Democratic Senator ‘Very Concerned’ About How DOJ Will Handle Marijuana Rescheduling

DOJ marijuana rescheduling and the banking fix: hurry up and wait. That’s the headline scrawled in grease pencil across Washington’s fogged window tonight, with a Trump executive order promising to shove cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III and the Department of Justice nursing its drink in silence. No timelines. No briefings. Not even a cameo from Attorney General Pam Bondi at the signing—an absence that says plenty in a town where who shows up often matters more than what’s said. Rescheduling could reset the board for cannabis banking, loosening the vise that keeps legitimate businesses locked out of basic financial services. But right now, the Capitol feels like a late-night diner: fluorescent, tired, and full of people who swear the food’s on its way while the griddle sits cold.

Senators are circling, smelling both opportunity and risk. Cory Booker isn’t popping champagne; he’s wary, reading the fine print, waiting to see where DOJ lands because administrations have a habit of promising dessert and serving the check. Still, he sees the opening: rescheduling might grease the skids for the SAFER Banking Act, the long-stalled blueprint to let cannabis companies into the banking lobby without an armed guard. He’s pushed to wire in equity—think safe harbors that explicitly include Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions, the lenders that actually meet small, minority-owned operators where they are. Yet here we are, more than a year into this Congress, and the bill hasn’t even been reintroduced. The industry remains cash-heavy, the risk remains real, and lawmakers keep glancing at the clock like they’ve got somewhere else to be.

Speaking of priorities, Ohio’s Bernie Moreno is blunt: cannabis banking ranks low while Congress juggles government funding, health care, and crypto. If rescheduling is coming from the executive branch, he suggests, the pressure on lawmakers breathes out a little. But there’s static on the line. Two GOP senators tried to block the rescheduling move with an amendment that didn’t make it to a vote. DEA says a rescheduling appeal process still grinds on, a bureaucratic metronome ticking in a locked room. And a nonpartisan analysis points out what insiders already know: DOJ could drag its feet by restarting a scientific review or simply step around the directive. That’s a darkly comic twist, given how often research has flagged the mismatch between marijuana’s current federal status and the evidence base—a tension explored in Marijuana’s Restrictive Federal Classification Isn’t Supported By Science, New Study Concludes.

Meanwhile, real people are left to navigate a patchwork that would make a quilt-maker swear. State regulators tinker at the edges—some tightening rules, others loosening grips—while businesses plan payrolls with one eye on the news crawl. Patients feel it most; changing limits, shifting guidance, and long waits for clarity ricochet through clinics and dispensaries, the kind of regulatory whiplash captured in Missouri Regulators Move To Clarify Medical Marijuana Patients’ Purchasing Limits. On the production side, states like Indiana keep their farmers on the sidelines, tagging them out before they can even step to the plate—see the political stop-and-go in Indiana House Rejects Amendment To Let Farmers Begin Cultivating Marijuana Seeds. And if you think hemp and CBD are immune from federal mood swings, ask the growers and patients staring down policy threats and delays, the story laid bare in Hemp Farmers And Patients Who Rely On CBD Need More Than Just A Delay In The Looming Federal Ban (Op-Ed). The through-line is simple: uncertainty is the most expensive line item in this industry.

Here’s the rub. Rescheduling to Schedule III could loosen tax shackles and let legitimate operators breathe, but it won’t automatically fix banking. That’s a legislative job, and Congress is still deciding whether to clock in. In the interim, the executive branch can set the tone—move decisively, keep the process transparent, and stop treating cannabis stakeholders like second-class constituents. Every day of silence keeps small businesses paying security guards instead of dividends, keeps patients scanning headlines instead of labels, keeps lawmakers telling us they care while nudging the problem to the next calendar. If the point of rescheduling is to align law with reality, then the reality needs a clear path: coherent federal cannabis policy, credible timelines, and a banking framework that treats legal operators like what they are—businesses. If you’re ready to cut through the noise and explore what’s next, end your night with a quiet browse of our shop at https://thcaorder.com/shop/.