Marijuana Moment: Trump’s Marijuana Rescheduling Order Could Let Washington, D.C. Finally Legalize Recreational Sales

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If federal officials follow through on President Donald Trump’s recent executive order directing the reclassification of marijuana, it could free up Washington, D.C. to finally legalize recreational cannabis sales after a years-long congressional blockade.

Moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) would not federally legalize marijuana, but it would have significant policy implications. While much of the industry and public attention has focused on how the reform would affect tax and research issues, the move could have an outsized impact on local policy in the nation’s capital.

According to congressional analysts and other experts, a Schedule III reclassification would mean that D.C.—which for over a decade has been barred from using its appropriated funds to allow marijuana sales, despite voter approval of of a noncommercial legalization initiative and local elected officials’ support for adding retail sales—could finally create a regulated adult-use market.

In a report published in 2024, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) said that while federal cannabis prohibition would still be the law of the land, it “would permit the District government, as a matter of local law, to authorize the commercial sale of recreational marijuana, establish market regulations, and levy marijuana taxes, among other policy options.”

The reason that D.C. is restricted from enacting that regulatory reform—even as nearly half of the states in the U.S. have established adult-use cannabis markets—is because of a congressional spending bill rider championed by prohibitionist Rep. Andy Harris (D-MD) that deprives the District of the ability to expend its appropriated dollars to set up such a system.

The rider specifically states that D.C. can’t use its own local funds to “legalize or otherwise reduce penalties associated with the possession, use, or distribution of any schedule I substance.” Moving marijuana to Schedule III would mean that part of the rider would no longer be applicable to cannabis.

There is a complication, however, because the congressional provision that’s been annually renewed since 2014 also stipulates that the District of Columbia can’t use funds to legalize or reduce penalties for “any tetrahydrocannabinols derivative.”

But that term isn’t clearly defined in the rider or anywhere else in federal law.

“The continued prohibition on legalization of tetrahydrocannabinols derivatives by the District could lead to interpretive questions about whether a particular substance is legally marijuana, hemp, a tetrahydrocannabinols derivative, or something else,” the 2024 CRS report says.

“Certain synthetic tetrahydrocannabinols remain illegal for recreational use under D.C. law, but it is not clear whether these synthetic substances would constitute derivatives,” it says. “In addition, although federal law defines marijuana and hemp to be exclusive of each other, a substance could conceivably be both a tetrahydrocannabinols derivative and marijuana or hemp as a matter of law.”

One of the nation’s top cannabis advocacy groups, NORML, also posted an analysis in 2024 arguing that rescheduling could “open a door” for D.C. to finally legalize adult-use marijuana sales. The group suggested that the term tetrahydrocannabinols derivative “is unlikely to be interpreted by a court as inclusive of marijuana generally.”

In 2021, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) separately responded to a congressional inquiry and affirmed that, even with the D.C. marijuana sales ban in place, local lawmakers there can still take steps to prepare for the potential creational of a regulated recreational marijuana market.

Medical cannabis sales are already legal in D.C.

Last March, the White House claimed that marijuana reform in Washington, D.C. is an example of a “failed” policy that “opened the door to disorder.”

The Trump administration last year asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit from a D.C. hemp business challenging the federal government over the congressional budget restriction preventing cannabis sales.

About three months after Capitol Hemp filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Justice Department in September submitted a motion requesting dismissal of the case, largely on procedural grounds. The court agreed the next month.

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