The Drug Enforcement Administration has revealed that it will consider re-classifying marijuana from a Schedule 1 controlled substances during the first half of 2016.
Weed — alongside LSD, ecstasy and heroin — is currently classified as one of the most dangerous and strictly regulated drugs in the United States.
Responding to a 2015 letter from Massachusettes Senator Elizabeth Warren and seven fellow Democratic senators, the DEA said that they understand the “widespread interest in the prompt resolution to these petitions and hopes to release its determination in the first half of 2016,” The Washington Post reports.
Allen St Pierre, executive director at the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said the decision could be a signature moment of President Barack Obama's presidency.
"It's probably the last act having to do with cannabis in his tenure," St Pierre told The Denver Post. He did admit, however, that lowering the drug’s schedule “doesn’t really mean a whole hoot to legalization.”
Fifty-eight per cent of Americans said they support marijuana legalization for medical and recreation uses, according to a Gallup poll released last October.
