Cannabis, power, and staging: the order behind reclassification

The recent reclassification of cannabis to Schedule III in the United States cannot be read as a simple technical adjustment in drug policy. Nor as a proper liberalization. To understand its real scope, one must look less at the immediate outcome and more at the sequence, the context, and how decisions were made. In politics, the order of movements matters, and it is almost never accidental.

The first gesture: silent restriction by the Farm Bill

The first gesture was silent. The modifications introduced in the 2018 Farm Bill, the law that had paved the way for a broad hemp and derivatives industry, did not come with a major public debate or a health or moral narrative. They entered last minute, amidst urgent budget amendments, under the pressure of a government shutdown. A technical, almost bureaucratic move, which, however, pointed to something quite clear: closing the cannabis model as a commodity, this diffuse territory where intoxicating cannabinoids, accelerated innovation, and a difficult-to-bank and control economy thrived.

The second act: medical staging at the center of power

It was then that the second act came, now with lights on. The reclassification of cannabis was signed by Trump himself in the Oval Office, surrounded by doctors in white coats. The scene was not innocent. There were no activists, no growers, no patients speaking of rights. There was science, authority, and the State. The message was clear: cannabis ceases to be a tolerated anomaly and formally becomes part of the legitimate medical field. Not as culture, not as a social practice, but as a regulated, dosed, and supervised substance.

From restriction to ordering: the logic of medicalization

The combination of these two movements reveals a coherent logic. First, the overflow of the industrial model inherited from the Farm Bill is restricted from below, almost noiselessly. Then, from above, cannabis is integrated into the classic architecture of the FDA, DEA, and the healthcare system. The result is not liberation, but medicalization. And this medicalization produces a central effect: financial normalization. By recognizing an accepted medical use, cannabis becomes more readable for banks, insurers, and institutional capital. Risk decreases, compliance improves, and money (that silent yet decisive actor) begins to circulate more smoothly.

The costs of the new arrangement

This shift has costs. Non-pharmacological use occupies an increasingly narrow space; state recreational markets continue to exist, but without federal protection; the entire plant and its cultural uses are left out of the dominant vocabulary. Cannabis becomes governable, but also more homogeneous. More organized, yet less plural.

The noise of easy certainties

In this context, I have read in recent days an avalanche of opinions on these changes, many of them formulated with adolescent assertiveness, those that find their natural habitat on LinkedIn: definitive phrases, closed conclusions, and a confidence that usually accompanies those who have not yet had time to discover all they ignore. In these subjects, certainty tends to be inversely proportional to experience. As the saying goes, the devil knows more from being old than from being a devil; knows more from what he has seen pass than from what he believes he knows. Therefore, it is advisable to be wary of these instant readings, designed more to garner approval and likes than to understand the real complexity of a political process that, like almost all, plays out simultaneously in the symbolic, in the fine print; and in what has not yet happened.

The decisive factor: political time

Moreover, none of this is definitively closed. The decisive factor is political time. The restrictions on the Farm Bill only come into effect at the end of 2026. Until then, a transition period opens up in which the industry adapts, banks come into play, and the new medical-financial paradigm begins to consolidate. In this interval, the political climate weighs as much as legal texts. Polls for the 2026 legislative elections paint an open scenario: a slight Democratic advantage in some surveys, technical ties in others, and a historical constant that is hard to ignore: midterm elections tend to penalize the president's party, especially in highly polarized contexts.

Congress as a strategic variable

This fact is not minor. Because if Congress and the Senate change their profile, there will still be time to neutralize or modify the restrictions introduced in the Farm Bill before they come into effect, without the need to dismantle the reclassification or directly confront the new medical framework already established. American politics is full of norms that never ended up having simple effects simply because the balance of power changed in time.

Choreography, not contradiction

In politics, time is never neutral, and coincidences are usually just a discreet form of strategy. Trump does not seem to see cannabis as a moral problem, even though he knows that part of his base sees it that way, but mainly as a matter of order and business. The restrictions introduced almost in secret may have served to calm conservative sensitivities; the medical staging, to send an unequivocal signal to the financial system. There is no contradiction: there is choreography. The budget that will be voted on at the end of 2026 may be in the hands of a Congress more receptive to cannabis than the current one. If this happens, today's hardening may prove, retrospectively, to be what it may have always been: a transitional staging to open businesses, whatever their final form, under a more bankable, more ordered framework perfectly compatible with the logic of contemporary economic power.

*The opinion expressed in this article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Sechat.