Sponsors (72)
Introduced August 29, 2025 by Jerrold Lewis Nadler · Last progress August 29, 2025
The bill broadly removes many federal cannabis penalties and expands economic opportunity, relief, and data-driven policymaking for impacted people and businesses, while imposing substantial administrative costs, legal uncertainty, enforcement and security trade-offs, and unresolved equity and privacy challenges.
People with past nonviolent federal cannabis convictions (especially low-income people and racial/ethnic minorities) will have records sealed/expunged and can seek sentence review, substantially improving employment, housing, and reentry prospects.
Noncitizens and low-income applicants for federal benefits will no longer be denied visas, green cards, asylum, or federal benefits solely for past or present cannabis use, reducing deportation risk and expanding access to safety-net programs.
State-authorized cannabis businesses and ancillary providers gain access to SBA programs, targeted grant funds, and set-asides intended to expand capital and technical assistance—improving small-business financing and support, especially for socially and economically disadvantaged entrepreneurs.
Taxpayers and courts will face substantial administrative and judicial costs and workload from mass record reviews, hearings, appointed counsel, vacating/re‑sentencing cases, and agencies’ required rulemaking and implementation.
The bill creates legal uncertainty and substantial litigation risk because textual substitutions, retroactive vacatur, and partial federal/state mismatches may require courts and agencies to resolve how prior law and enforcement interact with the new regime.
Removing marijuana from federal scheduling and narrowing cannabis-based enforcement tools could limit federal interdiction and complicate national-security and personnel-security assessments, raising concerns for law-enforcement and some security-sensitive roles.
Based on analysis of 18 sections of legislative text.
Decriminalizes cannabis federally, orders expungement of many federal cannabis records, creates a cannabis tax/reinvestment fund, and establishes DOJ/SBA programs and studies to promote equity and implementation.
Removes cannabis from the federal controlled-substances schedules, requires federal courts to expunge and seal most non-violent federal cannabis convictions and related arrests (including many juvenile adjudications), and creates federal programs, studies, and tax rules to support community reinvestment and equitable participation in the legal cannabis industry. It also changes immigration and federal benefit/security-clearance rules so past cannabis use or convictions cannot be used to deny benefits or clearances, directs multiple federal agencies to revise rules and carry out studies, and establishes a new Treasury Opportunity Trust Fund to collect and distribute cannabis tax revenues for law enforcement relief and small-business equity programs. The bill affects people with prior cannabis convictions, would rework federal criminal and immigration consequences of cannabis offenses, creates a Cannabis Justice Office at DOJ and SBA programs to assist disadvantaged entrepreneurs, funds multiple research and implementation studies, and requires agencies to update guidance and rules within set timelines. Many implementation steps occur within 6 months to 2 years of enactment; some provisions expressly take effect on enactment or after 180 days.