Major Nurses Associations Applaud Trump’s Marijuana Rescheduling Move, Saying It Could Open Doors To Critical Research

Marijuana rescheduling just got a white-coat blessing—and not the polite golf clap kind. When President Trump signed an order to push cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III, two of the biggest nursing organizations in the country stepped forward like seasoned night-shift captains and said: finally, something we can use. The American Nurses Association and the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology see a door kicked open for research—real, rigorous, peer-reviewed work that treats cannabis like a medicine to be studied, not a myth to be feared. Moving from the prohibitionist attic of Schedule I to the clinical daylight of Schedule III aligns federal cannabis policy with modern healthcare practice, and that shift matters for the people who hold hands in recovery rooms and monitor oxygen lines while the rest of us sleep. Call it what it is: a deliberate stride toward evidence-informed care, patient safety, and a saner national conversation.

What Schedule III changes for care and science

• Streamlined research: Fewer regulatory choke points mean hospitals and universities can more easily study cannabinoids’ effects on pain, anesthesia, and perioperative care.
• Clinical guidance: A clearer legal framework helps professional societies issue protocols, set dosing standards, and track outcomes with serious data.
• Supply chain stability: Researchers gain better access to quality-controlled study materials, not the inconsistent scraps of past decades.
• Public health oversight: More trials and registries translate into stronger safety profiles, adverse event tracking, and informed risk-benefit decisions.

Talk to nurse anesthetists and you’ll hear the same refrain: the operating room tolerates superstition about as well as an unstable airway. The AANA’s leadership has long argued for research that shows precisely how cannabis and cannabinoid medicines interact with anesthesia, pain pathways, and the messy realities of perioperative care. Schedule III is the difference between ducking bureaucracy and designing careful studies. It’s how you move beyond anecdotes to protocols—how you protect patients in the real world, where people show up with edibles in their bloodstream and chronic pain in their histories. Pharmacists echo the point: evidence beats rumor every time, and this policy shift accelerates the evidence. The white coats aren’t cheering politics; they’re demanding tools.

The policy chessboard: progress, friction, and what comes next

Of course, Washington never hands you a clean plate. An executive order can set the table, but the Department of Justice still has to carry the dish to the finish line—and in this town, someone is always reaching for the salt. There’s a live debate over where executive authority ends and agency discretion begins, and it would be naive to assume the path is straight. For a sober look at that tug-of-war, see DOJ Could Ignore Trump’s Marijuana Rescheduling Directive, Congressional Researchers Suggest. Even if Schedule III lands, Congress still controls the plumbing: banking access for cannabis businesses, sentencing reform, and the broader architecture of marijuana policy reform. Deadlines collide, agendas drift, and unrelated fights spill into the same hallway, like the looming hemp skirmish that now intersects with cannabis rescheduling timelines—an argument laid out in Trump’s Marijuana Order Means Congress Must Delay The Federal Hemp Ban’s Timeline (Op-Ed). Progress is real. Friction is guaranteed. The question is which force wins the long game.

Patients at the center: pain, disability, and the promise of better data

Nurses didn’t learn compassion from statutes, and they don’t need Congress to tell them pain is complicated. Ask the disability community: medical marijuana use is already widespread among people who live with chronic pain and limited mobility, and emerging research shows real therapeutic upside when care teams understand the plant and the patient together. If we want safer outcomes, we need better inputs. That means studies at scale, clean methodologies, and the kind of cross-disciplinary collaboration you only get when the law stops treating scientists like smugglers. One place to start is the growing evidence base that cannabis helps some patients manage pain more effectively and with fewer side effects than legacy regimens—an arc captured in Medical Marijuana Use Is ‘Prevalent’ Among People With Disabilities—And It Helps Treat Pain, New Federally Funded Study Shows. With pharmacists publicly supporting rescheduling and nurse leaders pushing for standardized perioperative guidance, Schedule III looks less like a culture war trophy and more like basic infrastructure for modern medicine.

Momentum, markets, and the states watching the feds

Policy doesn’t move because a few insiders say so; it shifts because public sentiment tilts hard enough to make inaction look silly. Voters across the spectrum increasingly accept that cannabis has medical value, and the polling has only sharpened since the rescheduling push began. If you need a read on the room, the numbers tell it clean in Bipartisan Majority Of Americans Support Rescheduling Marijuana And Say It Has Medical Value, New Poll Finds After Trump Takes Action. States eye federal moves like restaurateurs scan a competitor’s menu—quietly, hungrily, ready to steal what works. Expect legislatures in purple zip codes to use Schedule III as cover to refine their medical programs, expand access, and push for saner banking rules. The nurses are right to applaud: when the research spigot opens, clinical practice follows, and the fog lifts for patients and providers. If you’re curious where this is headed—and want to explore the plant behind the policy—wander our shop and see what careful cultivation looks like: https://thcaorder.com/shop/.