Federal Cannabis Policy Under a Corrupt Administration
November 5, 2026
Cannabis Rescheduling Takes a Political Turn: Why Minnesota Operators Are Shut Out
On Friday, Oct. 30, the DEA announced that it had given federal registration and protections to more than 900 medical cannabis businesses across the U.S., all in medical-only states including FL and TX, and is refusing to extend such approvals to cannabis operators in states that allow both medical and adult-use, including Minnesota.
Jen's take: The DEA is only begrudgingly regulating cannabis, and taking a very narrow view. This is not a huge surprise to me, but it's disappointing. Remember that the Trump Administration split the rescheduling question this spring and moved medical cannabis (only) to Schedule III by administrative order. (The main beneficiary? The MSOs that control the FL and TX medical markets, which have contributed huge amounts of money to Trump.) All businesses in the 24 states with both medical and adult-use sales are currently shut out from the benefits of DEA registration.
What's at stake? Who actually gets the benefits of rescheduling. Remember that cannabis operators have been paying burdensome, extra taxes under Section 280E. One of the main reasons the cannabis industry wants to move to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act is to stop paying those crazy tax rates.
The DEA's view is so narrow that they are "testing whether a state can be disqualified as a whole, rather than judging an individual applicant,” a Vicente lawyer, Neil Willner, told the Minnesota Star Tribune on Friday. Willner called that curious and troubling.
I agree, and I'll go further - it's consistent with the Trump Administration's shameless cronyism, which creates policies designed to only help big donors and red states. Remember that most states that have legalized for medical and adult-use are blue states. With this convoluted argument, the DEA has figured out how to exclude blue states from the benefits of rescheduling.
What should small adult-use operators in Minnesota do now? Nothing on this issue. We have to wait for the long administrative process on rescheduling to play out.
Kudos to Matt DeLong and the Star Tribune for breaking this story and publishing the denial letter that the DEA sent to Minnesota retailer In Dispensary!
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