What Does Rescheduling Mean for Cannabis Marketing and PR?

On April 30, 2024 news broke that the Drug Enforcement Administration agreed to reclassify cannabis from a Schedule I substance to Schedule III. The historic, if incremental, move followed the Food and Drug Administration’s own recommendation that cannabis be rescheduled, and that the federal government officially recognize the plant’s medical efficacy. 

Almost immediately after the DEA made its announcement, discussion began about the financial and legal implications of rescheduling for cannabis businesses. Famously, cannabis businesses must pay higher taxes and take fewer deductions than companies in other industries thanks to federal policies like tax code 280E. But Schedule III would change other aspects of how cannabis brands do business—including how they approach marketing and PR.

For now, all anyone can do is speculate at how exactly federal rescheduling would change the cannabis advertising rules that currently limit cannabis brands’ access to social media and broadcast channels as much as 280E and other regulations limit their access to major banking networks and investment tools. But a few aspects of how rescheduling might change cannabis marketing and PR are already coming into focus.

If you’re curious what cannabis marketing and publicity might look like under Schedule III, here’s what we know so far:

1. Expansion of scientific research. Since the Controlled Substances Act was passed in 1970, scientific research on cannabis has been severely limited in the United States. Under cannabis prohibition, researchers have only been able to conduct clinical trials with cannabis grown on the University of Mississippi campus—one of the few institutions to have a federal contract. 

As Grasslands Founder and CEO Ricardo Baca noted on a recent episode of City Cast Denver, his friend and fellow member of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’ Natural Medicine Advisory Board, Dr. Sue Sisley, is one of the scientists whose work has been affected by the available research material. 

Sisley and her fellow cannabis researchers have been forced to use moldy, poor quality cannabis from the NIDA-run lab in Mississippi, rather than procuring research material from legal dispensaries in their home states—aka, the kind of cannabis that people are actually consuming.

As thought leaders and psychedelic advocates Michael Pollan and Bob Jesse noted at the 2023 Psychedelic Science Conference, loosening research restrictions not only enables institutions to conduct new studies into psychoactive substances, it also invites scientists to revisit a lost body of existing, pre-prohibition research. Indeed, Jesse called the current process of rediscovering forgotten psychedelic research as “the excavation of knowledge.” 

When the cannabis industry is able to pursue a similar resumption and revisitation of scientific inquiry as has already begun with psychedelics, it will support and reinforce the FDA and DEA’s current assertion that cannabis does have medical value.

“When we go down to Schedule III suddenly it opens up research significantly, and that means we are going to learn a lot more about this substance that we are generally so unfamiliar with,” Baca told City Cast. “That’s going to be huge for local businesses, really opening up access to that research so they can better communicate and have a better relationship with their patients and consumers.”

Indeed, with an expanded understanding of how cannabinoids and terpenes affect the endocannabinoid system and the plant’s medical efficacy, cannabis marketers can make more accurate—and less restricted—health claims and develop products that more closely align with consumers’ needs.

2. Renewed interest from journalists. There’s an old adage in journalism and public relations—what’s new is news. It’s easier to pitch, say, the first Black woman-owned dispensary in Manhattan than the 387th cannabis retail location to open in the city a decade after the market opens. 

When Colorado became the first state in the country to launch adult-use cannabis sales in 2014, The Denver Post was bold to dedicate four journalists, including Baca, to cover the cannabis beat. But it was also a pragmatic choice. 

A decade later, cannabis isn’t the cutting edge, sexy story it once was and it can be challenging for publicists to provide reporters with the “why” to go with the “who, what, when and where” that make up news releases and proactive pitches. 

Rescheduling would change that. Even the mere possibility of moving cannabis to Schedule III has generated national headlines. The biggest change to federal drug policy in generations will certainly continue to be newsworthy not only for alt-weeklies and cannabis trade publications, but also mainstream media outlets.  

Inevitably, rescheduling would mean more earned media coverage for cannabis businesses. But as we love to point out at Grasslands, PR for individual cannabis brands is PR for the industry as a whole. Increased journalistic interest in the cannabis industry—whether reporters are covering the latest scientific studies, legal battles between prohibitionists and regulators or cannabis culture mainstays like the 420 holiday—is a meaningful opportunity to change how this plant is perceived and the narratives we tell about its role in our lives and our communities. 

‍3. Reinvesting in the business. We always tell our friends and clients that the last thing you should do during a bear market is cut your marketing and PR budget—an economic downturn is exactly when you need to increase brand awareness and customer loyalty the most. But it’s just the reality that sometimes trimming ad spend is what it takes to avoid layoffs or losing a hard-won cannabis license.  

As any cannabis business owner knows, the tax burden—excise taxes, special sales taxes, general sales taxes and 280E—all eat into profit margins. Post rescheduling, however, cannabis companies will be able to operate like their counterparts in other industries and there will be more money to reinvest into the business. 

That wider margin can be utilized in all sorts of ways, including marketing and PR that can help independent mom-and-pops and MSOs alike achieve the dream of becoming truly mainstream cannabis brands. 

Increased scientific research and media interest in cannabis are still very much needed to counteract nearly a century of racist, inaccurate cannabis messaging along the lines of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaigns and Reefer Madness—the 1930s propaganda film, that is, not the cult classic musical that in 2024 put on a 25th anniversary revival.

Shame-free consumption is key to unlocking the total addressable market for cannabis and finding receptive new audiences. The more cannabis is covered in the media and the more corporate credibility granted to cannabis professionals, the less room there is for anti-cannabis rhetoric and consumption stigma in the broader discourse.

To put it another way, stigma reduction is harm reduction—and that saves lives.

It will likely take years before cannabis advocates and activists achieve full federal legalization. Until then, however, rescheduling presents interesting opportunities to advance cannabis marketing, PR and journalism. Time will tell if the future holds cannabis ads that are more akin to commercials for Cymbalta, Remy Cointreau’s cognac or natural products brands like Celestial Seasonings, but we can’t wait to find out.

‍Ready to build your marketing and PR strategy? We’re always ready to talk through your brand’s unique needs and pain points to find a custom solution. But if you aren’t ready to start that conversation yet, check out our cannabis public relations services and cannabis marketing services to learn more about how we transform brands like yours with our proven process.