Could the Midterms Finally Bring Real Cannabis Reform?

Tuesday's midterm elections put Democrats in control of both the House and Senate. Beginning in January, Democrats will lead the committees in both chambers and control much of the committee agenda. They will have the ability to decide which bills receive hearings and markups and which legislation gets a real opportunity to move forward. For an industry that has watched federal cannabis bills sit in committee for years, that gives us something to be excited about.

President Trump will still have veto power, and Democrats will still need Republican support to get most legislation through the Senate. But Democrats have spent years writing legislation that would fundamentally change federal cannabis law, some narrower cannabis reforms already have Republican support, and Trump has publicly supported cannabis banking, Schedule III and allowing states to make their own decisions on cannabis.

Where the leading reform bills stand

I think the best place to start is with the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, or CAOA, because this is the type of reform I would really like to see make it across the finish line.

Senators Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker and Ron Wyden released the first CAOA draft in 2021 and formally introduced the legislation in 2022. They reintroduced it in 2024 and again in July 2026. The bill would remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act altogether, allow states to maintain their own cannabis laws, expunge cannabis offenses and create a federal regulatory and tax structure for cannabis. It is sitting in the Senate Finance Committee.

The MORE Act takes a similar approach. The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act would also remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act. It would expunge cannabis offenses and create programs intended to address communities affected by marijuana prohibition.

What makes the MORE Act particularly interesting is that we already know the House can pass it. The House passed it in December 2020 by a vote of 228-164, the first time either chamber of Congress had voted to federally decriminalize marijuana. The House passed another version again in April 2022. It never became law. The current version was introduced again in August 2025 and has once again been sitting in House committees.

So we already have two major pieces of legislation in Congress that would deschedule cannabis. Members of Congress have spent years drafting them, debating them, revising them and, in the case of the MORE Act, actually passing them through the House.

A reason for cautious optimism

So perhaps we are on the precipice of real reform. If a Republican administration can move medical marijuana to Schedule III, maybe a Democratic Congress and Republican president can find enough common ground to finally get cannabis descheduled.

One of the election results I find particularly interesting is Texas, where James Talarico became the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from the state in decades. Before the election, Talarico specifically identified cannabis as an area where he thought he could work with Trump, saying, "He's for legalizing marijuana, and so am I. I hope we can do that together." He has also supported expunging marijuana convictions and creating a regulated adult-use market.

Talarico is not talking about another study or another minor adjustment to federal marijuana policy. He is talking about legalization and working with a Republican president to get there. With Democrats gaining seats in traditionally Republican states and some of those new lawmakers already looking for areas of common ground, it raises the possibility that cannabis reform could be on the horizon.

How Democrats have gotten in their own way before

Unfortunately, the history of these bills also shows how a Democratic-led Congress can get in its own way.

The best example came in 2021 and 2022, when Democrats controlled the House, Senate and White House. SAFE Banking, which would protect banks that serve state-legal cannabis businesses, already had bipartisan support and had repeatedly passed the House. At the same time, Schumer, Booker and Wyden were developing CAOA and wanted Congress to address comprehensive legalization and the consequences of marijuana prohibition rather than simply giving the industry access to banking.

There was a real disagreement over which legislation should move first.

Schumer argued that passing SAFE Banking separately could make it more difficult to build support for comprehensive reform. Booker was even more direct. In 2021, he said he would "do everything I can to stop an easy banking bill" if Congress was going to help cannabis companies without also addressing restorative justice.

I understand the argument. If you believe you have an opportunity to end federal prohibition, why settle for banking?

The problem is that Congress ended up doing neither.

The House continued trying to advance banking reform while Senate leaders pushed for a larger bill. CAOA never developed enough support to pass the Senate, and SAFE Banking never made it to President Biden's desk. Democrats controlled the House, Senate and White House and still ended without Congress passing either comprehensive cannabis reform or the banking legislation that already had bipartisan support.

Also, the bills pending today will not automatically carry into the new Congress. When the 119th Congress ends, legislation that has not become law dies with it and will need to be reintroduced. But the legislation, the sponsors and years of work behind these proposals are already there.

For more than a decade, the cannabis industry has watched Congress get close and then find a way not to finish the job. We have watched bills pass one chamber and die in the other. We have watched bills sit in committee. We have watched Democrats fight over whether incremental reform would interfere with comprehensive reform. And we have watched cannabis businesses continue operating under a federal system that almost everyone involved acknowledges needs to change.

Maybe, after years of talking about rescheduling, the next two years finally give us a real shot at descheduling. I am keeping my fingers crossed.