"The only reefer madness I'm seeing is the continued federal prohibition of cannabis," Sen. Ron Wyden said this week as he, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Sen. Cory Booker reintroduced the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act (CAO). "Our legislation is the most comprehensive proposal on the books to end federal cannabis prohibition while keeping public health and safety front and center. The federal government needs to get with the times, and our bill is the way to do it."

The timing is worth noting.

First introduced five years ago, the CAO Act was reintroduced this week, just one day after a DEA administrative law judge closed the book on weeks of hearings over whether to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III. Judge Derek Julius has now set an August 17 deadline for post-hearing briefs, with no timeline for a final decision. Meanwhile, the DOJ's April rule already moved state-sanctioned medical marijuana to Schedule III on its own track, but that rule is also facing challenges in the D.C. Circuit. 

Layer on the administration's separate, still-pending effort to also move adult-use marijuana into Schedule III and the picture gets more tangled. At this moment, the federal government is simultaneously treating cannabis as a Schedule I substance with no accepted medical use, while at the same time, a Schedule III substance, which means cannabis does have an accepted medical use. 

Confused? Of course we are.

So it must be, just like Schrödinger's cat, marijuana exists in a “superposition”: all possible states simultaneously. That is less regulatory nuance and more regulatory nonsense, and a version of reefer madness all its own: two schedules, one plant, and still no clear finish line.

The cannabis industry knows Schedule III was always going to be a half-measure. It keeps the CSA's fingerprints on an industry and a plant which (scientific studies have proven) comes with lower social costs and physical risks than the unscheduled alcohol and tobacco, while keeping the industry still hampered by 280E, still boxed out of normal commerce, and still treated as suspect rather than mainstream. While full de-scheduling seems more and more like an aspirational ask, it's the only ask that ends the reefer madness for good.