and serve as a substitute for addictive and potentially lethal opioid painkillers lands less like a campaign line and more like common sense. Against that backdrop, it’s no shock to see red and blue voters lining up at the same counter.

Politics rarely follows a straight path, though. Federal marijuana rescheduling is an inside-the-Beltway maneuver with outside-the-bar consequences, and the states are already moving in tandem—and in tension. When Tennessee lawmakers began reading the room back home after Trump’s nudge, it wasn’t a psychedelic revelation; it was survival. See how pragmatic momentum looks on the ground in Bipartisan Tennessee Lawmakers Push For State-Level Marijuana Reform Following Trump’s Federal Rescheduling Move. This is the kind of local recalibration that happens when a national taboo starts losing its fangs. Even the diehards who once campaigned on D.A.R.E.-era scripts can read a poll; 66 percent of Republicans backing rescheduling isn’t a whisper—it’s a drumline.

Still, the fight isn’t all clean lines and warm embraces. In Ohio, voters’ recent appetite for legal cannabis hasn’t stopped some politicians from trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle, and residents are gearing up to push back. It’s worth watching the democratic muscle memory at work in Ohio Activists Plan Referendum To Block New Law Rolling Back Marijuana Rights And Restricting Hemp Sales. Meanwhile, the center of gravity keeps shifting toward medical pragmatism—even in the buttoned-up world of benefits and formularies. The idea that health systems could help shoulder the cost of cannabinoid therapies no longer reads like fever dream; it’s flirting with policy reality, as sketched in Federal Health Programs Will Cover Up To $500 Worth Of CBD For Certain Patients By April, Trump Official Dr. Oz Says. Taken together, these threads suggest something deeper than a news cycle: a public ready to align law with lived experience, and an industry mapping its way out of the shadows.

Zoom out, and it’s not just cannabis. The cultural palate is expanding, cautiously, sometimes clumsily, toward therapeutic experiments that would’ve been laughed off the menu a decade ago. Consider the Bay State’s next course in Massachusetts Lawmakers Vote To Legalize Psilocybin And Establish Framework For Therapeutic Access. It’s the same impulse powering the support for rescheduling marijuana: reduce harm, expand access, let research lead. That YouGov snapshot doesn’t promise an easy road to full legalization, but it signals a more honest, less hysterical era of marijuana policy reform—one where evidence and experience can finally sit at the same table. If you’re keeping score, federal marijuana rescheduling isn’t the last course; it’s the amuse-bouche that tells you the kitchen has changed hands. And if you’re ready to explore the compliant, hemp-derived side of that evolution, pull up a chair at our shop: https://thcaorder.com/shop/.