On the very first day of landmark federal hearings on marijuana rescheduling, a bombshell allegation dropped. A prominent anti-cannabis advocate told a DEA judge that the Trump administration reclassified cannabis not because of science, but because of millions of dollars in political donations from the cannabis industry. That charge set the tone for what promises to be a high-stakes showdown in Washington.
The Allegation That Shook Day One of the DEA Hearing
Kevin Sabet, CEO and president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, or SAM, fired the opening salvo on Monday during the first day of Drug Enforcement Administration hearings in Arlington, Virginia. He is one of the “interested parties” officially selected to participate in the proceeding.
During what appeared to be a scheduled lunch break, Sabet posted a video to X making a blunt accusation. The U.S. government is now defending its own rescheduling proposal, he argued, “because of a political reason.”
Sabet singled out Trulieve Cannabis Corp. CEO Kim Rivers by name, pointing to her donations to Trump inaugural committees and MAGA-affiliated PACs as the driving force behind one of the most significant federal drug policy shifts in 50 years.
“You now have the government in the super-awkward position of arguing the opposite of what it’s been arguing for the past 50 years,” Sabet said in the video. Experts following the hearing closely noted, however, that the formal DEA proceedings are focused on matters of medicine and policy, not political motivation, meaning Sabet’s allegation may carry little legal weight inside the courtroom itself.
The Money Trail Behind Trump’s Executive Order
The donations Sabet referenced are public record, not disputed.
Federal Election Commission filings show Trulieve contributed $750,000 to Trump’s inauguration committee in two separate payments in December 2024. Trulieve and Cresco Labs both channeled money into a political action committee called American Rights and Reform, which then donated $2 million to Trump’s MAGA Inc. in 2025.
Rivers was not just a donor. Forbes dubbed her “the Trump whisperer” in an April 2026 profile, noting she was present in the Oval Office on December 18, 2025, when Trump signed the executive order directing the Justice Department to complete the rescheduling process. Cresco Labs CEO Charlie Bachtell also attended Trump’s January 2025 inauguration alongside Rivers.
CNBC reporting revealed that Trump’s reclassification push followed a coordinated, yearlong effort by cannabis executives, billionaire allies, and political operatives combining donations, lobbying, and targeted polling.
Trump’s longtime pollster Tony Fabrizio reportedly showed that rescheduling had overwhelming public support, especially among voters aged 18 to 34. The White House, for its part, has said the president made a campaign promise to expand medical research into marijuana and is simply delivering on it.
Inside the DEA Hearing Room: Who Is Testifying and Why
The hearings, set to run from June 29 through July 15, are structured in a way that has already drawn criticism from reform supporters.
Because the DEA itself originated the rescheduling proposal, the agency serves as the rule’s proponent. That means the “interested parties” selected to participate in the hearing are, without exception, opponents of cannabis rescheduling. Every reform supporter who applied to testify was rejected, including the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
The Trump administration’s witnesses called to support rescheduling include:
- Dominic Chiapperino, director of the Controlled Substance Staff at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. He was responsible for the two-factor test the Department of Health and Human Services used in August 2023 to determine whether cannabis has an accepted medical use in the United States.
- Dr. Corey Burchman, a professor at Dartmouth College’s Geisel School of Medicine, expected to testify that medical cannabis is an effective pain treatment. Testimony from both was expected Monday, with cross-examination by opponents scheduled for Tuesday.
The opposition’s witnesses include:
- Bertha Madras, professor of psychobiology at Harvard Medical School and a former White House drug policy official, who testified in favor of keeping cannabis Schedule I as far back as 2014.
- Dr. Deepak Cyril D’Souza, a Yale University professor who oversees the Yale Center for the Science of Cannabis and Cannabinoids and edited the book “Marijuana and Madness.”
- Sheriff William Honsal of Humboldt County, California. He and D’Souza will testify on behalf of Nebraska, Indiana, and Idaho.
- Jo McGuire, executive director of the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association, who has lobbied for employers’ rights to deny jobs to cannabis users.
What Is Actually at Stake: Tax Relief and Public Health
The political noise should not obscure what this hearing could mean for real people.
In April 2026, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche already moved state-licensed medical marijuana and FDA-approved cannabis products to Schedule III. That immediate shift began stripping away the punishing IRS Section 280E tax burden for qualifying medical cannabis businesses.
Under Schedule I, cannabis operators were taxed as if they were illicit drug traffickers. The result was brutal.
| What Changed With Schedule III | Impact | |——————————-|——–| | Section 280E tax burden removed for medical operators | Effective tax rates drop from 70-90% to normal business rates | | Standard deductions now allowed (payroll, rent, marketing) | Estimated $2+ billion industry-wide cash flow increase | | FDA-approved cannabis products reclassified immediately | Reduced barriers for pharmaceutical research | | Recreational cannabis still remains Schedule I | Adult-use operators receive no tax relief yet |
If the DEA hearing concludes in favor of broader rescheduling, all marijuana including recreational use could be freed from those same crushing tax rules, a development the cannabis industry values in the high single-digit billions of dollars per year.
The DEA originally received more than 42,000 public comments when this rescheduling proposal was published in 2024, one of the largest public responses to any drug policy rulemaking in history. That scale of interest reflects how deeply this issue touches ordinary Americans, from patients managing chronic pain to small business owners suffocating under tax rules designed for drug cartels.
Opponents, led by Sabet, counter that Schedule III reclassification would open the door to “Big Tobacco”-style commercialization of a substance they say causes real public health harm, particularly for young people. SAM has called the rescheduling move “the greatest drug policy mistake in a generation.”
Lawsuits, Congress, and the Battles Beyond the Hearing Room
Sabet’s SAM is not fighting this battle only in the DEA hearing room.
SAM and the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association filed a federal lawsuit in May 2026 asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to strike down the existing cannabis rescheduling order. SAM retained former Attorney General Bill Barr’s law firm to lead the legal challenge, a significant escalation in firepower.
A House committee also voted to block federal officials from taking further steps to carry out cannabis rescheduling, while some Republican lawmakers introduced legislation that would maintain 280E tax restrictions even if Schedule III rescheduling is finalized.
Meanwhile, reform advocates face their own frustrations with the process. The National Cannabis Industry Association’s board chair publicly slammed the DEA’s decision to exclude pro-reform voices, stating that the hearing structure leaves the DEA alone to defend the rule that the Trump administration itself championed. With lawsuits consolidating in federal appeals court and the hearing still three weeks from finishing, the outcome is far from settled.
What started as a federal drug policy hearing has become a mirror for something much bigger: a clash between money and medicine, between political access and public health, between an industry fighting for survival and advocates who believe the risks are being ignored. The patients, workers, and families watching these hearings from across the country deserve answers that go beyond the donation records and the politics. Whether those answers come out of an Arlington, Virginia courtroom over the next three weeks remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: the stakes have never been higher, and neither has the scrutiny. Share your thoughts in the comments below, and join the conversation happening right now on social media with #CannabisRescheduling.