The acting AG won't say whether adult-use rescheduling is coming

Pressed in Senate questioning on July 22, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche declined to commit to rescheduling marijuana beyond the medical carve-out already in force. He offered no reason and no timeline. The administration's April 2026 order moved FDA-approved and state-licensed medical cannabis products to Schedule III and left the adult-use question to the DEA's administrative process — the same process whose hearing record just closed, with post-hearing briefs due August 17 and no date set for a ruling after that.

Sen. John Fetterman used the moment to renew his push for statutory legalization. "It is time for Congress to stop dicking around and make weed legal," he said, adding that he has "always been very pro-weed." It is a quotable line, and it is also a concession: the senator loudest about legalizing is arguing that the executive-branch route isn't going to finish the job.

The financial stake here is narrow and enormous. Medical-only operators got out from under IRC 280E in April — they can deduct ordinary business expenses again. Everyone selling adult-use cannot. That single distinction is worth hundreds of millions of dollars across the industry, and Blanche's non-answer means nobody should be modeling adult-use 280E relief with a date attached to it.

The rest of the week's policy movement ran on its own track regardless. Nebraska's Medical Cannabis Commission approved new business licensing rules, and the California Highway Patrol pushed out $41 million in impaired-driving prevention grants funded by marijuana tax revenue — a reminder that the money keeps getting collected and spent no matter which schedule the plant sits on.