Sponsors (71)
Introduced August 29, 2025 by Jerrold Lewis Nadler · Last progress August 29, 2025
The bill trades broad criminal-justice relief, expanded economic opportunity, and clearer federal support for cannabis-affected communities against sizable implementation costs, transitional regulatory uncertainty, workplace and public-safety challenges, and new administrative and fiscal risks for taxpayers and agencies.
Millions of people with prior non-violent federal (and many state-level) cannabis convictions — especially low-income individuals and racial/ethnic minorities — can get convictions vacated, records sealed/treated as if they never occurred, and be resentenced where applicable, reducing incarceration and improving employment and housing prospects.
Small businesses, entrepreneurs, veterans, and socially/economically disadvantaged applicants gain expanded access to SBA loans, guarantees, counseling, fee waivers, and grant programs, opening capital and growth opportunities for cannabis and cannabis-adjacent enterprises.
Federal removal or redefinition of many cannabis crimes and related federal barriers (descheduling/reclassification) enables larger legal cannabis markets and removes many federal criminal penalties, potentially expanding jobs, tax revenue, and lawful economic activity at state and local levels.
Taxpayers and government budgets face substantial additional costs and administrative burdens — from increased court workloads, appointed counsel, rulemaking, studies, program grants, tax-administration changes, and IT/training updates at federal and state levels.
Descheduling and rapid statutory changes create transitional regulatory gaps and legal uncertainty (product safety, labeling, interactions with state law, and agency authority) until HHS/FDA and other agencies issue detailed rules, producing consumer uncertainty and uneven enforcement.
Workplace and public-safety concerns: limits on suspicionless testing, changes to security-clearance standards, and imperfect impaired-driving tools could create safety risks or complicate employer compliance in safety-sensitive sectors (transportation, public safety, federal contractors).
Based on analysis of 18 sections of legislative text.
De-schedules cannabis federally, mandates expungement of many federal cannabis records, creates a cannabis tax/trust fund for reinvestment and SBA programs, protects immigration/benefits, and updates federal law language to 'cannabis.'
Immediately removes cannabis from the federal list of Schedule I controlled substances, orders federal courts to expunge or seal qualifying federal cannabis convictions and related records from May 1, 1971 through enactment, and replaces federal references to “marijuana/marihuana” with the term “cannabis.” It creates a federal cannabis tax and an Opportunity Trust Fund to finance reinvestment and small-business programs, establishes a Cannabis Justice Office and SBA programs to support equitable market entry, directs multiple federal studies on impacts of legalization, protects immigration status and federal benefits from cannabis-related events, and requires agencies to update rules and guidance to implement the law.