The DEA hearing is underway — and it's taking July 4th off

The DEA's hearing on moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III opened Monday, June 29, at 9 a.m. at the agency's hearing facility in Arlington, Virginia, with FDA official Dominic Chiapperino as the government's first witness. It's scheduled to run until July 15 — with a built-in pause: the hearing recesses July 3 and reconvenes July 6, giving everyone involved a break to mark 250 years of American independence before getting back to arguing about drug scheduling.

The witness list is doing a lot of the talking before anyone testifies. DEA selected seven participants for the hearing on June 18, and by most accounts every one of them opposes rescheduling — a structural choice that has drawn open criticism from NORML and NCIA, who note the format effectively stacks the record against reform from the start. Ironically, some rescheduling advocates argue that's actually a sign the reform is on track, since an administration looking to derail it could simply slow-walk the process instead of running it at all.

Meanwhile, two medical cannabis companies filed motions this week to intervene directly in a separate lawsuit challenging the rescheduling order itself, arguing they'd suffer "direct economic, regulatory and operational harm" if the litigation succeeds in blocking the reform before the hearing even finishes. That's a tell: operators are worried enough about the record getting undone in court that they're spending legal fees to protect a rule that technically already took effect for medical product back in April.

None of this changes anything for adult-use operators today — recreational cannabis is still Schedule I, 280E still applies outside the medical lane, and it will stay that way until this record closes and a final rule is published. The practical move for anyone budgeting past July 15 is the same as it was last week: watch the transcript, not the press releases, and don't plan around relief landing before it's actually signed.