As Trump Teases Marijuana Reclassification, Experts Warn of Health Threats

During a press conference Monday, President Donald Trump confirmed that his administration is considering rescheduling marijuana as a less potent drug under federal law, which could open the door for a vast economic expansion of the drug’s distribution through interstate commerce. The announcement comes despite extensive evidence of the serious medical harms that cannabis causes to the human body.

As dozens of states have decriminalized marijuana over the last two decades for both medicinal and recreational use, the cannabis industry has exploded to over $38 billion in 2024, with estimates projecting that the market will double by 2030. Trump is considering reclassifying the drug from the most dangerous Schedule I (which includes heroin and LSD) to the less potent Schedule III (which includes Tylenol with codeine, ketamine, and anabolic steroids).

Axios reported Wednesday that the marijuana industry has heavily lobbied the president and has “contributed millions of dollars to his political organizations.” Kevin Sabet, founder and CEO of SMART Approaches to Marijuana, says the industry has mounted “a very powerful PR effort” and has “spent hundreds of millions of dollars in total to influence the president from Florida onward, whether it’s inauguration, whether it’s million-dollar-plate fundraisers in New Jersey. They are going all out because they want this tax break.”

Yet studies continue to show very serious health problems arising from cannabis use. In July, a major study was released confirming previous studies that showed a twofold increase in the risk of death from cardiac arrest associated with the drug’s use, with daily use raising the heart failure risk by 34%. In addition, cannabis users have significantly increased risk of psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, suicidal thoughts, high anxiety, memory loss, lower IQ, severe vomiting, fetal development issues, bronchitis, emphysema, and ER visits.

Sabet, who joined “Washington Watch” Wednesday to discuss the Trump administration’s announcement, argued that the potential rescheduling of marijuana does not make sense from a scientific perspective.

“Although there are medical applications of the marijuana plants, those are in different schedules,” he explained. “They’re not in Schedule I. Those are already in Schedules II, III, and IV. So the effort to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I doesn’t really make a lot of sense when you look at the science. And unfortunately, there’s a sort of small wing among some of the president’s supporters that stand to make a lot of money if it is rescheduled, because they’ll be able to write off taxes, essentially write off expenses as part of their business taxes if they’re in the marijuana business.”

Sabet went on to detail how broad the health threat is of cannabis use.

“Marijuana is a very complex plant,” he observed. “It has hundreds and hundreds of components, and we only know about a handful of them in terms of what science has revealed. And already what we know is very scary and very dangerous. So the active ingredient is THC. It binds to receptors in the brain and throughout the body to cause addiction, to cause really erratic behavior that can lead to psychosis [and] schizophrenia. Cognition and learning—memory is a big issue. Obviously, lungs [are] an issue if you smoke it, if you smoke anything, for that matter, especially something with so many carcinogens as marijuana has, as well as on your heart.”

Sabet further argued that modern strains of marijuana are far more potent than the varieties available in decades prior, posing an even great health threat.

“We’ve learned about a lot of this stuff and how harmful it can be. It’s not the Woodstock weed. [The] legalization that some states have been doing has actually led to the creation of a lot of these new products. We never had 99% potent products before legalization. … They’ve added all kinds of ingredients [including] metals, and there’s bacteria and mold [as well as] pesticides. … [E]ven in legal states, the product that people are buying, you don’t really know what you’re getting.”

Sabet concluded by urging the Trump administration to back away from rescheduling marijuana.

“I really hope President Trump does the right thing,” he underscored. “Reclassification would not legalize marijuana—let’s be clear—but it would give further impression that marijuana is a harmless drug. It would give further impression, wrongly, that marijuana doesn’t cause things like uncontrollable chronic vomiting, which it does. That’s called cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. … You know, marijuana is … responsible for the majority of kids that are in treatment. I get calls daily from parents, usually mothers who are extremely distraught over their teenagers being completely addicted to marijuana, totally derailing their life. So a lot of baby boomers don’t understand that because the marijuana they used was frankly a very different drug back then.”

Originally published by The Washington Stand.

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