US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana

One major effect of this is that weed stores will be able to use banks and payment processors legally once the regulators catch up.

How? It's still federally illegal to sell schedule 3 to consumers without a DEA licensed rx and dea licensing. The banks would still be knowingly in conspiracy to transmit illegal drug money and a litany of felonies for recreational or purely state-licensed 'medical'.

You can sell schedule 3 drugs to consumers. Pharmacies do this all the time.

'without a DEA licensed rx and dea licensing'

Rx under DEA scrutiny is nothing like rec or laughable state controlled medical 'recommendations'. You pull that shit as a provider on controlled scripts and your charts get audited, your DEA license gets pulled.

But it does mean that it will actually, for the first time ever in living memory, be possible for someone to fully federally legally possess a THC-active form of cannabis without further Congressional action. I'm not sure if a state-legal cannabis supply chain could be fully federally legal in this context, but imagine if a pharma company goes through the FDA approval process for a THC pill and then doctors prescribe it for patients based on their medical judgment that it will help alleviate pain for some chronic condition like Crohn's disease. (I expect both of those steps to happen in practice, over time of course due to how many prerequisites exist for FDA approval, to the extent they haven't already been begun.)

Imagine a noncitizen in that situation being able to tell a border officer, or a citizen being able to tell a security clearance investigator: "Yes, I do use THC. Here's my prescription and the bottle from the pharmacy." and being confident of no negative repercussions. Wonderful progress compared to where we are now.

Agree with the sentiment but isn't legal marinol roughly fulfilling that niche of THC pill?

You could already get THC script, in that context this seems like a half hearted concession for flower to stall and poison legalization efforts by giving a victory poisoned with DEA licensing that inserts the nasty tendrils of the weed hating DEA into medical flower.