All Daily Smoke entriesNovember 4, 2026

The DEA Wants Us to Register. Are We Supposed to Celebrate?

A DEA registration portal is not the end of prohibition. The government has studied cannabis for decades; it is time to stop criminalizing people over the plant.

The story

Election night comes around, seats flip, people celebrate, and cannabis reform gets another round of hopeful speeches. I understand the excitement. But I have one question: What, exactly, are we celebrating if the federal government still makes state-licensed medical cannabis operators ask the DEA for permission?

In April, the federal government moved state-licensed medical cannabis products and FDA-approved drugs containing cannabis into Schedule III and created an expedited DEA registration process for state medical license holders who manufacture, distribute, or dispense them. The DEA even has a registration portal for medical cannabis dispensaries. That is a real policy change. It is not nationwide legalization, and it is not descheduling. It does not mean every hemp business or every person who uses cannabis has to register with the DEA. Read the federal rule and the DEA’s own explanation.

But sit with the irony for a second.

For decades, the drug war has called people criminals over this plant. People have been arrested. Families have been torn apart. Homes have been raided. Dogs have been shot in cannabis raids. Lives have been derailed by records that follow people long after a sentence ends. Now the path into part of the legal medical industry runs through registration with the very federal enforcement agency that helped carry out that war.

I’m supposed to call that freedom? That is fucking insane.

Look, I can recognize that a change from Schedule I to Schedule III matters for the people it covers. I can also say, without softening it: having to ask the DEA for permission is not the same as ending prohibition. A new federal form does not erase an arrest. A registration portal does not give a family back the years it lost. And a politician saying “progress” does not answer why adults are still caught between state permission and federal control.

That is why election-night victory laps feel hollow to me. I do not care which party gets the headline if nobody is willing to say the hard part out loud. Deschedule cannabis. End federal prohibition. Stop treating ordinary people like a threat for choosing a plant. Repair the damage this policy has done.

And please do not tell me the government just discovered this plant might have medical value. In 1975, researchers at the Medical College of Virginia published findings showing that certain cannabinoids slowed the growth of a type of lung tumor in mice. That was early laboratory evidence, not proof that cannabis cures cancer in people. But it was a reason to keep asking questions. It certainly was not a reason to pretend there was nothing worth studying.

Decades later, a federal health agency held a patent on potential antioxidant and neuroprotective uses of cannabinoids. The federal government contracted with the University of Mississippi to grow cannabis and make standardized cannabis cigarettes for research. And the FDA has approved prescription drugs involving cannabis compounds: Epidiolex is cannabis-derived; Marinol, Syndros, and Cesamet are synthetic cannabis-related medicines. Marinol and Syndros both contain dronabinol.

So the government has studied it. Supplied it. Patented potential uses for its compounds. Approved medicines based on those compounds. And through all of that, people were still being treated as criminals over the plant itself. That contradiction is the story.

Here is what I want to ask every newly elected official and every returning one: Will you support descheduling? Will you repeal federal penalties for cannabis? Will you address the records, families, and communities harmed by enforcement? Or will you give us a new form, a friendlier press release, and another speech about progress?

I am not against a step forward. I am against being told to mistake a step for the finish line. The Flower Pharm was built for people, not talking points. Do not hand us a DEA registration portal and ask us to applaud like the drug war is over. Deschedule it. End prohibition. Repair the harm. Then we can talk about celebrating.

#TheFlowerPharm #DailySmoke

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