On 23 April 2026, the US Department of Justice issued an order immediately placing cannabis "subject to a state medical marijuana license" into Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act, alongside the small number of FDA-approved products that contain marijuana. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed the order. It is real, it is in effect, and it is much narrower than a lot of the headlines about it suggest.
What actually moved. Only state-licensed medical cannabis and FDA-approved cannabis products. Recreational cannabis, sold legally in 24 US states plus Washington, D.C., remains Schedule I, the same category as heroin, under federal law. Nothing about this order changes that. If you saw a headline implying cannabis is now broadly legal at the federal level, that headline overstated the order.
The concrete effect that already kicked in. As of 22 April 2026, medical cannabis operating under a state licence is no longer subject to Section 280E of the US Internal Revenue Code, the provision that has historically barred cannabis businesses from deducting ordinary business expenses because their product was a Schedule I substance. That is a genuine, immediate tax change for licensed medical operators, not a symbolic gesture.
What is still pending, and on what date. The DEA has set an expedited administrative hearing, opening 29 June 2026, to consider the larger question: whether to reschedule all cannabis, recreational included, from Schedule I to Schedule III. This traces back to a 18 December 2025 executive order directing the Attorney General to complete rescheduling as fast as the law allows. The April order is best read as the fast, narrow piece of that process the DOJ could do immediately, while the broader question goes through a formal hearing.
Why an India-focused site is covering a US regulatory order. Two reasons. First, US federal cannabis scheduling has historically shaped how other countries, India's own 1961 to 1985 timeline included, framed their own drug law under international pressure, so shifts here are not purely domestic news. Second, it is a useful contrast: a rescheduling process moving through an executive order and a formal administrative hearing with a published date is a very different mechanism from the stakeholder-consultation model the Delhi High Court ordered for India in February, see our piece on that case. Comparing how two large democracies are handling the same underlying question is exactly the "around the world" angle we want this section to cover.