President Donald Trump signed an executive order to boost research into the potential therapeutic use of psilocybin, LSD and other psychedelics. In a separate move, the Department of Justice has just reclassified marijuana as a Schedule III drug. Rachel Hoopsick, a professor of health and kinesiology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an expert on substance use and mental health, spoke with News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates about the potential consequences of these changes.
The Trump Administration just changed marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug. What effect will this have?
As of April 23, 2026, the Department of Justice has placed Food and Drug Administration-approved marijuana products — and marijuana products subject to a qualifying state medical marijuana license — into Schedule III, which the Drug Enforcement Agency classifies as “drugs with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.” The DOJ will also hold a new DEA hearing this summer to consider a broader rescheduling of marijuana from Schedule I, a classification the agency reserves for drugs they deem to have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” to Schedule III. So, this is a significant federal shift, but it is narrower than full legalization or full de-scheduling.
In practical terms, reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule III drug could reduce some federal barriers to medical research and bring more legitimacy to therapeutic study, but it does not erase the larger legal or policy problems. Marijuana would still be subject to the Controlled Substances Act and related federal criminal prohibitions. So, I would describe this as an important administrative change, but not a complete reform of marijuana policy.
What have we learned in recent years about the pros and cons of reduced restrictions on access to marijuana?
We’ve learned that reducing restrictions on marijuana can lessen some of the harms of a purely punitive approach to drug policy, but that does not mean that a lightly regulated or highly commercialized market is a public health success. In recent years, we’ve seen that when access expands without strong consumer protections, the result can be higher potency products, misleading or unsubstantiated health claims, inconsistent labeling, youth-targeted marketing and accidental ingestion risks, especially with edibles and copycat products.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA both continue to warn about risks tied to high-THC products, including impaired driving, psychosis risk for some users, accidental pediatric exposures and products that consumers may not fully understand or that have not been adequately evaluated for safety.
What we’ve learned is that reducing restrictions is not enough by itself. If you pull back prohibition without building strong consumer protections and a real public health framework, you simply trade one set of harms for another: from criminalization on the front end to commercialization and weak regulation on the back end.
How do current restrictions on psychedelics affect research into their therapeutic potential?
Current restrictions do not make psychedelic research impossible, but they do make it slower, more expensive and harder to scale. Because substances like psilocybin, LSD and ibogaine are still generally treated as Schedule I drugs, researchers must clear DEA registration requirements and controlled-substance handling rules. For clinical studies, those burdens sit on top of the usual FDA and institutional review board requirements. The FDA has also acknowledged that psychedelic trials raise distinct design issues, which means the science is not only regulated more heavily but is often methodologically harder to execute well.
The practical effect of all these restrictions is that research tends to be concentrated in institutions with the money, compliance infrastructure and legal support to manage all of that. That narrows who can study these drugs, limits how quickly studies can launch and slows the accumulation of evidence about both benefits and risks.
I do think psychedelics have real therapeutic potential, and we should reduce unnecessary administrative friction, but not by weakening the safeguards that make the evidence credible in the first place.
What in your opinion needs to happen to maximize the potential benefits of these changes without adding to the drawbacks or potential harms?
First, research needs to be easier without lowering evidence standards. That means streamlining approvals, supporting multicenter trials and making sure the agencies speeding things up are not weakening the scientific bar for safety and efficacy.
Second, patient access should expand through the most protective mechanisms available. The FDA’s Expanded Access pathway is specifically designed for serious or life-threatening conditions when no satisfactory alternatives exist, whereas the FDA says its role under Right to Try, which allows some terminally ill patients access to experimental drugs, is much more limited. Right to Try at present does not require FDA review of individual requests. If the government wants to expand access to investigational psychedelics, it should strengthen protective pathways, not just faster ones.
The harms related to marijuana use include the current and past criminalization of users, which disproportionately affect people of color. New efforts should include expunging prior marijuana convictions. This would remove the collateral consequences that still affect people’s access to employment, housing, education and public benefits.
Policies should include reinvesting in the communities of color that were disproportionately targeted under prohibition. That reinvestment should mean tangible support for things like community health services, substance use treatment, youth programs, education, workforce development and neighborhood resources, alongside a stronger public health framework for product testing, labeling, packaging, potency transparency and marketing restrictions. Otherwise, reform risks benefiting the legal cannabis industry more than the people most harmed by criminalization.
Who benefits most from loosening restrictions?
Ideally, the biggest beneficiaries would be patients with serious mental health conditions or other hard-to-treat illnesses, along with researchers trying to build better evidence. In reality, the most immediate beneficiaries are often the institutions and companies already best positioned to navigate complex regulations. On the psychedelic side, that means well-capitalized firms, major research centers and providers operating near the clinical pipeline the White House is trying to accelerate. On the marijuana side, that means licensed cannabis businesses that gain legitimacy and regulatory relief before broader justice reforms catch up.
While patients may benefit in the long run, industry tends to benefit first unless reform is intentionally designed around equity, public health and consumer protections.
Editor’s note:
To contact Rachel Hoopsick, email hoopsick@illinois.edu.
