The Week in Weed: August 28, 2026

Welcome back to The Week in Weed, your Friday look at what’s happening in the world of legalized marijuana. This week, the DEA released the rescheduling hearing transcript, which runs to over 2,500 pages. Cannabis has become more popular than tobacco in the United States. And finally, we revisit a post from Dolly Parton.

RESCHEDULING TRANSCRIPT

If you’ve been wishing you could read the full transcript of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) hearing on cannabis rescheduling – this is your lucky day. Note: this is not for the faint of heart. It’s more than 2,500 pages in all, divided into separate files for each day, plus various orders. Now, we wait for DEA Administrative Law Judge Derek Julius to make a non-binding recommendation to the DEA. Parties to the hearing (the DEA and various anti-cannabis groups) have 20 days in which to object to the recommendation, after which Judge Julius makes a final recommendation to DEA Administrator Terry Cole. Lawsuits could ensue after that.

Cultivated Daily read through the transcript and came up with some interesting tidbits, including this one:

Pueblo emergency physician Karen Randall built part of her slide deck on images pulled off the internet, including a toddler with a bong sourced from Reddit. The DEA attorneys asked how she knew it was a real baby. She said she didn’t.”

CANNABIS USE

Gallup updated their annual Consumption Habits poll in July, and while cigarette use remains at an all-time low, cannabis use is heading in the opposite direction. More Americans (17%) are smoking marijuana or using edibles (15%) than are smoking cigarettes (11%). Cannabis use has more than doubled since Gallup first started asking participants about their use in 2013. 54% of American adults say they drink alcohol, so perhaps reports of its demise are premature.

AND FINALLY

In tribute to Dolly Parton, one of the very few public figures to have fans of all political stripes, we reprint a piece we ran back in 2023:

It’s not just Clint Eastwood who has to debunk phony CBD endorsement claims. Dolly Parton issued the following statement recently:

Be well everyone – we’ll see you next week!