The head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that while the Trump administration is taking the potential harms of marijuana use among youth “very seriously,” it’s also important to preserve access to cannabis for medical purposes—and that’s part of the thinking behind the push to federally reschedule it.
In an interview on Fox Business on Wednesday, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary was asked about a recent New York Times editorial published that called for safeguards around marijuana, citing contested data on the relationship between cannabis use and health issues such as psychosis.
“First of all, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in teens vaping with THC…in the four years prior to us coming into office. So we’re taking this very seriously, and we’re trying to understand this field of science with better research,” he said. “The marijuana today is not the marijuana of hippies. It’s 10 to 20 times stronger, and new research is showing that its effect on the developing adolescent mind is different than in an adult.”
“It can result in psychosis diagnoses later in life. So we are taking this very seriously, and it is a controlled substance in the Trump administration, and so that’s the state of affairs,” Makary said, adding that there are other “side effects” associated with marijuana such as cannabis hyperemesis syndrome.
“I think if you simply talk about the dangers of marijuana in kids in terms of risk, remember, risk appeals to many kids, so we have to talk about what it does to their ability to compete in a track-and-field match, and what it does to their day-to-day sort of vitality,” the FDA commissioner said. “It creates fatigue, and it creates problems with learning and judgment, so we have to talk about that.”
While the interview made rounds on social media, drawing criticism from industry stakeholders, there was less focus on other comments Makary made concerning the Trump administration’s efforts to ensure that patients are able to access marijuana for medical uses.
“We are also in the Trump administration very serious about making sure that the medicinal purposes—that is, the indications where people find benefit in medical conditions, for example, with chronic terminal cancer—is advanced,” he said. “And so we’ve taken action to change the scheduling from Schedule I to Schedule III” under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
President Donald Trump issued an executive order in December order Attorney General Pam Bondi to expeditiously complete the rescheduling process, which was initiated under the Biden administration, but there haven’t been any recent updates on the Justice Department’s progress in seeing through that directive.
Meanwhile, last month, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said the cannabis rescheduling appeal process “remains pending” despite Trump’s executive order.
A recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report discussed how DOJ could, in theory, reject the president’s directive or delay the process by restarting the scientific review into marijuana.
Bondi separately missed a congressionally mandated deadline last month to issue guidelines for easing barriers to research on Schedule I substances such as marijuana and psychedelics.
Last year, the FDA commissioner said exploring the therapeutic potential of psychedelics such as psilocybin and ibogaine is a “top priority” for the Trump administration, especially when it comes to helping military veterans grapple with trauma from being sent to fight “unnecessary wars.”
Meanwhile, asked about the widespread availability of intoxicating cannabinoid products, such as delta-8 THC, Makary warned last year that the use of cannabinoids can lead to cardiac problems and psychosis.
