Experts explain huge changes a federal drug reclassification could bring

The state of Missouri reported more than a billion dollars in recreational marijuana sales in 2023.

That's according to data the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services released this January.

Recreational marijuana was legalized in Missouri in February of 2023.

Now, the Drug Enforcement Administration is proposing re-classifying marijuana.

It's currently a schedule-one drug, considered a dangerous drug under federal law, alongside substances like heroin.

Marijuana could be lowered to a schedule three classification.

No, this wouldn't in any way make marijuana federally legal, but it completely shakes up how the industry pays for it, how we think of weed, and what we can learn about it.

Mike Wilson, the CEO of Franklin's, moves a lot of green across Missouri as manufacturers of marijuana products.

"We're the number one blunt manufacturer in the state,” Wilson said.

But it also costs them a lot of green.

Peter Andreone, attorney at Kennyhertz Perry Law, explained the federal tax burden the industry faces because weed is schedule one.

"They are disallowed from deducting normal business expenses,” Andreone said.

For some businesses that can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Moving to schedule three would eliminate that burden. It also eliminates decades of stigma.

"I think really something that we do estimate is just how much permission it gives everybody that was just sitting on the fence before," Wilson said. "You know there's a whole generation of people that just won't consume it until it's federally legal, and in their mind, this was the first step towards that."

It wouldn't just change what we think of it, it'd change what we know.

"One of the big things that it does is it opens up research opportunities,” Andreone said.

It's very difficult for researchers to experiment with class schedule drugs.

Andreone says it's much easier to get approval to work with schedule three drugs.

"For things like the gut or the brain or emotions, you know all the things that users will report, now have the opportunity that we can actually go put science to them,” Wilson said.

You might want to slow your roll though; there's still months before anything might be changed, but even the possibility is a huge deal.

"I don't want to downplay it at the same time because it is probably the largest shift in federal drug policy in the last 50 years,” Andreone said.

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