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The Alkaloid #13: The Empty Chair

The FDA lost its commissioner in May. Four weeks from now, the agency is supposed to help decide whether all marijuana moves to Schedule III. The most powerful job in American drug policy is being done by a caretaker, and almost nobody is talking about it.

The most powerful seat in drug policy, and no one is in it. The June 29 hearing won't wait for that to change.

The Dose

The most powerful job in American drug policy is empty right now, and the timing could hardly be worse.

Marty Makary resigned as FDA commissioner in mid-May, ending a turbulent 13 months marked by staff departures, leaks, and a final standoff with the White House over flavored vapes. In his place sits Kyle Diamantas, the agency's food-program chief, a lawyer by training with no clinical background, holding the role on a temporary basis.

Here is why that matters to anyone watching cannabis or psychedelics. On June 29, the DEA opens an expedited hearing on whether to move all marijuana, including adult-use, from Schedule I to Schedule III. The psychedelics executive order is sitting on the FDA's desk waiting to be put into practice. A November deadline looms that could reshape the hemp and CBD market. Every one of those threads runs through the commissioner's office. And that office, four weeks before the biggest hearing in 50 years, has a caretaker in it.

The reform conversation has never been louder. The machinery meant to deliver it has rarely looked shakier.

Quick Hits

The hearing has a hard clock. The June 29 proceeding isn't open-ended. It's designed to conclude by July 15, with firm procedural deadlines meant to prevent the stalling that killed the last attempt. The window to participate already closed in late May.

Medical already won. Recreational is still waiting. April's order moved FDA-approved and state-licensed medical marijuana to Schedule III. Adult-use, which is most of the market, stayed Schedule I. June 29 is the proceeding that could finally change that.

The acting commissioner isn't a doctor. Diamantas comes from the legal and food-safety side of the FDA, not the clinical side. How the agency engages with a scientific rescheduling question under that kind of leadership is an open question.

RFK Jr. is searching for a replacement. HHS confirmed the hunt is on, but major regulatory actions, including the June 29 hearing, won't wait for a permanent commissioner to be confirmed.

That's the news. The analysis is below — Science Desk, Market Watch, and a closing thought.

A dried psilocybin mushroom against a dark green background, with a faint molecular diagram and immune-cell illustrations behind it.

Field Notes #4: The Anti-Inflammatory Trip You Can't Feel

People are searching for "microdose therapy for chronic inflammation" and finding wellness sites that promise more than the science can back. Psychedelics show real anti-inflammatory promise in the lab. Whether a microdose delivers it in a human body is a different, much shakier question.

A split image: a clinical glass vial and an IV needle on a cold sterile surface on the left, and a clay pot of dark ayahuasca brew surrounded by vines and candlelight on the right

Field Notes #3: The Molecule Without the Ceremony

A London lab gave 34 depressed people a single IV dose of DMT, the compound in ayahuasca, and saw depression scores fall for up to six months. No ceremony, no all-night vigil, no nausea. Just the molecule. Which raises a question the trial can't answer: how much was ever the chemical alone?

A cannabis leaf on the dividing line between a stack of cash with a financial report in warm light and the shadow of prison bars on a concrete floor

The Alkaloid #12: The Tax Break and the Cell

In April, the DOJ rescheduled medical cannabis to Schedule III — handing operators billions in tax relief. It opened zero prison cells. Now 29 members of Congress want Trump to commute the sentences of roughly 3,000 people still serving federal time for a drug the government just reclassified.

Vetoed legislation document stamped in red ink, with a gavel and cannabis leaf on a dark wooden desk

Field Notes #2: Five Years in the Gray Market

Virginia just vetoed the bill that would have launched legal cannabis sales. The political story is small. The larger one — five years of legal possession without legal sales has produced the country's most documented case of what gray markets actually cost.