30-Dec-2025

DEA Marijuana Year in Review 2025: President Trump Fixing DEA?

How Presidential Leadership Exposed a Marijuana Bureaucracy That Failed Patients, Science, and the Constitution.

The only question left is whether the DEA will finally follow the President's lead - or continue to be the last obstacle between patients and medicine.

WASHINGTON, DC / ACCESS Newswire / December 30, 2025 /

2025 will be remembered as the year the myth finally collapsed.

The myth that the Drug Enforcement Administration's marijuana regime was about public safety.
The myth that delay was prudence.
The myth that blocking science protected patients.

It took President Donald J. Trump's Executive Order on marijuana research and rescheduling to force the truth into the open.

And the truth is this:
For nearly a decade, the DEA obstructed legitimate pharmaceutical cannabis development-while patients waited and bad actors flourished.

At the center of this failure is MMJ International Holdings, MMJ BioPharma Cultivation and MMJ BioPharma Labs, all U.S. company's operating under one umbrella that treated cannabis not as a loophole, not as a political cause, but as what the law requires it to be:

A drug, developed under FDA standards.

President Trump's Executive Order: Patients First, Science First

In late 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order directing the Attorney General to expedite completion of marijuana rescheduling and remove barriers to legitimate medical research.

The Order did what the DEA refused to do for years:

Acknowledged that Schedule I status impeded medical research
Recognized that patients benefit from scientifically validated cannabis therapies
Directed DOJ to finish what HHS and DOJ already agreed on - rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III
Reaffirmed that FDA science, not bureaucracy, governs medicine

President Trump's position was clear and consistent with his 2024 campaign pledge:

"As President, we will continue to focus on research to unlock the medical uses of marijuana... and support common-sense laws."

For patients with Huntington's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and other neurological disorders, this was not politics-it was hope backed by law.

MMJ Did Everything the Federal Government Asked-And Was Punished for It

MMJ followed the hard path:

FDA Orphan Drug Designation (Huntington's Disease)
IND-authorized clinical programs
Pharmaceutical GMP manufacturing
Final dosage-form soft-gel capsules
DEA Schedule I research laboratory
Botanical drug standardization
NDA-level development work spanning seven years

MMJ submitted its DEA bulk manufacturing application in 2018.

What followed was not review - but paralysis.

No approval.
No denial.
Just delay, delay, delay.

Patients waited.
Capital burned.
Science stalled.

The Constitutional Reckoning: DOJ Pulls the Plug on DEA's ALJ System

In 2025, the Department of Justice - under Attorney General Pam Bondi - did what the DEA could not:

Told the truth.

DOJ formally announced it would no longer defend the constitutionality of the DEA's Administrative Law Judge system, conceding that:

Multiple layers of ALJ removal protection violate Article II
The system lacked proper executive accountability
Ongoing cases - including MMJ's - were legally compromised

This followed Supreme Court rulings in Axon v. FTC and Jarkesy v. SEC, which made clear that agencies cannot act as prosecutor, judge, and jury.

Bottom line:
No lawful evidentiary hearing ever occurred in MMJ's case.
The process used to block MMJ was unconstitutional from the start.

Anne Milgram's Legacy: Delay as Policy

Former DEA Administrator Anne Milgram leaves behind a record defined by contradiction:

Blocking FDA-compliant research
Allowing synthetic THC to explode nationwide
Empowering lawyers over scientists
Replacing regulation with inertia

Her tenure will be remembered not for enforcement - but for institutional decay.

Thomas Prevoznik: Authority Without Accountability

No individual better represents the DEA's internal dysfunction than Thomas Prevoznik.

For years, Prevoznik imposed extra-statutory requirements, including the infamous "bona fide supply agreement" rule - an impossible condition that no applicant could satisfy before approval.

This was not caution.
It was obstruction disguised as compliance.

Matthew Strait and the Revolving Door Problem

After helping create the regulatory maze inside DEA, Matthew Strait now appears in private industry advising companies on how to "navigate" the very system he helped break.

This revolving door is not reform-it is institutional self-preservation.

Aarathi Haig and the Ethics Breakdown

DEA attorney Aarathi Haig compounded the problem by misrepresenting facts in court, falsely claiming MMJ never filed NDA-level applications with the FDA - statements contradicted by the administrative record.

Combined with unresolved bar compliance issues in New Jersey, this conduct underscores a deeper problem:

At DEA, accountability was optional.

Terry Cole: The Moment of Truth

DEA Administrator Terrance "Terry" Cole now stands at a crossroads.

President Trump has issued clear direction.
The courts have spoken.
The Constitution has been enforced.

Yet: