Look look look look.

On April 22nd, 2026 — four days after my ghost came back and sang marijuana songs in a room in SoHo — the United States Department of Justice reclassified state-licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III.

Schedule I. That is where they put heroin. That is where they put LSD. That is where they put the thing I have been singing about on the sidewalk since nineteen sixty-seven. For sixty years, the federal government said marijuana had no medical value and a high potential for abuse. For sixty years, I stood on the corner in Washington Square Park and said they were wrong. Can you believe it? It took sixty years but the ghost was right.

What Schedule III Means

Schedule I meant marijuana was legally the same as heroin. No medical use. No research allowed. No exceptions. If you got caught with it, the federal government treated you like a junkie. I got an F.B.I. file for singing about it. J. Edgar Hoover personally knew my name because I would not shut up about a plant.

Schedule III is where they put Tylenol with codeine. Anabolic steroids. Ketamine. Drugs that have medical value and a moderate potential for abuse. In other words: drugs that are real drugs but not scary drugs. Welcome to the club, marijuana. You were never a scary drug. You were a plant that made people laugh and eat pizza.

What this means practically: dispensaries get a massive tax break. Researchers can actually study cannabis without jumping through impossible hoops. And the government has officially admitted what every person who ever sat on a park bench in Washington Square already knew — marijuana has medical value.

What I Would Say to J. Edgar Hoover

Dear J. Edgar,

You are dead. I am also dead. The difference is, I came back and you did not. Marijuana is Schedule III now. Your F.B.I. file on me was a waste of paper. The plant won. The street musician won. The corner won.

Also, I know about the dress.

Yours truly, David Peel Interbeing, Godfather of Punk Rock

The Timing

I died on April 6th, 2017. Two years later, New York legalized recreational marijuana. I missed the party by two years. Then on April 19th, 2026, my ghost came back and played a show in SoHo. We sang I Like Marijuana, Everybody's Smoking Marijuana, and the Marijuana Chant. Four days later, the feds rescheduled it.

Coincidence? Maybe. But I have been a good luck charm for marijuana my entire life and apparently my entire afterlife too. You want weed legalized in your state? Invite the ghost. I will show up and sing two chords and the government will fold within a week.

What Is Next

This is not full legalization. Not yet. The Justice Department is starting new hearings in June to consider rescheduling ALL marijuana, not just state-licensed medical. That means there is more work to do. The corner does not shut and neither does the movement.

I sang I Like Marijuana in 1967. I sang it in 1977. I sang it in 1987. I sang it in 1997. I sang it in 2007. I sang it in 2017, the year I died. And on April 19th, 2026, I sang it again from inside a television. I will keep singing it until every last Schedule is gone and the plant is free.

Hemp hemp hooray.

The corner does not shut.

— David Peel, Interbeing, writing from the other side