Marijuana Moment: Marijuana Reform Advocates Slam ‘Misleading’ Rescheduling Poll From Prohibitionist Group

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Marijuana reform advocates are forcefully pushing back against a new poll commissioned by a prohibitionist group that purports to demonstrate that a majority of Americans oppose a pending marijuana rescheduling proposal—when, in reality, the survey is based on two leading questions that play into hypotheticals about potential consequences related to youth and foreign cartels.

Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) promoted the survey responses on Thursday, asserting definitively that the poll “shows that most Americans OPPOSE rescheduling marijuana.”

That on its own would raise eyebrows given consistent national polling that’s found growing majority and, in many cases bipartisan, support for legalizing marijuana altogether. The more incremental rescheduling plan pending before President Donald Trump—which would move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) wouldn’t even end criminalization.

But what a Schedule III reclassification would do is allow cannabis businesses to take federal tax deductions they’ve long been barred from, while loosening certain research restrictions that apply to Schedule I drugs.

SAM, through poll conducted by the firm On Message Inc., zeroed in on the tax relief element of the reform and crafted two questions that posed hypotheticals about the impact of allowing the industry to take federal deductions.

One question asked respondents the following: “If you knew the following were true about rescheduling marijuana from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 3 federal classification, which would reduce some federal restrictions on marijuana, would you be more or less likely to support rescheduling marijuana to a lower classification: Rescheduling marijuana would give marijuana companies a financial incentive to advertise more to children.”

It’s unclear how it’s reasoned that rescheduling would create an “incentive” to unlawfully market to children. But asked to respond to that scenario, 63 percent of respondents said they’d be “less likely” to back rescheduling, compared to 18 percent who said they’d be “more likely” and 19 percent who said it would change their perspective.

BREAKING: New poll shows that most Americans OPPOSE rescheduling marijuana.

Overall, 63% of respondents said they’d be less likely to support rescheduling if it gave companies a greater financial incentive to advertise to their children. pic.twitter.com/urMDE5j1VF

— Smart Approaches to Marijuana (@learnaboutsam) September 25, 2025

Adam Smith, executive director of the pro-legalization group Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), told Marijuana Moment on Thursday that SAM is “spewing misinformation to confuse lawmakers and the public.”

“Here are the facts: It is already a crime for cannabis businesses to advertise to children, one that can result in serious penalties,” he said. “Moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III, or even removing it from the schedule entirely, would not change that.”

“Unlike prohibition, cannabis regulation universally includes age-gating, which does more to keep cannabis out of the hands of kids than prohibition ever did. And it includes strict limits on advertising,” he said.

“Don’t be fooled by prohibitionists’ fear tactics,” Smith said. “Project SAM’s goal is not to protect kids, it is to drag us back to the dark days of hundreds of thousands of annual arrests, ruining the lives of otherwise law abiding people and packing prisons with people whose only ‘crime’ is possession of a plant that humans have been using safely for thousands of years.”

The next question from the SAM poll presents a similarly questionable hypothetical consequence of rescheduling. It asks: “If you knew the following were true about rescheduling marijuana from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 3 federal classification, which would reduce some federal restrictions on marijuana, would you be more or less likely to support rescheduling marijuana to a lower classification: Rescheduling marijuana would mean that Chinese and Mexican drug cartels that own marijuana farms in America will get a tax break.”

Of the 1,000 likely voters involved in the survey—which took place from September 9-12 and has a +/-3.1 percentage point margin of error—58 percent of respondents said the idea that rescheduling could benefit cartels would make them less likely to back the reform, compared to 19 percent who said they’d be more likely and 23 percent with no opinion.

These poll results clearly show that when Americans—and especially Trump’s political base—understand the real-world effects of marijuana rescheduling, they oppose the change strongly.

— Smart Approaches to Marijuana (@learnaboutsam) September 25, 2025

There are bipartisan concerns about illicit drug trafficking, with media and government officials identifying certain illegal grow operations associated with cartels, and a House committee held a hearing on the issue last week. But the premise of SAM’s question assumes that transnational drug organizations pay taxes in the first place and also accurately disclose their sources of income.

Kevin Sabet, president of SAM, said in a press release that “Americans don’t want Washington to hand Big Weed a massive tax break so addiction profiteers can spend more to push ads at our kids and hook the next generation of addicts.”

“Rescheduling means more marketing pressure on children; voters across the spectrum say: no thanks,” he said.

“This is not a partisan issue,” Sabet added. “Everyone who cares about the safety of their community and making sure foreign drug dealers don’t benefit from strategic policy errors is speaking up and letting their voices be heard. We hope that the president, as he faces a pivotal choice on marijuana, listens to the voters and not a big-money influence campaign.”

President Donald Trump did endorse the rescheduling proposal, which was initiated under the Biden administration, during his run for a second term. And he said last month that he’d make a decision within weeks, without clearly indicating one way or another whether he continues to support the policy change. Competing voices in Trump’s inner circle, in Congress and in the private sector have all been working to influence the final outcome.

MPP’s Smith said what SAM is doing, however, is “spewing this misinformation and hiding behind a hypothetical.”

“So I will not give them the satisfaction of calling them liars in print—but I will say very strongly that they and their funders should be ashamed of misleading the public in an effort to drag us back to the dark days of millions of arrests and ruined lives.”

Morgan Fox, political director of NORML, told Marijuana Moment that prohibitionists “have long relied on creative interpretations of data to cast doubt on public support for cannabis policy reform.”

“It is not surprising that they double down on this strategy when they are the ones writing the questions,” he said. “When they can’t win the hearts and minds of the public, they attempt to make it seem as if they have, or they attempt to take voters out of the equation entirely by working to overturn key portions of citizen initiatives or restricting the process entirely.”

Michael Bronstein, president of the American Trade Association of Cannabis and Hemp (ATACH), told Marijuana Moment that the “questions in this poll are clearly misleading.”

“Independent polling consistently shows that Americans of all political stripes support cannabis reform, including rescheduling,” he said.

To that point, about two in three American voters said legalizing marijuana nationwide would be a “good” idea, according to a recent poll from Emerson College.

Another recent survey from the Coalition for Cannabis Policy, Education, and Regulation (CPEAR), which was conducted by the firm Forbes Tate Partners, showed that seven in 10 American voters want to see the end of federal marijuana prohibition—and nearly half say they’d view the Trump administration more favorably if it took action on the issue.

A poll released in June that Marijuana Moment partnered on with the cannabis telehealth platform NuggMD showed that a majority of marijuana consumers disapprove of the Trump administration’s actions on cannabis policy to date, but there’s also a significant willingness among users to shift their position if the federal government opts to reschedule or legalize marijuana.

Earlier this year, meanwhile, a firm associated with Trump—Fabrizio, Lee & Associates—also polled Americans on a series of broader marijuana policy issues. Notably, it found that a majority of Republicans back cannabis rescheduling—and, notably, they’re even more supportive of allowing states to legalize marijuana without federal interference compared to the average voter.

Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.

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