Why is Marijuana a Schedule I drug?

A surprising history in light of Trump's pending reclassification of cannabis

This was originally published in 2022. It’s particularly relevant today in light of the Trump administration’s pending removal of cannabis from Schedule 1.

Cannabis is not killing 100,000 American annually, the number of opioid overdose and poisoning victims. So why does the federal government list it along with heroin, LSD and ecstasy, as a Schedule I narcotic, the most dangerous category of the Controlled Substance Act? It ranks ahead of lethal Schedule II drugs such as fentanyl and OxyContin.

Marijuana’s inclusion on Schedule I was not the result of medical studies or clinical testing. It was instead political payback from Richard Nixon, who was miffed that a commission he had appointed to study marijuana, returned with a recommendation to decriminalize the drug. In Pharma, I tell the story of how that happened from an insider’s perspective, the view of Michael Sonnenreich, then a young Department of Justice attorney. In 1969 Sonnenreich had singlehandedly rewritten the federal gui…