As the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is moving toward reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug, the Justice Department proposal would recognize the medical uses of cannabis, but wouldn’t legalize it for recreational use.
This proposal would move marijuana from the “Schedule I” group to the less tightly regulated “Schedule III.”
This switch is considered “paradigm-shifting, and it’s very exciting,” Vince Sliwoski, a Portland, Oregon-based cannabis and psychedelics attorney who runs well-known legal blogs on those topics, told The Associated Press when the federal Health and Human Services Department recommended the change.
“I can’t emphasize enough how big of news it is,” he said.