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President Donald Trump is weighing an executive order that would push the federal government to reclassify cannabis, a step that could mark the most significant shift in U.S. cannabis policy in decades—even as the White House cautions that no final decision has been made.
The deliberations, first reported late Thursday by The Washington Post, center on moving marijuana from Schedule I—the government’s most restrictive category, reserved for drugs deemed to have no accepted medical use—to Schedule III, a classification that would acknowledge medical value and loosen some federal controls.
“This is an encouraging development and a strong indicator that comprehensive legalization is no longer a distant goal,” says Sorse Tech CEO Howard Lee.
The Post reported Trump discussed the potential policy change in a call that included House Speaker Mike Johnson and cannabis industry executives, alongside senior administration officials. Johnson voiced skepticism, the report said, while industry participants pressed the case that rescheduling would reduce barriers to research and help normalize a legal market that now operates in tension with federal law.
In response to the news, Sasha Nutgent, VP of cannabis retail for Housing Works Cannabis Co. out of New York, tells Cannabis Now that with today’s current cannabis classification, “retailers are not incentivized to operate legally. Reclassification would change that for thousands of businesses, especially those owned by folks from communities most impacted by the War on Drugs.”
News of the possible executive order rippled quickly through financial markets early this morning. Cannabis-related stocks and exchange-traded funds jumped in premarket trading after the Post report, according to Reuters, reflecting investor optimism that a federal shift could ease access to capital and reduce tax burdens that have long squeezed state-legal operators.
Rescheduling, however, would not legalize marijuana nationwide. Even supporters describe it as a narrower, technical move with broad downstream effects—especially for research, medical access and business operations—rather than a sweeping rewrite of prohibition-era policy.
Gennaro Luce, founder and CEO at CannaLnx, powered by EM2P2, argues that “Rescheduling is an important and overdue shift for patient-centric healthcare, but the move to Schedule III alone isn’t enough to make medical cannabis more accessible or affordable.”
Luce says insurers still need verification, compliance and eligibility frameworks before they can treat medical cannabis like a real benefit. “That part of the system is still missing from the national conversation — fortunately, it’s the medical-cannabis system piece we’ve already built and tested alongside physicians, patients, dispensaries, POS systems and insurers.”
President Trump’s considerations land on well-trodden terrain. The modern push to reconsider cannabis’ federal classification accelerated under President Joe Biden, whose administration initiated a review that produced a recommendation from the Department of Health and Human Services to move cannabis to Schedule III. The Justice Department formally began the rescheduling process in 2024, opening the door to rulemaking that has since faced delays and political crosscurrents.
Policy experts say an executive order can direct agencies and set priorities, but it cannot, by itself, rewrite the Controlled Substances Act. Any durable change to cannabis scheduling ultimately runs through federal administrative procedures led by the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration, including scientific findings, legal analysis and formal rulemaking steps. That legal nuance has become familiar to cannabis readers—and to anyone who has watched the issue ricochet between campaign promises and bureaucratic reality.
In past coverage of cannabis executive action, Cannabis Now has emphasized that the “stroke of a pen” theory often collides with the limits of federal authority, even when presidents or governors have wide latitude to shape enforcement priorities and regulatory posture. Still, the political stakes are unmistakable. A Trump-backed push to reschedule could scramble the usual partisan map on cannabis, where national Democrats have often positioned themselves as the party of reform while Republicans have been divided between states’-rights advocates and prohibition-aligned lawmakers.
The Post report suggested Trump views rescheduling as a way to “cut restrictions” without endorsing full legalization—a framing that could appeal to voters who support medical access and regulated markets but remain cautious about broader social change.
For the cannabis industry, the practical implications of Schedule III are potentially enormous—but also uneven. Operators have argued that rescheduling could reduce certain federal tax penalties and make it easier for institutions to do business with cannabis companies.
Ryan Hunter, chief revenue officer for Colorado-based Spherex, a leader in cannabis extraction and purification, offers perspective: “Cannabis is still federally illegal—but even as a federally illegal substance, the move to Schedule III dramatically reduces the federal tax burden for operators. Under IRS code 280E, handling Schedule I or Schedule II substances eliminates the ability for operators to deduct standard operating expenses that most other businesses deduct from their federal taxes. As a result of 280E, cannabis operators’ effective tax rate may be as high as 80 pecent. Beyond this significant improvement, the implications are unclear, but we’re hopeful that this move will allow for cannabis operators to garner the same investment opportunities other industries will enjoy.”
Analysts told Reuters that shifting cannabis to Schedule III could also accelerate pharmaceutical research and distribution models, even as state-legal markets continue to rely on a patchwork of rules that vary widely from one jurisdiction to another. Critics, including some in Congress, argue rescheduling risks moving faster than the science. The Post reported Johnson referenced studies he said cut against reclassification, reflecting a broader debate over how to weigh evidence of therapeutic benefits against risks of misuse and dependency.
What happens next could hinge on timing and follow-through. An executive order, if issued, would likely instruct cabinet agencies to prioritize or expedite the administrative process rather than instantly change marijuana’s legal status. Even then, opponents could challenge the move politically and in court, while regulators would still need to align policy with existing federal statutes and international commitments.
“Whenever the White House moves forward with Schedule III, the federal government is effectively telling us that cannabis is medicine,” comments Calyx Containers President and Co-Founder Alex Gonzalez. “And if it’s medicine, ‘good enough’ cannabis practices won’t cut it anymore. Whether rescheduling happens next month or next year, the direction is clear: Cannabis is moving toward pharma-grade standards. For brands, that means tightening quality systems, investing in the ability to react or scale, and preparing for a regulatory-ready supply chain. We’re seeing the smart operators onshoring infrastructure, and we’re positioning our domestic production and business model on being ready to help operators turn this moment into a competitive advantage.”
In the meantime, the national reality on cannabis continues to diverge from federal law. Most states now allow marijuana for medical use, and a growing number permit adult-use sales—a shift that has normalized cannabis commerce for millions of Americans while leaving businesses and consumers navigating legal gray zones that are invisible at the dispensary counter but very real at banks, research institutions and federal agencies.
“Rescheduling is the single most important drug policy move in decades. The potential opportunities for medical and scientific research will significantly increase, while those living in states without an existing medical program will now have access to the powerful healing properties of the plant,” says Mark Lewis, president of specialty banking at Lüt.
“Make no mistake though, rescheduling is just the beginning for those working in the cannabis industry. Until the SAFE Banking Act or 280E is passed, operators will still have to jump through challenging financial hoops to pay their staff, bills or garner investment. The moment is historic, but until cannabis businesses can operate fiscally with the same ease as any other business, more work needs to be done,” Lewis continued. “Payments still need to work in the reality of today, where the ongoing threat of card network shutdowns exists, not just the promise of future reform. While rescheduling may open doors over time, it does not remove the day-to-day financial friction that cannabis operators face right now.”
Whether Trump ultimately signs an order or backs away, the past 24 hours have underscored a core truth of cannabis politics in Washington: Even incremental change can move markets, reshape messaging and reopen debates that Congress has struggled for years to settle.
The post Trump Weighs Executive Order to Advance Cannabis Rescheduling appeared first on Cannabis Now.
Cloud technology has afforded organizations the ability to operate dynamically and build new technologies quickly while keeping costs low. However, as organizations move away from on-premises IT infrastructure, they may lose visibility into their new cloud-based assets.
Cloud environments, such as the big three cloud providers (Amazon, Google and Microsoft), vastly differ from provider to provider. Large organizations likely have assets in more than one cloud environment, which creates a challenge for security teams. Specialized knowledge is needed to ensure proper configuration across cloud environments, otherwise it’s easy to lose track of existing assets and their conditions.
The likelihood that a cloud container (or bucket or blob) is improperly configured, exposing assets to the public internet, is high. One checkbox missed when setting up an application in a cloud environment could expose information unknowingly.
This is why security teams need access to offensive security testing that provides the specific expertise needed per cloud provider.
Enter the Synack Red Team (SRT) and platform. The SRT is a community of more than 1,500 security researchers, each chosen for their skillset, resulting in a large, diverse pool to perform pentests or other security testing for the cloud.
When setting up an SRT engagement with Synack, we’ll find the right security researchers with expertise tailored to your cloud or multi-cloud environment. We also handle dynamic IPs–often associated with cloud environments–with ease, updating the scope of a project every night so that deployed SRT researchers stay on target.
Whether you need IT infrastructure checked in your Microsoft Azure environment or important assets reviewed in Amazon S3 buckets, the Synack Platform has you covered. After SRT reports are vetted for high impact misconfigurations and exploitable vulnerabilities, the platform delivers reports with as much or as little detail as needed. You can also request a patch verification within the platform to ensure any remediations or reconfigurations really worked.
With Synack, you can see security trends over time. If you’re just beginning your digital transformation—moving from on-prem to the cloud—or your organization has spent years building cloud infrastructure and applications, you need to be able to demonstrate to leadership that your security measures are effective.
From round-the-clock coverage to one-off cloud vuln checklists, Synack can sniff out exploitable vulnerabilities and help you, through data and proof-of-work, build a hardened cloud attack surface.
The post Untangling Your Cloud Assets with Offensive Security Testing appeared first on Synack.
Most businesses today perform at least some of their compute functions in the cloud. For good reason. Processing in the cloud can lead to increased productivity while reducing capital and operational costs. But, as with any computer system, there can be holes in security that hackers can exploit. In 2021, the average cost was $4.8 million for a public cloud breach, $4.55 million for a private cloud breach, and $3.61 million for a hybrid cloud breach.
Breaches can also lead to the exposure of customer records. In May 2021, a Cognyte breach exposed 5 billion customer records. Perhaps the most high profile breach was at Facebook. In April of that year, hundreds of millions of customer records were exposed. Cloud customers need to be mindful of cloud security and take necessary steps to protect themselves.
Penetration testing, or pentesting, is a well-proven and critical component of any organization’s cybersecurity program. In a pentest, a trusted team of cybersecurity researchers probes your IT systems for vulnerabilities that could allow them to breach your defenses, just as a cybercriminal would do. The result of the pentest is a report on your cybersecurity posture, including vulnerabilities that need to be remediated.
Pentesting methods and practices were primarily developed with on-premises systems in mind. But today, organizations are moving more of their compute processing and data storage to the cloud. So you might ask – Is pentesting necessary for my cloud implementation? Can you even do pentesting in the cloud? The answer to both questions is a definite yes.
Whether you are using the cloud for IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), Paas (Platform as a Service) or SaaS (Software as a Service) cloud usage is essentially a shared responsibility model where both the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and the tenant share certain responsibilities, including cybersecurity. There are several potential risks and vulnerabilities that are inherent in using cloud services, such as the extensive use of APIs for communication, the potential for misconfiguration of servers and the use of outdated software or software with insecure code. If not remediated these vulnerabilities could lead to a breach. The top concerns of cloud operation are data loss, data privacy, compliance violations and exposure of credentials.
The big difference in pentesting your own system and pentesting in the cloud is that you are actually testing someone else’s system. In public and hybrid cloud implementations, in addition to shared responsibility considerations, you also have shared resources considerations. You don’t own the cloud resources, so you need to create your testing process to operate within the CSP environment.
While offloading work to the cloud has broad benefits, it also has some drawbacks. One is the lack of transparency. You don’t know exactly what hardware is being used or where your data is stored. This can make thorough pentesting more difficult. And since you are working with a resource sharing model, there is the potential for cross-account contamination if the CSP has not taken adequate steps to segment users. Most important from a testing perspective, each CSP has its own policy regarding pentesting on their systems.
Most CSPs will allow pentesting on their systems…as long as you adhere to their guidelines and restrictions. If you have a multi-cloud implementation, involving two or more CSPs, you need to ensure that you understand the pentesting policies of each. Here are a few of the considerations when pentesting in the cloud.
Not only can you pentest in the cloud, you need it to be part of your cybersecurity process. Remediating vulnerabilities discovered by pentesting will improve the security of your cloud implementation. It can also help you achieve compliance and give you a more comprehensive understanding of your cloud system. Synack’s approach to pentesting for the cloud addresses the concerns relayed here—you can set up a pentest for your cloud environment in minutes with some of the world’s top cloud security experts.
The post Pentesting for Cloud Systems: What You Need to Know appeared first on Synack.
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