DEA Hearing Roster Will Define the Cannabis Rescheduling Narrative

WASHINGTON – Before a single witness testifies at the Drug Enforcement Administration’s June 29 marijuana rescheduling hearing, the most consequential decision may already be made: who gets into the room.

Finalizing the list of approved participants is not a mere procedural detail. It is the first real signal of what kind of record the government wants to build, whose arguments it wants to hear, and how seriously it intends to grapple with the business reality of a market that is split between medical and adult use, multistate and independent operators.

The 2026 DEA rescheduling hearing: timeline and mechanics

Under the Justice Department’s April 2026 notice, the hearing will begin June 29 at the DEA Hearing Facility in Arlington, Virginia, and conclude no later than July 15. Electronic notices of intent to participate were due by May 24; paper notices by May 20. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has said he plans to finalize the list by June 22. That means the industry is now in the narrow window where the filing phase is over, but the official roster remains unknown.

That gap matters, because the roster is not just about optics. In a DEA rulemaking hearing, participant selection shapes the factual record, the witness mix, and the arguments that become part of the administrative file. For cannabis businesses, that affects more than headline politics. It can influence how the government weighs tax consequences, compliance burdens, market structure, medical versus adult-use distinctions, and the practical effect of moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III.

Key participants and petitions: Who shapes the rescheduling record?

Even before DEA publishes the list, the fight for representation is already visible.

NORML is seeking participant status, arguing the hearing record would be incomplete without the perspective of adult-use consumers. The organization also believes reclassifying cannabis to Schedule III would be, at most, an interim correction rather than a final answer. The move indicates at least one reform-side filer is not content to let the hearing be framed solely as a medical or financial issue. NORML wants the record to acknowledge the adult-use market that already exists under state law and the consumers who live in that system.

“Marijuana cannot lawfully remain in Schedule I,” said attorney Joseph A. Bondy, chair of NORML’s board of directors and counsel to the organization. But “[a]dult cannabis consumers do not become patients because federal law lacks a better category for them. They are not abusing medicine. They are participating in state-regulated adult-use systems enacted by voters and legislatures.” 

On the other side, Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) also filed a notice of intent to participate, but the notoriously anti-cannabis group intends to oppose any rescheduling. SAM’s public statement framed rescheduling as an unjustified benefit for what it called “Big Marijuana.” The organization’s push to ensure its voice is part of the debate indicates the opposition is organized, message-disciplined, and prepared to hang its arguments on the perils of underage access.

“This fight is not over, and we will not sit on the sidelines while the federal government hands Big Marijuana its biggest political win in history,” said Chief Executive Officer Kevin A. Sabet. “Rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III has no scientific basis and would hand the industry billions of dollars in rewards for targeting children.” 

A third publicly visible filing came from Jason Karimi, a longtime cannabis-policy advocate and co-founder of the WeedPress blog. Karimi submitted a notice of intention to participate on his own behalf. He is not a trade association or a major operator, but his filing underscores a broader point: The field is not just government versus industry. Individuals, advocacy organizations, and ideologues all want a role in shaping the record.

“My interest in this proceeding is direct and substantial: I am a sincere practitioner whose religious exercise of cannabis use is substantially burdened by the current federal classification,” Karimi’s petition states. “My participation would materially assist the administrative law judge and the record by providing focused evidence and testimony on the practical interaction between federal scheduling classifications and state [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] implementation frameworks.”

Others who have publicly revealed their intention to participate include:

• The American Trade Association for Cannabis and Hemp.
• MMJ International Holdings, an anti-rescheduling biopharma company.
• Doctors for Drug Policy Reform, an organization of medical professionals and scientists.

Roster selection: how the DEA chooses factions and defines the narrative

The publicly available filings make the emerging pre-roster field more complicated than a simple pro-versus-anti count. The real fight is over which pro-reform voices get heard and which do not.

A hearing roster dominated by national advocacy groups and general policy organizations would tell one story. A roster that also includes actual operators, especially businesses that can describe the day-to-day effects of Internal Revenue Code Section 280E, registration, inventory control, capital constraints, and state-by-state compliance, would tell a much more useful one. And there is a further split inside the operator class itself. Large multistate operators can speak to scale, public-market expectations, and sophisticated compliance systems. Smaller operators can speak more credibly about margin pressure, banking scarcity, and how partial federal reform can still leave independent businesses structurally boxed in.

That is why the big question is not only who filed but also whether DEA is willing to hear from a cross-section of the real market. The roster for the aborted 2025 rescheduling hearing may provide a clue: The 25 coveted seats were allotted primarily to professional associations and governmental and law-enforcement agencies. Although pro- and anti-rescheduling voices were represented evenly, only two participants were licensed operators: multistate operator Village Farms International and medical card facilitator The Doc App. Among the others were:

• National Cannabis Industry Association.
• American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.
• State of Connecticut Office of Cannabis Ombudsman.
• Massachusetts Cannabis Advisory Board.
• Smart Approaches to Marijuana.
• National Transportation Safety Board.
• State of Nebraska.
• International Association of the Chiefs of Police.
• Drug Enforcement Administration of Federal Narcotics Agents.
• Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America.
• Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
• National Sheriffs’ Association.
• National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association.

The 2025 lineup illustrates two things. First, it shows the last serious version of a DEA rescheduling hearing assembled a broad and adversarial field. Second, it gives operators a baseline for comparison. When the 2026 roster arrives, the industry will be able to ask whether the same camps returned, whether the field got narrower or broader, and whether actual operators receive meaningful representation.

The practical takeaway: why the roster predicts the final rescheduling rule

The process question is arguably bigger this time because the January 2025 hearing never actually reached the merits. Administrative Law Judge John J. Mulrooney’s cancellation order paused the proceeding after disputes over DEA’s conduct, participant status, and the agency’s handling of evidence. In other words, the last hearing track did not fail because the cannabis policy debate was settled. It failed because the process broke down. That history makes the 2026 roster a credibility issue, not just a scheduling issue.

The hearing roster will tell the market what kind of evidence DEA wants in the record before it moves toward any broader final rule. If DEA favors medical and institutional voices, the record may focus on public health, pharmacology, and formal regulatory structure. If it includes operators, adult-use advocates, and smaller businesses, the record is more likely to reflect the practical consequences of partial federal reform in an already functioning commercial market.

The practical takeaway is simple: Do not treat the roster as a footnote when it drops. Treat it as an early read on how broad, or how narrow, the federal government intends this rescheduling conversation to be.

Because by the time testimony starts on June 29, the first important fight may already be over: the fight over who gets to define cannabis for the record.