Talks of rescheduling cannabis have picked up recently in light of the news that Trump said his administration is preparing to make a decision on the topic. This discourse has been a long time in the making—Biden ordered a review of the drug’s Schedule I status in 2022, and the year after, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommended that it be reclassified as a Schedule III substance. Since then, progress has stalled. Psilocybin—more commonly known as magic mushrooms—may find success sooner: the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has officially requested a medical scientific review of the drug in response to a looming rescheduling petition.
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Psilocybin is currently classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning it has “high abuse potential with no [federally] accepted medical use; medications within this schedule may not be prescribed, dispensed, or administered.”
As reported by Marijuana Moment, the DEA forwarded a request to reschedule psilocybin to Schedule II to HHS for consideration. If successful, mushrooms will be legally recognized as having “high abuse potential…however, these medications have an accepted medical use and may be prescribed, dispensed, or administered.” Psilocybin would join the ranks of drugs like fentanyl, oxycodone, and morphine.
Before the DEA sent this request along to federal agencies, it rejected it multiple times. The advocates who proposed the rescheduling initially were led by Washington doctor Sunil Aggarwal, whose work has included attempting to get approval to administer psilocybin to end-of-life care patients.
Aggarwal has been working since 2020 to secure this right, and he’s finally made it past the DEA and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 2023, the court did rule against the DEA in a lawsuit brought against it by Aggarwal’s team, but the petition was still not brought to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as requested.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the current HHS Secretary, and he has openly supported expanding medical access to psychedelic drugs. In June, RFK claimed to have regular talks with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Doug Collins about the matter. He also stated his intention to allow veterans to legally access the substances within the next year.
The FDA has also previously referred to LSD as a “breakthrough therapy,” indicating openness to psychedelic treatments. The Advanced Integrated Medical Science (AIMS) Institute—with which Aggarwal works—believes that because of this designation, in addition to countless successful clinical trials, “HHS and FDA are in a position to quickly provide DEA an evaluation and scheduling recommendation.”
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This positive news for the psychedelic community could be revolutionary. A whole cohort of people who suffer from countless debilitating conditions may benefit from these therapies, and this is the first step to securing access for them.