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 federal criminal exposure for cannabis conduct, opens federal economic supports and justice‑reinvestment for affected communities, and improves data‑driven policymaking — but does so while creating large administrative costs, legal uncertainty, potential enforcement and national‑security tradeoffs, privacy risks, and ongoing barriers for equity unless implementation and safeguards are carefully managed.
People with past nonviolent federal cannabis convictions will see records sealed/expunged and can seek sentencing review (with appointed counsel for indigent petitioners), reducing barriers to employment, housing, and supervision for affected individuals.
Individuals and businesses face reduced federal criminal exposure because marihuana/THC are removed from Schedule I (while HHS/FDA retain product-safety authority and some transportation-safety authority is preserved), narrowing federal prosecution and some surveillance tools.
Noncitizens and low-income benefit applicants will have fewer collateral immigration and public‑benefit barriers: past cannabis use/possession no longer bars many visas, green cards, asylum or federal benefits, reducing deportation and benefit-denial risks.
Federal courts, agencies, and taxpayers face substantial administrative and fiscal burdens—mass record reviews, mandated hearings and appointed counsel, agency rulemaking, data collection, and program rollout—requiring new staff, systems, and funding.
Legal and regulatory uncertainty: textual substitutions, retroactive vacaturs, schedule changes, and new federal protections create litigation and interpretive risk and could produce inconsistent outcomes across courts, agencies, and states.
Decriminalization and rescheduling may limit certain federal enforcement tools (including interdiction and investigative authorities) and complicate personnel security assessments, which critics say could hamper national‑security and law‑enforcement responses to cross‑jurisdictional trafficking and sensitive hires.
Based on analysis of 18 sections of legislative text.
Removes cannabis from federal controlled-substance law, mandates expungement/sealing of nonviolent federal cannabis convictions, creates cannabis tax/reinvestment funds and SBA/DOJ programs, and protects benefits/immigration/security-clearance status.
This bill removes cannabis (marijuana) from federal criminal schedules, requires federal courts to expunge and seal nonviolent federal cannabis convictions (and review resentencing for people still under sentence), and creates new federal programs, taxes, studies, and grant authority to support communities and small businesses affected by past cannabis enforcement. It also protects people from losing federal public benefits or security clearances for cannabis use and prevents immigration penalties for historic cannabis possession or convictions no longer prohibited under the law. The law changes many federal statutes and administrative rules: it directs agencies (Treasury, DOJ, SBA, NHTSA, BLS, NIOSH, Education) to issue guidance or studies, establishes an Opportunity Trust Fund to collect and distribute cannabis tax revenues for reinvestment and grants, adds a Cannabis Justice Office in DOJ to run community reinvestment grants, adjusts SBA programs to support state-authorized cannabis businesses, and requires demographic and impact reporting to Congress.