One DEA, Two Directions: How America's Drug Scheduling System Moves Both Ways at Once

On June 29, 2026, the DEA opened administrative hearings on whether to further reclassify marijuana down the federal schedule, building on the administration's April move from Schedule I to Schedule III ^[1]. Two days later, on July 1, the same agency temporarily classified synthetic 7-hydroxymitragynine and three related compounds — concentrated derivatives of the kratom plant — as Schedule I controlled substances, the most restrictive category in federal law, reserved for substances with no accepted medical use and high abuse potential ^[2]. One agency, one week, two substances moving in opposite directions through the same scheduling machinery. The contrast is not subtle. Marijuana had been in Schedule I alongside heroin. The administration moved it to Schedule III in April, and the June hearings considered pushing it further still ^[1]. Psychedelics, too, were moving toward less restriction: the administration had signed an order in April accelerating psilocybin and LSD research for military veterans with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries ^[1][2]. Synthetic kratom derivatives went the other way — into Schedule I, effective July 1 ^[2]. What separates the substances that loosened from the one that tightened is not the scientific process itself. The kratom ban has an HHS determination behind it — no accepted medical use, high abuse potential — and the American Kratom Association, the industry's main advocacy group, backed the ban to protect natural kratom's reputation ^[2]. Missouri's attorney general cited 197 deaths in the state linked to 7-OH and called kratom alkaloids

Kratom alkaloids, especially 7-OH, are dangerous opioids that carry serious health risks. — Catherine Hanaway

^[3]. The ban is not arbitrary. But the same kind of scientific and health assessment justified moving marijuana the other way. The system can produce a rationale for movement in either direction. What differs is who is pushing. Marijuana carries a legalized industry, tax revenue in dozens of states, and a years-long lobbying infrastructure. Psychedelics carry a veterans' constituency that gave the issue political traction in an administration attuned to that constituency. The president himself mused on May 11 that his administration was

We're looking very seriously at natural 7-OH and getting that approved. — Donald Trump

— yet seven weeks later, his DEA imposed the harshest possible federal restriction on the synthetic version of that same compound ^[2]. No organized constituency existed to press the case for a less restrictive approach, and none did. The same DEA administrator, Terrance Cole, signed the Schedule I order for synthetic kratom derivatives ^[2] while under criminal investigation by the state of New Mexico for a different enforcement decision: allowing hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to circulate between 2023 and 2025 in order to build larger trafficking cases ^[4][5]. A DEA whistleblower, David Howell, described the tactic bluntly.

We poisoned our community to make cases. — David Howell

A 15-month-old toddler in Española was among the dead ^[5]. New Mexico's governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, declared a public health emergency and deployed the National Guard in response to the DEA's own tactics ^[4].

Make no mistake: the DEA knew people would die if these pills made it into New Mexico communities, and the agency let it happen anyway. — Michelle Lujan Grisham

New Mexico is weighing a civil claim that would seek billions in damages from the DEA, with Lujan Grisham calling the fentanyl strategy

It is the most derelict, despicable act in my long political career. — Michelle Lujan Grisham

while noting that state overdose deaths rose 21 percent even as national deaths declined 14 percent ^[6]. New Mexico launched its criminal probe on June 26 ^[4] — the same day the UN observed the International Day Against Drug Abuse, with Secretary-General António Guterres calling for

it inflicts profound harm on people and communities around the world while fuelling violence, crime and instability. — António Guterres

^[7]. An international body calling for harm reduction and a U.S. state opening a criminal investigation of its own drug enforcement agency landed on the same calendar day, pointing at opposite diagnoses of the same crisis. That tension is not only international. It runs through one government. The week the DEA moved synthetic kratom derivatives to Schedule I, the FDA — a sister agency in the same federal government — cleared a medical device for detecting opioid-induced respiratory depression, a technological tool for keeping people alive rather than restricting supply ^[8]. Two agencies, same week, same opioid crisis, incompatible instruments: one reaching for prohibition, the other for detection. It runs between federal and state levels, too. North Carolina's legislature advanced a bill setting a minimum age of 21 for kratom purchase — treating it as an age-restricted consumer product with misdemeanor penalties for sellers, not a Schedule I threat ^[9]. Kansas went the other direction, imposing a total kratom ban starting July 1 ^[3]. And it runs beyond U.S. borders: Ireland's Joint Committee on Drugs Use recommended that personal drug possession cease to be a criminal matter and instead be met with a health-led approach ^[10]. The committee's deputy chair framed it as

This is about recognising drug use and addiction as a public health issue. — Mary Fitzpatrick

^[10]. The enforcement apparatus is not uniformly failing. In May 2026, the DEA arrested more than 130 suspects and seized 4.7 million fentanyl pills nationwide in a pair of operations ^[11]. The New Mexico "let drugs walk" tactic culminated in the agency's largest-ever fentanyl bust in Albuquerque ^[5]. A former U.S. attorney defended the calculus:

The bigger fish are worth catching, and that will save more lives. — Alex Uballez

^[5]. The results are real. The question is what they cost, and who pays. The pattern visible across these stories is not that the system is broken or that one philosophy is correct. It is that the system can move in either direction, and does — sometimes in the same week, sometimes in the same agency. The harm-reduction approach the UN recommends, that Ireland is adopting, that the FDA practices with detection devices, that North Carolina practices with age restrictions, and that the administration practices with psychedelic research for veterans coexists with the prohibition approach the DEA practices with Schedule I classification and "let drugs walk" case-building. Which approach prevails for a given substance correlates with whether that substance has an organized constituency capable of pulling policy toward less restriction. Marijuana and psychedelics do. Synthetic kratom derivatives do not. The kratom ban's scientific basis is genuine, and the industry itself was split. But the marijuana downgrade's scientific basis was genuine too. The same institutional process produced opposite results. What remained constant was the direction each substance traveled: toward less restriction where a constituency pushed, toward maximum restriction where none did. The scheduling system's claim to consistent risk-based classification is hardest to sustain when it is moving two substances in opposite directions through the same doors in the same week, under the same administrator, in the same building.