Congress Dropped a Marijuana Freeze and Medical Programs Moved

The House ban on marijuana rescheduling never made it into the fiscal 2026 spending law. President Trump signed the Commerce, Justice, Science package on January 23, 2026, after negotiators struck the freeze and kept the medical marijuana rider that has sat in Justice Department budgets since FY2015.

Three months later, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche put state-licensed medical marijuana, and FDA-approved marijuana drugs, in Schedule III. Adult-use cannabis stayed in Schedule I. The House is now trying the freeze again.

The House Freeze Never Made It Into Law

In July 2025, the House and Senate wrote different versions of the same Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies bill. Both kept the Rohrabacher-Farr rider, which bars the Justice Department from using appropriated funds to stop listed states from carrying out their own medical marijuana laws. Only the House tried to lock the Drug Enforcement Administration out of rescheduling.

The House Appropriations Committee approved that freeze on September 10, 2025, on a 34-28 vote. Section 607 said none of the funds in the act could be used to reschedule marijuana or take it off the Controlled Substances Act schedules. Cannabis advocates had already watched an earlier House draft omit the medical rider, then seen the rider restored as the bill moved.

Senate appropriators never added a matching funds ban. On January 5, 2026, House and Senate negotiators released a conferenced minibus and dropped the freeze. House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole said the package contained no poison pills and kept legacy riders. The medical marijuana shield stayed. The rescheduling padlock did not.

THE PATH OF THE FY2026 CJS BILL

1. July 15, 2025: House panel gives the CJS bill its first committee nod, with the medical rider back in the text.
2. September 10, 2025: Full House Appropriations Committee approves the bill 34-28, including the Section 607 rescheduling freeze.
3. January 5, 2026: Conferees release a three-bill package and strip the freeze, while keeping the medical rider.
4. January 15, 2026: The CJS measure passed the Senate 82-15 after the House cleared it 397-28.
5. January 23, 2026: President Trump signed the three-bill package into law as H.R. 6938, P.L. 119-74.

The Senate committee said the act provides $78 billion in discretionary funds, including $2.6 billion for the DEA. The enacted medical rider is Section 531. It still does not cover adult-use stores. It also still left Nebraska off the list of protected states, even after voters there approved a medical program in 2024.

What Licensed Medical Marijuana Gained in April

On April 23, 2026, the Justice Department issued a final order moving some medical marijuana to Schedule III, covering FDA-approved marijuana drugs and marijuana that is subject to a state medical marijuana license. Adult-use cannabis, unlicensed bulk marijuana, and synthetic THC stayed in Schedule I. The order followed Trump’s December 18, 2025, executive order on medical marijuana and cannabidiol research, and it took effect without finishing the old 2024 hearing.

Marijuana has sat in Schedule I since Congress wrote the Controlled Substances Act in 1970. Schedule I is the federal box for drugs with no accepted medical use. Schedule III is the box for drugs that have medical use and a lower, though still real, abuse risk. The Congressional Research Service notes that Section 280E of the tax code bars certain deductions for trades that traffic in Schedule I or II substances, so licensed medical products now sit outside that I and II tax bar while adult-use product does not.

Blanche also pulled the stalled 2024 hearing. On April 22, 2026, he withdrew Hearing No. 24-44, the leftover proceeding from the May 21, 2024, proposal to move marijuana as a whole. A new notice of hearing went in the Federal Register on April 28, 2026. The DEA stood up a Medical Marijuana Dispensary Registration Portal for state medical licensees who want a federal registration.

WHAT SCHEDULE III NOW COVERS

• State medical licensees: Marijuana made, sold, or dispensed under a qualifying state medical marijuana license is in Schedule III.
• FDA-approved drugs: Plant-derived delta-9 THC products that FDA has approved as drugs are in Schedule III, with older drugs such as Marinol and Syndros left on their prior schedules.
• Adult-use cannabis: Recreational marijuana remains Schedule I and is still a federal crime to grow, sell, or possess outside approved research.
• Unlicensed bulk and synthetics: Unlicensed bulk marijuana stays in Schedule I, and the order does not move synthetically derived THC or change hemp’s status.

The rider in Section 531 still matters. The April order is already in court, and a spending bar is a separate shield if a judge knocks the order down. Courts have read the rider as a limit on prosecution of state-legal medical activity, not as a repeal of the underlying crime, and not as cover for adult-use shops.

Cole’s Raids and the Chinese Grow File

The Senate’s July 2025 draft had also told the FBI, the DEA, and U.S. attorneys to report within 90 days on illicit grows tied to foreign nationals, including any links to Chinese crime groups or the Chinese government. That reporting mandate does not show up as a clear, standalone requirement in the law that Trump signed. The enforcement file did not wait on a report.

On May 13, 2026, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins pressed FBI Director Kash Patel and DEA Administrator Terrance Cole on illegal grow houses in Maine. Collins cited a 2023 Department of Homeland Security memo that put as many as 270 Chinese-backed illegal marijuana operations in the state, with illicit revenue estimated up to $4.3 billion. She said the houses are often wrecked, which tightens an already thin housing stock.

COLE’S MAINE TALLY

• Search warrants: Terrance Cole said the DEA had executed 44 warrants on Chinese underground marijuana houses.
• Plant seizures: Those raids took about 32,000 marijuana plants and more than 500 pounds of marijuana.
• Open map: He said investigators had identified up to 250 potential locations where the activity is occurring.
• Local burden: Collins said Maine sheriffs have carried much of the work, and that more than 200 suspected houses remained in play when she first raised the 2023 memo with federal officials.

Patel told her the bureau had stood up Homeland Security Task Forces aimed at grow houses tied to Chinese nationals, and that tracing the money back to the mainland is hard. Terrance Cole said the work now includes blockchain traces and local partners. The political story treats these grows as a China problem. The operational story is still house-by-house, warrant-by-warrant, in towns that already have legal medical programs.

One other side effect of these illegal grow operations is that they usually destroy the houses in which they’re located, which exacerbates the housing shortage in my state.

Susan Collins, Chair, Senate Appropriations Committee, FY2027 budget hearing

Licensed medical operators now sit in a different federal box than the people in those houses. That is the split the 2025 bills helped produce, even if no one wrote it that way on the first draft.

House Appropriations Tries the Freeze Again

The House did not retire the freeze when conference killed it. On May 13, 2026, the House Appropriations Committee approved the fiscal 2027 CJS bill 32-28. Section 591 uses the same funds ban the House tried in Section 607 a year earlier: no Justice Department money to reschedule marijuana or take it off the schedules.

If that language ever becomes law, it would land on a different map than the 2025 fight. Licensed medical marijuana is already in Schedule III by order. The live target is the leftover rulemaking on the rest of the plant, including adult-use. The committee bill also keeps an updated medical rider and, for the first time in this cycle, puts Nebraska on the protected list.

THREE ROUNDS OF CJS MARIJUANA LANGUAGE

Smart Approaches to Marijuana cheered the FY2027 freeze and separate report language telling Justice to look at financial services for marijuana businesses tied to the Chinese Communist Party. That is the House bargain in plain form: keep the medical rider, try to stop the rest of rescheduling, and treat Chinese-linked cannabis money as a crime problem. The Senate has not signed onto that freeze. It did not sign on last year either.

Nebraska Sat Out the Rider for a Year

Nebraska is the clearest leftover from the July 2025 drafts. Voters approved medical marijuana in 2024. State officials fought the program, and the Senate’s 2025 rider list skipped the state. The enacted FY2026 rider did the same. For a full budget year, Nebraska’s medical law sat outside the spending shield that covered the rest of the listed states.

The House’s FY2027 rider draft puts Nebraska on the list. The same state also joined Idaho, Indiana, and Louisiana as a designated opponent in the DEA’s leftover rescheduling hearing. Nebraska wants the medical program its voters passed. Its lawyers still showed up to argue against moving the rest of marijuana to Schedule III.

That posture fits the wider split. Medical programs are the piece of cannabis policy both parties will still write into a spending bill. Adult-use is the piece House Republicans will try to freeze, and the piece several red-state governments will fight in a DEA courtroom.

Only Opponents Got a Seat at the Hearing

The DEA’s new hearing ran from June 29 through July 15, 2026, at headquarters at 700 Army Navy Drive in Arlington, Virginia, with a recess on July 3. Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek C. Julius ran the room. The government went first as the proponent of the 2024 proposal to move remaining marijuana to Schedule III.

Administrator Terrance Cole selected seven outside parties. All seven oppose the move: the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Smart Approaches to Marijuana, the states of Nebraska, Idaho, Indiana, and Louisiana, DUID Victim Voices, Dr. Kenneth Finn, and pharmacist Phillip A. Drum. Reform groups that support Schedule III were told they were not “adversely affected or aggrieved” under DEA rules, so they did not get party status.

The hearing was open to the public in a limited way and was not livestreamed. Julius said it would not be televised or broadcast. A transcript is supposed to go up on DEA.gov. SAM put DEA pharmacologist Dr. Luli R. Akinfiresoye on the stand after the agency took her off its own witness list. Opponents are using her to argue cannabis still fails the old five-part “accepted medical use” test. The government says that test is the wrong exam, and that HHS’s two-part inquiry is the one the statute requires.

No final rule has followed the July 15 close. Julius still owes findings and a recommended decision. Terrance Cole still owes an administrator’s ruling after that. SAM, joined by the attorneys general of Nebraska, Louisiana, and Indiana, is already challenging the April medical order in the D.C. Circuit. The leftover plant is still Schedule I while that machinery turns.

Why State Regulators Still Lack DEA Guidance

The April order is five months old, and state regulators still do not have a federal playbook. On September 21, 2026, California Department of Cannabis Control Director Clint Kellum said the DEA has shown no real interest in helping states prepare, even while it asks California for medical-market data.

We have received no formal updates from DEA headquarters on implementation guidance of the order.

Clint Kellum, Director, California Department of Cannabis Control

Gillian Schauer of the Cannabis Regulators Association has made the same point: putting the order into practice will lean on state systems, and DEA has not meaningfully engaged those officials. A Government Accountability Office review, circulating the same week, found that DEA has no policies or procedures for how staff are supposed to evaluate or schedule substances. The registration portal exists. The instructions states need do not.

Licensed medical operators were told they had entered a new federal class. They are being asked to register as if that class were real, while House Republicans try again to cut off funds for the rest of the rescheduling docket, and while Terrance Cole’s agents keep hitting unlicensed houses. The July 2025 bills did not end in a split vote. They ended in a split market, and the next CJS bill is where the House wants to freeze it in place.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of federal spending bills, DEA scheduling actions, and related enforcement. It is informational only and is not legal advice, tax advice, or medical advice, and it is not a recommendation to grow, possess, sell, or use cannabis. Readers who need to act on scheduling, DEA registration, Section 280E, or a state medical program should consult a licensed attorney and, for care decisions, a qualified clinician. Votes, bill text, schedule status, and court cases reflect the public record cited here and can change as Congress, DEA, and the courts move.