Dr. Oz Could Elevate Medical Marijuana Support As Trump’s Medicare And Medicaid Director

President-elect Donald Trump’s recent selection of physician and TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz to oversee the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services adds another pro-medical-marijuana voice to the forthcoming administration.

While federal prohibition means the move is unlikely to have any immediate impact on cannabis availability for patients covered by the health assistance programs, Oz could nevertheless push for broader acceptance of the substance from the office, especially if marijuana is moved to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act.

In recent years, Dr. Oz has encouraged audiences to be open openness to therapeutic cannabis and advocated for sweeping policy changes around the drug.

“We ought to completely change our policy on marijuana. It absolutely works,” he said in a 2020 interview, calling cannabis “one of the most underused tools in America.”

In August of this year, he wrote in a syndicated health column that there’s evidence cannabinoids can curb seizures, alleviate nausea associated with cancer treatment and potentially help manage pain—especially in older people.

“If your physician recommends it to manage pain, especially if you’re 65 and older, give it a try,” Oz wrote with co-author Michael Roizen, a doctor focused on aging.

At the same time, they cautioned that medical marijuana is “an evolving field with limited research.”

I am honored to be nominated by @realDonaldTrump to lead CMS. I look forward to serving my country to Make America Healthy Again under the leadership of HHS Secretary @RobertKennedyJr. pic.twitter.com/aYIQJHG5Ej

— Dr. Mehmet Oz (@DrOz) November 19, 2024

In his earlier 2020 comments, Oz claimed that he’d had conversations with officials at both the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), who both told him the other agency was an obstacle to reform.

“I called the DEA,” he said. “They said, ‘We don’t want this to be illegal. Your government ought to change that. But we got to enforce the law.’ I call the FDA that regulates the drugs. They say, ‘We think it ought to be used, but until the DEA says it’s allowed, we can’t let people prescribe it everywhere.’”

Oz also said the time that he believes, particularly for seniors, that marijuana for pain represents a “safer solution than, for example, narcotics in many cases.”

“I’ve seen this helping people with sleep issues, with pain issues for sure, and a lot of people who have serious medical problems getting relief—and here’s the thing, you can’t die from it,” he said. “I’m unaware of any case when anyone has overdosed.”

In 2017, Oz tweeted that “medical marijuana could help patients, & even have a major impact on the opiate crisis.”

Medical marijuana could help patients, & even have a major impact on the opiate crisis. Be sure to join us tomorrow: https://t.co/NG5RW7Rryy

— Dr. Mehmet Oz (@DrOz) September 21, 2017

Also that year, Oz led a petition calling on the National Institutes of Health to increase its support for marijuana research.

“Outdated beliefs and policies have prevented our country from funding medical cannabis research but the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has reviewed other scientific research and found evidence that patients treated with cannabis or cannabinoids were more likely to experience a significant reduction in pain symptoms,” he said at the time. “Yet the government still says cannabis has no proven medical value.”

“The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funds much of our nation’s medical research, allots only $111 million dollars to cannabis research. This sounds like a large number, but it represents a mere 0.3 percent of NIH’s total spending on research and is only 0.1 percent of the cost of the opioid epidemic. This is a drop in the bucket for something that experts believe could have the potential to help in our fight against the number one killer of adults under 50. Studies already suggest that states with medical cannabis laws have a 25 percent lower mean annual opioid overdose mortality rate compared with states without medical cannabis laws.”

Here are the facts you need to know about #MedicalMarijuana. Please share, and support our @change petition here: https://t.co/ASJWKcBOdw pic.twitter.com/wTyrBhvexR

— Dr. Mehmet Oz (@DrOz) September 22, 2017

Despite his positive claims around medical marijuana in past years, Oz has generally opposed recreational use of marijuana. During his unsuccessful 2022 run for Senate against then-Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D), Oz criticized his opponent for supporting marijuana legalization. Appearing on Fox News, he made dismissive comments about the “pot flag” that Fetterman hung on the balcony of his Capitol office as he pushed for legalization in the Keystone State.

In his August column, Oz made various claims about the dangers of recreational marijuana use, saying it “can have lots of negative repercussions and that especially concerns us for young folks, who, now that pot is de-criminalized, may think they need it to get through the day.”

He also peddled a dubious claim that smoking a cannabis joint “produces eight times as much lung- and brain-damaging particulate matter as one manufactured cigarette.” And he said “chronic use of cannabis is linked to respiratory issues and an increased risk for testicular cancer, anxiety and depression.”

“All of this means we need more standardized products and more studies of those products to determine risks and benefits,” Oz and Roizen said.

Oz nevertheless has been consistently supportive of medical marijuana as a promising alternative to traditional medications.

In 2017, he asserted that marijuana could represent a tool to combat the opioid epidemic and subsequently made other public comments about the plant’s therapeutic potential.

“I’m hoping the federal government at some point—someone’s going to say, ‘come on, this is a farce, open it up for the entire country,’” the doctor has said. “That way, the right people can begin to prescribe it.”

Currently, none of the federal health programs that Oz will oversee cover the use of medical marijuana. As a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report earlier this year explained, substances in Schedule I cannot lawfully be prescribed by doctors.

In order for that to change, the substance would need to be rescheduled, CRS said, and FDA would need to approve specific formulations for use.

“If marijuana were moved from Schedule I to Schedule III, it could in theory be dispensed and used by prescription for medical purposes,” CRS said in a subsequent analysis. “However, prescription drugs must be approved by FDA. Although FDA has approved some drugs derived from or related to cannabis, marijuana itself is not an FDA-approved drug.”

Several other people tapped by Trump to be top administration officials are broadly supportive of marijuana reform and could have more immediate effects on policy.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), will have the chance to advance major drug policy reforms he’s championed such as promoting access to psychedelics therapy and reshaping federal marijuana laws.

Kennedy followed a dizzying path to the Trump administration, entering the 2024 presidential election as a Democratic candidate before switching to independent as he lagged in the polls and then eventually endorsing the GOP nominee. Along that path, he stood out in part for his drug policy platform, which involved legalizing and taxing certain psychedelics in addition to cannabis.

If confirmed by the Senate or otherwise elevated to health and human services secretary via a recess appointment, Kennedy will be in a unique position of influence to follow up on those goals, commanding control of the nation’s health apparatus that oversees FDA and other critical agencies.

Last month, Kennedy specifically criticized FDA over the agency’s “suppression of psychedelics” and a laundry list of other issues that he said amounted to a “war on public health” that would end under the Trump administration.

Kennedy has also been open about his own struggles with addiction during his youth and the lessons that he’s taken away from his decades in recovery. While he said he’s generally not one to recommend a drug to treat substance misuse, he’s seen in his own family how psychedelics can facilitate the type of psychological healing needed for long-term recovery.

“I would legalize psychedelic drugs—some form of legalization,” he said in June, adding that he didn’t necessarily envision a commercial market where anyone could visit a shop to buy the substances but that there should be regulated access.

“I don’t know about just buying them in stores. I have to look at all that,” he said. “But in one way or another, we need to make it easy for people to use them in ways that could benefit our children and could benefit everybody. I’ve seen it in my own family, the benefits of it.”

Meanwhile, many marijuana industry stakeholders are optimistic about Trump’s selection of Matt Gaetz, formerly a congressman for Florida, to be U.S. attorney general. Well before Gaetz was even considered a potential candidate, he’d already previewed his plans if he was chosen to lead the Department of Justice: “Go easy on marijuana.”

Gaetz, who resigned from his House after Trump tapped him for the nation’s top law enforcement position, was among the only GOP members of Congress who voted for a Democratic-led cannabis legalization bill. He did so twice, and he’s also backed other more modest reforms such as marijuana industry banking access.

For marijuana stakeholders, Trump’s choice of Gaetz is a welcome one in that it suggests state cannabis markets could continue to see a policy of non-interference from the federal government and that Biden administration’s plans to reschedule marijuana would proceed despite the White House changeup.

Gaetz also said last year that he’s concerned that if the federal government doesn’t “go further” than simply moving marijuana to a lower drug schedule, large pharmaceutical companies might be able to overtake the cannabis industry.

For now, Trump’s selections of top officials are tentative. They must still be confirmed by the Senate or otherwise ascend to the job via recess appointments. Among what are widely seen as unconventional picks, both Kennedy and Gaetz could both face pushback from congressional lawmakers on their way to the new posts.

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