A momentous change in federal law to the benefit of the cannabis industry and medical marijuana patients is succumbing to the burdens of federal regulatory policies and procedures, political disenfranchisement and behind-the-scenes cultural influencers. What began in earnest to change the classification of cannabis from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug now looks threatened, if not endangered. So, what is derailing rescheduling, and why?
A momentous change in federal law to the benefit of the cannabis industry and medical marijuana patients is succumbing to the burdens of federal regulatory policies and procedures, political disenfranchisement and behind-the-scenes cultural influencers. What began in earnest to change the classification of cannabis from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug now looks threatened, if not endangered. So, what is derailing rescheduling, and why?
Recent steps to rescheduling seem disheartening to cannabis proponents
In late 2022, then-President Joe Biden tasked the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Attorney General to launch formal scientific reviews to determine if marijuana should be rescheduled and, in a historic first, HHS did recommend rescheduling. The nascent cannabis industry was absolutely giddy about the prospect of rescheduling.
On May 21, 2024, an official notice was published in the Federal Register that the Biden administration was recommending rescheduling. The public was encouraged to send comments on the recommendation and, in response, 43,000 comments from advocates and opponents alike were delivered to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), which had been tasked to conduct hearings and collect evidence on rescheduling cannabis. On the campaign trail, candidate Donald Trump indicated support for rescheduling cannabis. He also suggested that regulation of cannabis should stay — as it is primarily today — in the capable hands of state regulators.
Evidentiary witness hearings on comments made to the DEA were scheduled to be held in Washington, D.C., before a DEA administrative law judge (ALJ) in January 2025. However, in December 2024 the ALJ canceled the January 2025 hearings when various cannabis companies and organizations alleged in filings to the ALJ that the DEA was biased against rescheduling, based upon reports that the DEA was holding ex parte communications with at least one prohibitionist organization. Interlocutory appellate relief was granted to consider removing DEA from the rescheduling process. The hearing process on rescheduling has stalled while the appeal proceeds.
Will the new president support the Biden administration’s attempt to reschedule by proving that cannabis has bona fide medical uses? The answer may lie in his early February 2025 nomination of Terry Cole, former secretary of public safety and homeland security for the Commonwealth of Virginia, to lead the DEA. After years of DEA employment, Cole’s social accounts attribute his public comments to be anti-cannabis.
Background on cannabis scheduling
Rescheduling would lower the 1970’s Nixon-era “War on Drugs” classification of cannabis under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) from Schedule I (like heroin and LSD) to Schedule III (like anabolic steroids, aspirin with codeine, and testosterone).
Schedule I drugs like cannabis are the most heavily regulated and restricted, and only limited research on Schedule I drugs is permitted under the CSA. Research is “notoriously expensive and time-consuming.” And when drug analyses result in a high potential for abuse and/or dependency or there is no documented medical use for the drug, that drug is doomed to Schedule I treatment. DEA’s tight control over cannabis research has roadblocked many researchers’ efforts to document cannabis’ health benefits.
Rescheduling would have had a hugely positive impact on cannabis businesses by permitting substantial federal and state tax benefits denied them now, increasing the availability of banking to cannabis businesses, making medical cannabis available to patients nationwide and imposing a systematic national process for laboratory analysis and testing of marijuana and its products. Good for business, good for the public.
Research on the use of cannabis instead of opioids and other narcotics for the treatment of PTSD, cancer recovery and chronic pain has been ongoing for years. For example, Dr. Sue Sisley is an internist and psychiatrist in Scottsdale, Arizona, and owner of the Scottsdale Research Center, and has been studying cannabis’ potential medical benefits to military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder for more than two decades. In one of her studies published in 2019 in The Journal of Pain, Sisley, among other researchers, reported that medical cannabis users used cannabis instead of pain medications because they had fewer side effects and better pain management. In 2017, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine issued a science-backed report that cannabis was an effective antiemetic for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and minimized pain in adults with chronic pain.
And, in late 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies to conduct a study of veterans with moderate to severe PTSD who will smoke marijuana and report their reactions in real-time via a mobile app.
Thus, recent research findings that there are, in fact, currently accepted medical uses for cannabis suggest that rescheduling is appropriate and the time for the federal government to reschedule is here. Remember, a lower classification of cannabis as a Schedule III drug could make cannabis cultivation, manufacturing and retailing legal across the U.S., with some limitations, conditions and prerequisites — which would be a drastic evolutionary change in the history of the human use of cannabis.
The current climate on rescheduling remains murky, particularly during the pendency of the interlocutory appeal of DEA’s review of public comments on cannabis rescheduling. The new administration’s desire to minimize government excesses and regulations and the recent appointment of a new DEA Administrator who is on record for saying “Just Say No” (to drugs) does not bode well for the rescheduling of cannabis.
H/T: www.bizjournals.com
