The HHS is recommending cannabis to be moved from Schedule 1 to Schedule III. This will remove the 280E tax burden on the US marijuana companies and allow for up-listing to the NYSE and NASDAQ.
Important to note that it’s not a surefire thing that it’ll be rescheduled to III. This is just the HHS recommendation to the DEA which is binding only so far as scientific evidence for scheduling. There’s still the unknown of politics that could drive the DEA to schedule it differently, such as II or even keep it in I. That said, this is a huge deal and in my opinion schedule III is more likely than not.
The process now is the DEA performs an eight step review to determine final scheduling. The eight factors considered are:
- The drug’s actual or relative potential for abuse.
- Scientific evidence of the drug’s pharmacological effect, if known.
- The state of current scientific knowledge regarding the drug or other substance.
- Its history and current pattern of abuse.
- The scope, duration and significance of abuse.
- What, if any, risk there is to the public health.
- Its psychic or physiological dependence liability.
- Whether the substance is an immediate precursor of a substance already controlled.
I think steps 1. and 6. are where the political question comes into play.
h/t SunscreenSong