Here’s Why Many Cops Support Trump’s Marijuana Rescheduling Move (Op-Ed)
Cops, Cartels, and the Case for cannabis rescheduling to Schedule III. Pull up a stool. Here’s the late-night truth that sticks to your ribs: rescheduling isn’t about lighting up; it’s about prioritizing. It’s about whether a detective chases a fentanyl ring or writes up a guy with a gram in his pocket. In a sharp, unvarnished op-ed, former St. Louis police sergeant Gary Wiegert lays it bare—fifty years of Schedule I dogma has turned policing into a shell game, pushing resources at the wrong problems and letting the real wolves slink through the fence. Thirty-eight states say cannabis has a place in medicine or daily life. The feds still park it next to heroin. That mismatch isn’t academic—it’s operational. It gums up the gears, saps time, and muddies the law. As Wiegert argues, move it to Schedule III, recognize medical use, and let cops spend their hours on predators, not paperwork. If you want the straight-line version, his full case is here for the reading at Missouri Independent.
Priorities, Not Platitudes
Walk the beat long enough and you learn the cruel math of limited bandwidth. Every hour is a choice. And right now, too many of those hours vanish into the black hole of simple possession. Wiegert points to years of arrest data that make your jaw tighten: since 2011, more than four in five drug arrests were for possession, and cannabis alone has accounted for roughly a third of all drug arrests and nearly half of possession arrests. That’s not a war on kingpins—that’s a war on minutes, stolen from investigations that actually stop the bleeding. Layer in a patchwork of state laws and you get whiplash. Some courts and legislatures flirt with rolling the clock backward while others sprint ahead, leaving patients, cops, and judges to improvise. The tug-of-war is real—see the stakes in Arkansas Supreme Court Ruling Could Let Lawmakers Roll Back Medical Marijuana Access, where access itself can turn on a gavel blow. Federal clarity matters because fragmentation breeds confusion—and confusion breeds bad policing.
The Street Doesn’t Wait for Congress
While policymakers argue, the illicit market sips espresso and hums along. Unlicensed grows in California and Oklahoma don’t file paperwork or card teenagers. They don’t pay taxes. They don’t test for pesticides or mold. They don’t care. Meanwhile, legal operators play with ankle weights on—strangled by federal tax code 280E, which disallows ordinary deductions for anyone “trafficking” in Schedule I substances. That’s not just a policy quirk; it’s a competitive handicap that tilts consumers toward the very shadows regulators claim to be chasing. And at street level, some lawmakers still default to punishment-first instincts that chew up time without delivering safety—see the impulse in Florida Lawmakers Approve Bill To Punish Medical Marijuana Patients For Having Open Containers Of Cannabis In Cars. You don’t dismantle cartels by ticketing patients. You do it by dialing policy to reality, then freeing up cops to hunt the real monsters.
Schedule III: Not a Free Pass, a Functional Map
Let’s be clear, because clarity is the whole point: moving cannabis to Schedule III doesn’t wave a magic wand and legalize everything. Controlled is still controlled. But it acknowledges medicine where medicine exists. It unlocks research without forcing scientists to crawl through barbed wire. It curbs 280E’s punishment-for-existing effect, letting regulated businesses compete on something like a level field. That means more tested product, more tax compliance, fewer reasons for customers to wander down a dark alley. And yes, it means fewer hours tossed at low-level possession. Even within the Trump-era framing, the question isn’t whether you love or hate weed; it’s whether you want law enforcement aligned with real harm. The policy drumbeat is getting louder, and eyes are on whether the administration’s top cops will go on record with timelines. Advocates are already watching the calendar—see Marijuana Advocates Hope Trump’s Attorney General Will Give A Rescheduling Update At Congressional Hearing. That kind of daylight—the who, when, and how—matters for markets, medicine, and municipal budgets alike.
The Human Stakes Behind the Badge
Behind the statistics are people whose jobs run on adrenaline and aftermath. Police and first responders face PTSD rates that studies peg at multiples of the general population. Some of them, veterans of two wars—the street and the sand—live with symptoms loud enough to drown out sleep. Sensible cannabis policy could offer therapeutic avenues that don’t involve secrecy or career risk for federal employees or active-duty personnel. Rescheduling won’t solve it all overnight, but it opens doors that Schedule I deliberately nails shut. And when groups like the Law Enforcement Action Partnership and Law Enforcement Leaders throw their weight behind reform, they’re not chasing a vibe—they’re asking for tools that match reality. Meanwhile, statehouses keep shadowboxing. Watch the griping and gridlock in Pennsylvania House Lawmakers Slam Senate Over Marijuana Legalization Inaction As Governor Again Calls For Reform, and you’ll see why a coherent federal floor matters: it sets the stage, so states stop improvising with people’s lives and law enforcement’s time.
So here’s the bartender’s pour at the end of the night: cannabis rescheduling to Schedule III is less revolution than renovation—replacing bad wiring before it burns the house down. It reorients law enforcement toward violent crime and fentanyl, de-escalates the petty stuff, starves illicit actors who thrive in the gaps, and gives medical truth some room to breathe. We can regulate like adults. We can tax smartly instead of punitively. We can research without blindfolds. And we can do it while keeping kids safe and communities calmer. That’s not politics. That’s logistics, compassion, and a little common sense. If you’ve read this far and want to explore compliant, lab-tested options in the legal market, step into our curated world here: shop.
