Caribbean Cannabis: US Court Keeps Schedule III Order in Force

On 9 September 2026, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit refused to freeze the order that moved American state-licensed medical cannabis to Schedule III. That order is the one piece of US law the Caribbean’s licensed cannabis sector has spent this year waiting on, and it survived its first serious court test. Nothing changes at a herb house counter this week.

What the court did

A three-judge panel denied a motion to stay filed in June by the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association and MMJ International Holdings, which had asked the court to suspend the order while their lawsuit to vacate it runs. “Petitioners have not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review,” the panel wrote, per Marijuana Moment’s report. The Justice Department had argued that the two challengers hold “pocketbook interests” in prohibition. The same order also refused two medical cannabis companies, MedPharm Iowa and Tri-Mountain Pure, permission to intervene on the government’s side.

The order under challenge was signed by Attorney General Todd Blanche in April 2026 and published in the Federal Register on 28 April. It reaches two categories: marijuana inside an FDA-approved drug product, and marijuana held under a qualifying state medical marijuana licence. Adult-use cannabis remains in Schedule I. A separate expedited DEA hearing opened on 29 June 2026 to consider moving all cannabis down, the record closed in July, and DEA chief administrative law judge Derek Julius has not yet issued his recommendation.

Why a Washington docket matters in Bridgetown

No part of the order licenses anyone in the Caribbean. Its regional weight is entirely about correspondent banking, the chain that lets a bank in Barbados or Jamaica settle a US dollar transaction through a US institution. Caribbean lenders have refused cannabis accounts because their US partners price Schedule I exposure as unacceptable anti-money-laundering risk, which is why most of the regional industry still runs on cash a decade into legalization.

Saboto Caesar, the St. Vincent policy specialist later retained by St. Kitts and Nevis to design a banking framework, argued in the St. Vincent Times on 30 April that the reclassification lowers exactly that risk profile. The regional banking case has been built on it since. The counterweight came from the Bahamas in June, when the Clearing Banks Association warned that Bahamian banks still cannot service cannabis firms under current US correspondent rules, naming Citibank, JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.

What This Means

For anyone travelling this autumn, treat this as no change. Jamaica’s herb houses, Puerto Rico dispensaries, and every other legal counter in the region operate under local law, which the ruling does not touch. Bring cash, expect card payments to be unreliable outside Puerto Rico, and check your destination’s rules before you fly rather than assuming a US development loosened anything.

The slower effect is real. Banked operators can take cards, hold deposits, and build the kind of premises visitors expect. A court order keeping Schedule III alive is a precondition for that, not a delivery of it.

What to Watch

The panel gave the parties 30 days to propose a briefing format, so the challenge to the order itself is still live into October. Judge Julius’s recommendation on broader rescheduling is the bigger lever and has no date on it. The one thing to watch regionally is narrower and more telling than either: whether a single Caribbean bank opens an account for a licensed cannabis operator now that the order has held.