Trump signs executive order that could reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that could reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug and open new avenues for medical research, a major shift in federal drug policy that inches closer to what many states have done.

The switch would move marijuana away from its current classification as a Schedule I drug, alongside heroin and LSD. Cannabis would instead be a Schedule III substance, like ketamine and some anabolic steroids.

Reclassification by the Drug Enforcement Administration would not make it legal for recreational use by adults nationwide, but it could change how the drug is regulated and reduce a hefty tax burden on the cannabis industry.

The Republican president said he had received a deluge of phone calls supporting the move and its potential to help patients. “We have people begging for me to do this. People that are in great pain,” he said.

Medical marijuana is now allowed by 40 states and Washington, D.C., and many states have also legalized it for recreational use. But U.S. laws have remained stricter, potentially leaving people subject to federal prosecution.

The Justice Department under Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, previously proposed reclassifying marijuana to a Schedule III substance. Unlike Biden, Trump did not have open encouragement from across his party for the move. Some Republicans have spoken out in opposition to any changes and urged Trump to maintain current standards.

Such a switch typically requires an arduous process, including a public comment period that has drawn tens of thousands of reactions from across the U.S. The DEA was still in the review process when Trump took office in January. Trump ordered that process to move along as quickly as legally possible, though an exact timeline remained unclear.

Polling from Gallup shows Americans largely back a less restrictive approach: Support for marijuana legalization has grown from just 36% in 2005 to 64% this year. Yet that’s down slightly from a couple of years ago, primarily because of declining support among Republicans, Gallup said.

Trump’s order also calls for expanded research and access to CBD, a legal and increasingly popular hemp-derived product whose benefits to treat things like pain, anxiety and sleep issues are debated by experts.

A new Medicare pilot program would allow older adults to access legal hemp-derived CBD at no cost, if recommended by a doctor, said Dr. Mehmet Oz, who heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Still, the marijuana changes are not universally welcomed. More than 20 Republican senators, several of them staunch Trump allies, signed a letter this year urging the president to keep marijuana a Schedule I drug.

Led by North Carolina Sen. Ted Budd, the group argued that marijuana continues to be dangerous and that a shift would “undermine your strong efforts to Make America Great Again.” They argued, too, that marijuana negatively affects users' physical and mental health, as well as road and workplace safety.

“The only winners from rescheduling will be bad actors such as Communist China, while Americans will be left paying the bill,” the letter said, referring to China's place in the cannabis market.

In the early days of the second Trump administration, the Justice Department showed little interest in discussing marijuana rescheduling, which had encountered strong resistance from inside the DEA under Biden, according to a former U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in an effort to avoid retaliation.

Trump has made his crusade against other drugs, especially fentanyl, a feature of his second term, ordering U.S. military attacks on Venezuelan and other boats the administration insists are ferrying drugs. He signed another executive order declaring fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.

Jack Riley, a former deputy administrator of the DEA, backed the focus on the drug war as a national security priority, but said marijuana rescheduling sends a conflicting message.

“He’s blowing up boats in Latin America that he says are full of fentanyl and cocaine but on the other hand loosening the restrictions that will allow wider exposure to a first-level drug,” said Riley, who was in the running to lead the DEA upon Trump’s return to the White House. “That is clearly a contradiction.”

Opponents like the group Smart Approaches to Marijuana vowed to sue if the reclassification goes through.

On the other end of the spectrum, some pro-marijuana advocates want to see the government go further and treat cannabis more like alcohol. Trump hasn't committed to bigger steps like decriminalizing marijuana, and said Thursday that he encouraged his own children not to use drugs.

Still, he said “the facts compel" the government to recognize that marijuana can have legitimate medical applications. And it has become a part of the health care environment in many states.

Currently, 30,000 licensed health care practitioners are authorized to recommend its use for more than 6 million patients for at least 15 medical conditions, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found.

The Food and Drug Administration has found credible scientific support for its use to treat anorexia-related medical conditions, nausea, vomiting and pain. Older adults, in particular, are using it for chronic pain, which afflicts 1 in 3 from that age group.

Barrow reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim, Laura Ungar in Louisville, Ky., and Josh Goodman in Miami contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump displays an executive order reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump listens as Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks during an executive order signing in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

FILE - A medical marijuana plant grows at CRC on July 23, 2024, in Pike County, Ala. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler, File)

President Donald Trump speaks during an executive order signing in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump signs an executive order reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump displays an executive order reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

LONDON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been damning of the U.K.'s naval capabilities. Their jibes may have stung in a country with a long and proud maritime history, but they do carry some substance.

The U.K. has been at the forefront of Trump’s ire since the onset of the Iran war on Feb. 28, when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer refused to grant the U.S. military access to British bases.

Though that decision has been partly reversed with the decision to permit the U.S. to use the bases, including that of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, for so-called defensive purposes, Trump is adamant he was let down. He has repeatedly lashed out at Starmer and branded the Royal Navy’s two aircraft carriers as “toys.”

“You don’t even have a navy,” he told Britain's Daily Telegraph in comments published Wednesday. "You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work.”

Hegseth, meanwhile, said sarcastically that the “big, bad Royal Navy” should get involved in making the Strait of Hormuz safe for commercial shipping.

For numerous reasons, the Royal Navy is not as big and bad as it used it to be when Britannia ruled the waves. But it's not as feeble as Trump and Hegseth imply and is largely similar with the French navy, which it is often compared with.

“On the negative side, there is a grain of truth, with the Royal Navy being smaller than it has been in hundreds of years,” said professor Kevin Rowlands, editor of the Royal United Services Institute Journal. “On the positive side, the Royal Navy would say that it’s entering its first period of growth since World War II, with more ships set to be built than in decades.”

It’s not that long ago that Britain could muster a task force of 127 ships, including two aircraft carriers, to sail to the south Atlantic after Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands. That 1982 campaign, which then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan was lukewarm about, marked the final hurrah of Britain’s naval pedigree.

Nothing on that scale, or even remotely, could be accomplished now. Since World War II, Britain’s combat-ready fleet has declined substantially, much of it linked to changing military and technological advances and the end of empire. But not all.

The number of vessels in the Royal Navy fleet, including aircraft carriers, destroyers frigates and submarines has fallen from 166 in 1975 to 66 in 2025, according to The Associated Press' analysis of figures from the Ministry of Defense and the House of Commons Library.

Though the Royal Navy has two aircraft carriers at its command, there was a seven-year period in the 2010s when it had none. And the number of destroyers has halved to six while the frigate fleet has been slashed from 60 to just 11.

The Royal Navy faced criticism for the time it took to send the HMS Dragon destroyer to the Middle East after the war with Iran broke out. Though naval officials worked night and day to get it shipshape for a different mission than the one it was readying for, to many it symbolized the extent to which Britain’s military has been gutted since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

For much of the Cold War, Britain was spending between 4% and 8% of its annual national income on its military. After the Cold War, that proportion steadily dropped to a low of 1.9% of GDP in 2018, fuel to Trump's fire.

Like other countries, Britain, largely under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, sought to use the so-called “peace dividend” following the collapse of the Soviet Union to divert money earmarked for defense to other priorities, such as health and education.

And the austerity measures imposed by the Conservative-led government in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008-9 prevented any pickup in defense spending despite the clear signs of a resurgent Russia, especially after its annexation of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine.

In the wake of Russia's full-blown invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and with another Middle East war underway, there's a growing understanding across the political divide that the cuts have gone too far.

Following the Ukraine invasion, the Conservatives started to turn the military spending tide around. Since the Labour Party returned to power in 2024, Starmer is seeking to ramp up British defense spending, partly at the cost of cutting the country's long-vaunted aid spending.

Starmer has promised to raise U.K. defense spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2027, and the updated goal is now for it to rise to 3.5% of GDP by 2035, as part of a NATO agreement pushed by Trump. That, in plain terms, will mean tens of billions pounds more being spent — a lot more kit for the armed forces.

The pressure is on for the government to speed that schedule up. But with the public finances further imperilled by the economic consequences of the Iran war, it's not clear where any additional money will come.

The jibes will likely keep coming even though the critiques are unfair and far from the truth, said RUSI's Rowlands, who was a captain in the Royal Navy.

“We are dealing with an administration that doesn’t do nuance," he said.

This story has been corrected to show there were 166 vessels in 1975, not 466.

An artillery piece from the 1982 Falklands War between Argentina and Britain lies on Mount Longdon on the Falkland Islands, also known as Islas Malvinas, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan)

FILE - The Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales is pictured before its port call in Tokyo, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

FILE - Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks to Royal Marines onboard the HMS ST Albans in Oslo, during his visit to Norway on Friday, May 9, 2025.(AP Photo/Alastair Grant, Pool, File)

FILE - Indonesian soldiers stand guard as Royal Navy offshore patrol vessel HMS Spey is docked at Tanjung Priok Port during a port visit in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana, File)

FILE - Crews walk near the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales before its port call in Tokyo Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)