The National Academies’ own project page, titled ‘Meeting of Experts: Discussion of Cannabis Use and Operational Fitness Policy for Pilots and Air Traffic Controllers,’ describes a four-part meeting series sponsored by the Department of Transportation. The stated task is to ‘enhance the FAA’s understanding of the impact of both recent and cumulative cannabis use on key functions for pilots and air traffic controllers,’ covering initial and ongoing screening, cognitive-function monitoring, and the duration and variability of impairment after cannabis use.

The page is explicit that this is a Meeting of Experts format, meaning invited specialists participate in their individual capacities rather than as a formal consensus committee, the sessions are closed to the public, and no report or published product will result. That is a meaningfully different process from a National Academies consensus study, and readers should not expect a public findings document from this specific effort.

The direct trigger is this year’s cannabis rescheduling action. Marijuana Moment reports that under an order issued by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in April 2026, marijuana products regulated by a state medical cannabis license, along with any FDA-approved marijuana products, moved from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. A separate administrative hearing is still considering broader rescheduling, including of recreational products.

According to the posted notice, as summarized in both the National Academies materials and Marijuana Moment’s reporting, this created a ‘dual-status regulatory environment’ that FAA and NASEM describe as producing ‘significant operational risk’ for aviation, including greater normalization of cannabis use, more complicated disclosure and compliance for safety-sensitive employees, and no validated criteria for FAA to determine when someone is no longer impaired.

Multiple, independent confirmations point the same direction: today’s rules have not loosened. Marijuana Moment reports that the Department of Transportation clarified in May 2026 that truck drivers, airline pilots, and other federally regulated safety-sensitive workers still cannot use medical marijuana without risking punishment, despite the federal rescheduling move. FAA’s own regulations continue to expressly prohibit safety-sensitive employees from performing their duties with marijuana or marijuana metabolites in their system.

The reporting also notes that the Transportation Security Administration separately clarified that its own marijuana policy ‘has not changed,’ pushing back on exaggerated headlines that had suggested otherwise. None of this new review process changes drug testing or medical certification standards today.

This review is unfolding alongside a broader political fight over whether rescheduling should carry any exception for safety-sensitive transportation workers. Per Marijuana Moment, a coalition of transportation and safety organizations wrote to federal officials last month raising ‘serious safety concerns’ about rescheduling’s effect on drug testing enforcement, and the House Appropriations Committee adopted a provision this July directing federal officials to keep requiring drug testing for workers such as truck drivers and airline pilots ‘regardless of any future changes to the legal status or scheduling.’

Some advocates and lawmakers have specifically pushed for a ‘carve-out’ clarifying that a 1986 executive order defining illegal drugs for federal workforce purposes still applies to cannabis even after rescheduling. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said last October that the administration was facing pressure to reschedule marijuana, calling it ‘really addictive’ and warning that reform sends a ‘dangerous’ message. This context helps explain why FAA is choosing a deliberate, evidence-review pathway rather than an immediate policy change in either direction.

If you hold, or are pursuing, an FAA medical certificate or a safety-sensitive DOT-regulated role, the practical guidance has not changed. Marijuana use, medical or otherwise, remains prohibited for these functions under current federal rules, and rescheduling to Schedule III has not altered that. Treat this review as a multi-year process to watch, not a change you can rely on today.

Patients should also expect that any eventual policy change will hinge on the same scientific question NASEM’s notice poses directly: how much time after cannabis use is needed to be confident that operational impairment has resolved. That is an unresolved, actively studied question, not a settled one.

Clinicians certifying or counseling patients in aviation or federally regulated transportation roles should be precise: federal cannabis rescheduling to Schedule III has not changed FAA medical certification standards or DOT drug testing requirements. Patients may reasonably ask whether rescheduling changes their occupational risk, and the accurate answer right now is no.

This is also a useful moment to reinforce that the pharmacokinetics of cannabis, specifically how long detectable impairment or drug-test-positive windows persist after use, remain genuinely unsettled from a regulatory-science standpoint. That is precisely the gap NASEM’s notice says FAA needs ‘structured, policy-relevant interpretation of existing scientific evidence’ to address, because there was not time to conduct new primary research before near-term policy decisions.

This review sits inside a larger pattern seen across federally regulated, safety-sensitive occupations in 2026. Trucking, the military, and now aviation are each confronting the same underlying tension: broad state-level and now federal Schedule III movement toward treating cannabis more like a regulated medical product, set against safety-sensitive federal rules that were built around Schedule I or II framing.

FAA’s choice to route this through a National Academies expert-meeting process, rather than issuing new rules directly, reflects how much scientific uncertainty still surrounds a core operational question: how long after cannabis use can a pilot or air traffic controller be reliably certified as unimpaired. Until that question has a validated answer, expect safety-sensitive agencies to keep current restrictions in place even as rescheduling reshapes cannabis policy elsewhere.

What stands out to me here is the honesty of the framing. FAA is not pretending rescheduling already answers the operational safety question, and it is not ignoring rescheduling either. It is explicitly saying that the science on elapsed time and impairment is not settled enough to support a confident policy change yet, and it is bringing in outside experts to work through that gap.

For my patients who fly, control air traffic, or work in other DOT-regulated safety-sensitive roles, my counsel remains unchanged: current federal rules still prohibit cannabis use in these positions regardless of state medical status, and that will not shift until FAA actually issues new policy, which by its own timeline is well over a year away at the earliest.

Four questions worth asking before assuming FAA cannabis policy is about to change