Sponsors (75)
Official title: To decriminalize and deschedule cannabis, to provide for reinvestment in certain persons adversely impacted by the War on Drugs, to provide for expungement of certain cannabis offenses, and for other purposes.
Introduced August 29, 2025 by Jerrold Lewis Nadler · Last progress August 29, 2025
The bill substantially reduces criminal penalties and collateral consequences and creates economic and equity pathways for cannabis-impacted communities while improving data-driven policymaking — but it also shifts large administrative costs to governments and taxpayers, raises privacy and legal‑certainty concerns, and creates tradeoffs for enforcement, workplace rules, and budget flexibility.
People with past federal (and some state-recognized) nonviolent cannabis convictions — especially low-income people and racial/ethnic minorities — will see records sealed/treated as if cannabis were not scheduled, can seek sentencing review or vacatur, and gain appointed counsel for relief efforts, reducing barriers to employment, housing, and civic participation.
State-authorized cannabis businesses and ancillary providers gain access to SBA lending, technical assistance, and targeted grant programs, and dedicated cannabis-tax revenues are directed to community and small‑business support, improving capital access and economic opportunity for small and minority-owned firms.
Federal decriminalization measures (including removing marijuana from Schedule I and treating past convictions as if unscheduled) reduce federal criminal exposure, lower enforcement costs, and narrow certain federal surveillance/penalty authorities, expanding civil liberties for consumers and businesses.
Federal courts, agencies, states, localities, DHS, and GAO face large new administrative workloads and costs (record reviews, hearings, guidance, rulemaking, reprocessing past cases, training), producing substantial fiscal and operational burdens borne by taxpayers and government staff.
Broad textual changes, schedule removal, retroactivity, and mismatches with state law create legal uncertainty and litigation risk for courts, employers, agencies, and regulated parties about the effect of prior case law, regulation continuity, and what remains punishable.
Collecting and publishing disaggregated demographic, health, school, workplace, and tax‑related data (including adding 'cannabis products' to IRS disclosures) raises privacy and re‑identification risks for workers, students, small businesses, and taxpayers if safeguards fail.
Based on analysis of 18 sections of legislative text.
Removes cannabis from federal Schedule I, orders widespread expungements/sealing and resentencing for nonviolent cannabis offenses, creates tax revenue programs for reinvestment, and bars federal benefit/security/immigration penalties tied to cannabis.
Removes cannabis from federal Schedule I, orders broad expungement and sealing of past nonviolent federal cannabis convictions and related records, and creates a federal framework to tax and reinvest cannabis revenues into community, justice, and small‑business programs. It also makes major legal changes: replacing the words “marijuana/marihuana” with “cannabis” across federal law, protects people from federal benefit, security‑clearance, and immigration penalties tied to cannabis conduct, and directs agencies to issue implementing rules and multiple studies on public‑health, workplace, education, traffic safety, and industry demographics. Establishes a Cannabis Justice Office at DOJ and new SBA programs for restorative loans and equitable licensing, creates an Opportunity Trust Fund to receive cannabis tax net revenues for specified grants, requires federal agencies to update guidance within defined timelines, and orders data collection and reports to Congress about legalization impacts and industry demographics. Some courts must complete comprehensive resentencing and expungement reviews within one year, and agencies have 180 days to phase many statutory changes or meet other specified deadlines for studies and rulemaking.