Hirsh Jain: Rescheduling Is Already Picking Winners

Hirsch, I want to start with the question I think a lot of people have.

My dad asked me, didn't Trump reschedule cannabis? And that sounds simple, but the answer is not simple.

So what actually happened in April and what did not happen? And why is the phrase cannabis being rescheduled misleading?

Sure.

I mean, I'll give you the very short answer, but then we can we can jump into it.

So as I'm sure many folks on this podcast know, in April, the acting attorney general, Todd Blanch, issued an order.

And what that order did was that it rescheduled medical cannabis.

And it also set a hearing to consider the full rescheduling of cannabis.

And that hearing will take place tomorrow.

June 29th to July 15th.

So one reason why this is somewhat ambiguous is we have, again, a rescheduling of medical cannabis, but the full rescheduling of cannabis is still pending.

And so I think that's one reason for the ambiguity.

I think another reason for the ambiguity, Brian, is there continue to be legal challenges against this order.

And so those legal challenges challenge the notion that this has been finalized.

So the rescheduling, I would say, is still in process, even though we've taken some important steps forward.

Why did he split it? It's a great question.

I mean, I think you can only say that, you know, the Trump administration took a different tack than the Biden administration, right? So the Biden administration, you know, intended to reschedule cannabis in one fell swoop.

And here the Trump administration took a different tack.

I think one explanation is that, you know, Trump wanted to get this done and didn't want to be bogged down by the administrative state or different procedural guidelines.

And that's kind of consistent with the ethos of the Trump administration, which is that the federal government moves slowly and we just want to get things done.

And so I think the Trump administration thought, and we can evaluate later whether this was, you know, well grounded or not, thought that this was one of the most expeditious ways to move forward with rescheduling by arguing that.

you know, medical cannabis should be, you know, rescheduled under the 1961 UN Single Convention.

So that's a dramatically oversimplified answer.

But I guess you can merely say the Biden administration took a certain approach that was based on, you know, procedure.

And we all know that the Biden administration, perhaps in part because of that, ultimately didn't get it done.