Medical Cannabis Is Now a Controlled Substance
DEA's final rule published April 28, 2026 moved marijuana, marijuana extract and naturally-derived delta-9-THC handled under a state medical marijuana license into Schedule III. On October 30, 2026 DEA announced its first registrations: more than 900 medical dispensaries in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. About 6,000 other medical operators are timely applicants, allowed to keep operating under their state license while DEA reviews them. For every one of them, expired, damaged, recalled and returned medical product is now controlled-substance inventory, with federal recordkeeping attached. Adult-use product was not rescheduled and stays in Schedule I.
The Rules That Now Apply
DEA's guidance says registrants handling Schedule III medical marijuana must keep every record required for Schedule III controlled substances under 21 CFR Part 1304: initial and biennial inventories and a record of each receipt, sale and disposal, kept for two years. Registrants and timely applicants may handle medical product only with other registrants and timely applicants, and timely applicants are expected to have verified every trading partner by November 29, 2026. Your state program's tracking and reporting rules still apply on top of the federal ones, so disposal has to reconcile in both systems.
Schedule III Medical Cannabis Product
Expired and out-of-date product, failed-testing and quarantined batches, recalls, customer returns, damaged product and discontinued SKUs make up your controlled-substance stream. It leaves your inventory the way a pharmacy's expired controls do: transferred to a DEA-registered reverse distributor, documented with an invoice or transfer record (Schedule III needs no DEA Form 222), destroyed by incineration to DEA's non-retrievable standard, with the reverse distributor completing DEA Form 41 and returning a Certificate of Destruction. File the transfer record and certificate with your Part 1304 records and use them to close the product out in your state tracking system. Choose a reverse distributor whose DEA certificate covers Schedule III, and keep a copy in your trading-partner file.
Extraction Solvents as RCRA-Hazardous Waste
Extraction and processing generate the most technically demanding stream: spent solvents such as ethanol, processing and lab chemicals, and other characteristic hazardous chemicals. These have to be characterized before disposal, because the RCRA listing or characteristic sets the path. Under EPA 40 CFR and DOT rules they are segregated by compatibility, manifested and destroyed at a permitted facility. Keep them out of the controlled-substance kit; they ship on their own manifest.
Vape Hardware and Lithium Battery Waste
Vape cartridges, pens, damaged hardware and their lithium batteries are e-waste and universal waste, not general trash. Under EPA universal-waste rules, batteries and electronics must be diverted from the trash and handled correctly, and lithium batteries are a genuine fire risk in a compactor or hauler truck. Segregate battery-bearing hardware at the source, away from product and general waste, and route it to universal-waste handling.