 "US President Donald Trump speaks after signing an executive order on creating a White House 2028 Olympics task force in the South Court Auditorium of the White House in Washington, DC, on August 5, 2025. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP)")
US President Donald Trump is reportedly reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug. A Wall Street Journal report, citing people familiar with the matter, revealed that the American leader is considering making the drug more accessible to people.
While attending a $1m-a-plate fundraiser at his New Jersey golf club earlier this month, Trump told a gathering that he was interested in making such a change, the people who asked to remain anonymous told The Wall Street Journal. Interestingly, the reclassification, to remove marijuana from the list of Schedule I controlled substances and make it a Schedule III drug, was proposed by former US President Joe Biden’s administration.
However, it was not enacted since Biden’s tenure came to an end. If the drug is reclassified to Schedule III, it would make it much easier to buy and sell marijuana and make the legal multibillion-dollar industry more profitable.
A business decision?
According to the Wall Street Journal, one of the guests at Trump’s New Jersey club was even Kim Rivers, chief executive of Trulieve, one of the largest marijuana companies. At the event, Rivers reportedly encouraged Trump to pursue the change and expand medical marijuana research.
It is pertinent to note that during Trump’s first term in the White House, two Soviet-born Republican donors, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, directly appealed to Trump for help with their plan to sell marijuana in states where recreational use was legal.
An audio from the dinner in 2018, secretly recorded by the two men in question, revealed that Trump was sceptical, telling the two men that he believed marijuana use “does cause an IQ problem; you lose IQ points”.
In the same conversation, the Ukrainian-born Parnas first suggested to Trump that he should remove the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and shared a false rumour that the diplomat was badmouthing the president by “telling everybody, ‘Wait, he’s gonna get impeached.’”
Impact Shorts
More ShortsWhat makes the situation more dramatic is the fact that Parnas and Fruman later helped Rudy Giuliani search for dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine, before being indicted and found guilty of campaign finance violations. They were accused of secretly using a Russian oligarch’s money to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican campaigns and committees, including Trump’s, in pursuit of favours for their planned legal marijuana business.