Zach Kobrin, Partner at Saul Ewing LLP, along with four other Cannabis professionals, will be on a panel speaking at the Cannabis Law Institute 2026. The panel's topic is "After the Reschedule: Navigating the New Federal Cannabis Landscape."
On April 22, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a Final Order moving state-licensed medical cannabis and FDA-approved cannabis products into Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act — ending more than 50 years of cannabis's classification alongside heroin as a Schedule I substance with no accepted medical use. A broader DEA administrative hearing, scheduled to begin June 29, 2026, is now underway to consider whether all forms of cannabis should follow. For the cannabis industry, this is simultaneously a historic milestone and a source of profound uncertainty. Rescheduling is not legalization. It does not create a federal cannabis marketplace. It does not resolve the fundamental conflict between state cannabis law and the federal Controlled Substances Act. What it does do is set into motion a cascade of legal, financial, regulatory, and operational changes — many of them immediate, some of them still unresolved — that every cannabis professional, business owner, attorney, and policymaker must now understand and prepare for.
The questions are urgent. When does Section 280E tax relief actually show up on an operator's balance sheet? Do state-licensed dispensaries now need to obtain federal DEA registration? What does the two-tier rescheduling structure — medical cannabis in Schedule III, adult-use still in Schedule I — mean for the largest and fastest-growing segment of the industry? Can rescheduling work at all without comprehensive congressional action? And what must happen state by state to ensure that federal rescheduling translates into real operational and legal change on the ground. This panel brings together the foremost legal, financial, regulatory, and operational minds in the cannabis industry to work through these questions in real time. The goal with this panel is to outline how rescheduling actually unfolds in practice.
