Reefer Madness

Trump should reschedule cannabis but legalizing today's super-potent weed is reckless

My latest OpEd in The New York Post published today:

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President Trump has signaled he’s considering correcting a 50-year mistake in US drug laws: Marijuana is in the same category as heroin and LSD.

A change in pot’s legal status at the federal level is overdue: Trump would be right to downgrade cannabis from Schedule I, defined as drugs with no accepted medical use and a high abuse potential, to Schedule III, where it would join ketamine, certain barbiturates and some opioid-like meds.

The original classification was not evidence-based but Nixon-era political payback. But what is at stake is much more than simply to which drug-control schedule cannabis should be moved. Trump faces a new reality: Cannabis in 2025 is fundamentally different and much more powerful than the one Richard Nixon politicized in the 1970s. It means the president must calculate how to change the federal classification for marijuana while not giving a green light for the free-for-all some legalization advocates envision.

Part of the problem is why weed ended up on Schedule I in the first place. President Nixon, who had campaigned on restoring “law and order,” created the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse to give him cover for a hardline stance. When the panel — chaired by former Pennsylvania Gov. Raymond Shafer — returned in 1972 with a report urging decriminalization for personal use, Nixon was livid. He shelved the findings and doubled down on the punitive approach, a decision more about punishing perceived political opponents and appealing to his conservative base than protecting public health.

In the five decades since, reform advocates have pointed to that history as proof the federal classification is irrational and outdated. They note alcohol and tobacco, both with well-documented health risks, remain legal. They also point to the 38 states that have legalized marijuana for medical use and 24 that allow recreational sales.

But this is not the 1970s cannabis the Shafer Commission considered relatively mild and socially manageable. The marijuana sold today is dramatically different — and far more potent.

Back then, the average THC content — the psychoactive compound that produces marijuana’s high — was less than 2%. Today, marijuana flower averages 15% to 20% THC, while extracts, oils and edibles can exceed 80% to 90%. This isn’t a stronger beer or a bolder wine; it’s more like swapping a glass of table wine for a shot of pure grain alcohol.

That surge in potency has real consequences. Emergency-room visits linked to marijuana have spiked in states where it’s been legalized. Physicians report more cases of cannabis-induced psychosis, sometimes in patients with no prior history of mental illness. A 2022 National Institutes of Health-funded study found that high-potency cannabis was associated with a fivefold increase in young men’s risk of developing schizophrenia. Other studies have tied heavy use to cognitive decline, impaired memory and lower academic and occupational achievement — particularly when use starts in adolescence.

While legalization advocates often cite the harmless image of a baby boomer smoking the occasional joint, today’s market caters to heavy users consuming extremely high doses. The public-health debate isn’t about that occasional puff. It’s about the normalization of high-potency marijuana that can hook users, impair judgment and — in a growing subset — trigger psychiatric crises.

The sensible path is what President Trump reportedly favors, reclassifying marijuana to a lower schedule. That acknowledges it does have accepted medical uses — from easing chemotherapy-induced nausea to controlling certain seizure disorders — and would remove some of the research barriers Schedule I imposes. Because marijuana is in the same category as heroin, scientists must navigate a maze of federal approvals to study it, stifling the very research needed to set evidence-based policy.

But reclassification should not be mistaken for a stamp of approval to legalize recreational marijuana federally. The stakes are different now. The industry is already racing ahead of regulators, pushing products of unprecedented strength, marketing aggressively to young people and — as Big Tobacco once did — downplaying risks. President Trump, however, has the bully pulpit and should take a page from the federal government’s playbook on tobacco control. Keep strict federal prohibitions on recreational marijuana sales, especially for high-potency products. Invest in public education campaigns that tell the truth about health risks, particularly for teens and young adults. Fund treatment programs for those already struggling with dependency or psychiatric complications. And give the Food and Drug Administration the resources to regulate potency, labeling and marketing where states have failed.

None of this will satisfy the two loudest voices in the marijuana debate. Legalization activists will decry it as prohibitionist overreach. Hardliners will resist any move that even hints at loosening the Schedule I label. But good drug policy doesn’t live at either extreme.

When Nixon rejected his own commission’s recommendations in 1972, he wasn’t thinking about science, public health or the long-term consequences of setting marijuana policy by political whim. We have the benefit — and the burden — of hindsight. Trump can correct the historical wrong of marijuana’s Schedule I classification while confronting the uncomfortable fact that today’s cannabis is not the same drug the Shafer Commission studied.

That means resisting the urge to treat marijuana as just another lifestyle product and instead handling it like what it has become: a powerful psychoactive substance whose risks are still not fully understood. Reclassification is overdue. Federal legalization is not.

Gerald Posner is the author of 13 books, most recently “PHARMA: Greed, Lies and the Poisoning of America.”