Sara Carter Bailey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), told Newsmax this week that the move to reschedule marijuana does not make the drug broadly legal. “It’s still illegal,” she said. “Executive-level Schedule III allows for doctors and research and for medicine, for medicinal purposes.”
Bailey was responding to a question about marijuana potency during an interview on the administration’s new National Drug Control Strategy. That document raises alarm about “high-potency” marijuana, warns that international cartels exploit state cannabis legalization laws, and addresses the forthcoming federal recriminalization of hemp THC products under a law signed by President Donald Trump.
Bailey also flagged illicit marijuana grows linked to the Chinese Communist Party, the Sinaloa cartel, and the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, with potency recorded as high as 90 percent in some products. She warned against adversarial nations purchasing U.S. farmland through straw men to grow illicit cannabis, calling law enforcement action against such operations a priority.
Under an order signed last month by Acting Attorney General Blanche, marijuana products covered by a state medical cannabis license moved immediately to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), along with any FDA-approved marijuana products.
The Congressional Research Service released a report last week clarifying that certified patients possessing medical cannabis from state-licensed dispensaries now have certain Schedule III protections, but the industry overall is not “immediately” in “full compliance” with federal law. “Thus, the order appears to authorize end users to possess marijuana for medical use without a CSA-compliant prescription,” the report stated, while noting that non-end-users in the state-legal cannabis industry may find that “the final order may make it possible for them to comply with the CSA, but may not bring them into full compliance with federal law.”
Before her confirmation as drug czar, Bailey had expressed support for medical cannabis and said she had no “problem” with legalization. “I don’t have any problem if it’s legalized and it’s monitored,” she said in 2024. “I may have my own issues of how I feel about that, but I do believe that cannabis for medicinal purposes and medical reasons is a fantastic way of handling—especially for people with cancer and other illnesses, you know—of handling the illness and the side effects of the medication and those illnesses. So I’m not saying we’ve gotta make it illegal.”
