The Trump administration is making good on its promise to reschedule cannabis, but only partially – raising plenty of questions for those in the cannabis industry.

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, signed an order last week that removes products sold under state medical cannabis licenses and FDA approved cannabis products from schedule I – defined as substances with no accepted medical use, to schedule III – which includes legal but regulated substances including certain doses of Tylenol with codeine and ketamine.

“While some marijuana-related products are no longer being treated as schedule I, it’s not accurate to say marijuana has been broadly rescheduled – this is partial rescheduling, at best,” said Cat Packer, director of drug markets and legal regulation at the Drug Policy Alliance.

Packer noted that the “FDA-approved” part of the order only applies to prospective FDA approved products that don’t exist yet – it doesn’t affect the few cannabis related pharmaceuticals that are already FDA approved.

“More concerning, it appears to predetermine the scheduling outcome for future FDA-approved drugs containing marijuana without a full, evidence-based risk evaluation,” Packer added.

The order justifies the partial move by repeatedly citing the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, a UN treaty that 73 nations including the United States entered in 1961. The Convention requires that specified “narcotics”, including cannabis, be produced only in limited quantities, and for scientific and medical purposes only.

“There’s an ongoing debate here,” Packer said, “Some would argue that, given the federal government’s posture toward state legalization, the US is already functionally out of alignment with the treaty – similar to how Canada has approached legalization.”

Cannabis is legal and regulated across Canada, despite their participation in the Single Convention.

“The administration’s recent announcement explained the bifurcation [between medical and other types of cannabis] was in part for an expedited, legally compliant pathway – but in practice, it’s made an already complex process more confusing,” Packer said.

Ryan Hunter, chief revenue officer at the Colorado-based cannabis company Spherex labs, echoed Packer’s sentiment that this announcement has only confused the process.

“This is a very silly announcement. I can’t imagine who thought this was a good idea,” Hunter said.

Alex Gonzalez, co-founder and president of the cannabis packaging company Calyx Containers, said he suspects the timing of the announcement was strategic.

“Trump’s got a little bit of an agenda here. Midterms are coming up. He’s getting some pressure from the voter base that he’s trying to win over, particularly younger males,” Gonzalez said, also noting that Pam Bondi’s removal might have also paved the way for the policy move.

“It’s evident, based on her history, even before she took the role that she was not for cannabis … she was a blocker,” Gonzalez said.

While Gonzalez, Hunter and Packer all agreed that the order has added confusion to the rescheduling process, they also found it promising to see any kind of concrete, pro-cannabis signal coming from such a high level. The order will be most meaningful for those in the medical cannabis space, although exactly how the order will be put into practice is unclear.

“There’s lots of questions,” Hunter said. “A person who buys an ounce of marijuana from the medical side of a dispensary, and a different person who buys an ounce of marijuana from the adult use side of that dispensary are being treated differently from a legal perspective, and it starts from there”.

Hunter added that while Spherex has a dual license that allows them to sell both recreational and medical cannabis, there’s actually no difference for what the consumer is buying.

“They’re exactly the same products,” Hunter said. “The cost is the same, the facilities [are] the same, the employees are the same.”

Packer said that, for medical clients, “these products are now federally recognized as legitimate medicine, signaling a meaningful shift in federal policy; patients and their caregivers should no longer be treated as criminals under federal law”.

However, since the order is unclear about implementation, Packer said it’s hard to say whether “these protections will be fully realized in practice”. Medical cannabis patients, for example, could still be vulnerable to discrimination in housing and employment based on their cannabis use, among other problems.

That the order is so focused on the medical side of cannabis will disproportionately benefit white people while leaving others open to consequences. To benefit from the order, only medical cannabis providers will be able to register with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

“In practice, this disproportionately excludes Black and Latino cannabis entrepreneurs, who are more likely to hold adult-use licenses due to the high barriers to entry in early medical markets, while equity programs that have since helped create pathways into the industry were largely advanced through adult-use legalization,” Packer said.

Blanche also announced that the DEA will hold a new administrative hearing for rescheduling on 29 June. Still, Packer said that full rescheduling is “far from guaranteed”.

“Even if marijuana is ultimately rescheduled, it will still fall short of the will of the majority of Americans, who for over a decade have supported full legalization,” he said.