Unsung Heroes: Lawyers Defeat Schedule I Cannabis Classification As Final Domino Of Prohibition Found Unconstitutional

We’ve been saying at this blog for 13 years that when a state enacts a medical cannabis law, Schedule I classification of cannabis is automatically nullified.


This legal argument, developed and refined first by us here in Iowa’s cannabis movement, was successful in a Nevada courtroom in October of 2022.

Here’s the ruling — the key quote is from the court was “The Nevada Board of Pharmacy acted outside of its authority when it failed to remove cannabis from the list of Schedule I substances upon the enactment of Article 4, Section 38 of the Constitution of the State of Nevada, which recognizes the use of cannabis for medical treatment.”

Schedule I requires all substances to have “no accepted medical use in the United States.”

We’ve been saying at this blog for 13 years that when a state enacts a medical cannabis law, Schedule I classification of cannabis is automatically nullified.


This legal argument, developed and refined first by us here in Iowa’s cannabis movement, was successful in a Nevada courtroom in October of 2022.

I first served a lawsuit in 2011 arguing that, as a matter of law alone, that state’s passing laws defining cannabis as medicine defeated Schedule I classification.

Lawyers in Nevada successfully proved that cannabis has “accepted medical use in the United States.” This is, historically speaking, going to be the key turning point in ending federal prohibition — as WeedPress predicted it would be for 13 years straight.

Read here at the Las Vegas Review Journal how legal victory this came to be — and then, since the ruling’s updates likely won’t be in major mainstream outlets anytime soon be sure to join the in crowd and sign up for updates from WeedPress on Facebook and subscribe by email on the right hand side of this article page.

Thanks for those who paid attention — with no exaggeration and no small sense of duty, millions of lives truly depend on it.

This is the solution. Congress provided it already and no new law is needed. Enforce the existing laws, and recognize state statutes defining marijuana as medicine meets the definition of “accepted medical use in the United States,” which should legally trigger cannabis being removed from Schedule I status. Schedule I prevents research, and prevents federal funding for research into marijuana’s life saving properties.

This status quo cannot continue forever and looking back, those in the know will see this ruling in Nevada as critical in the inevitable reversal of a decades old failed War on marijuana as a legitimate life saving medicine for stress, mental pain, and more.

And just to say I told you this was the way, here’s me serving the lawsuit making this argument back in 2011.

As the above lawsuit I served the state on behalf of an elder activist leader in Iowa states, “Although the Legislature does not have to listen to the Iowa Board of Pharmacy’s expert medical opinion, law controls, not science. The Respondent can ignore the science, but not the law. The law requires that marijuana be removed from schedule I, even if the Board had found that marijuana had no medical efficacy whatsoever.”

Nevada agrees with our original argument — as a matter of law, not science.

Solutions can be made to come true if you persist long enough and care about the people your solutions effect.

Read more about our 2011 lawsuit here — Lawsuit Against State of Iowa Challenges Constitutionality of Controlled Substances Act