A cannabis research company is asking a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) judge to allow it to add a young medical marijuana patient and advocate as a witness in an upcoming hearing on the Biden administration’s proposal to reschedule the drug.
In a letter brief sent to DEA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) John Mulrooney on Friday, Cannabis Bioscience International Holdings (CBIH) said that Alexis Bortell would “exclusively be a fact witness” who would speak to her experience dealing with intractable epilepsy that benefits from marijuana she’s federally prohibited from accessing.
“Ms. Bortell’s life story is incredibly compelling, and she is the exact gravamen and crux at the heart of these proceedings,” CBIH said. “Ms. Bortell has suffered greatly in her life, as a young child and to present, having to endure decades of acute severities due to the still current Schedule I illegal federal status of marijuana.”
While the DEA judge said in a prehearing ruling that he is not inclined to accept any additional motions from designated participants, CBIH requested that he make an exception because it was only recently that they were able to reach Bortell and confirm her willingness to testify.
“Your Honor, this fact testimony we feel could be extremely beneficial to the Court as to the issues at hand. If Your Honor allows her testimony, one could not rationalize any material prejudice to the other parties involved in this matter. If anything, there would be testimonial benefits to all involved in allowing her testimony, as her direct testimony will elicit practical life affects and ramifications that will be reasoned by this Court. Ms. Bortell is a genuine life study of the current scheduling decision making at the bar of the Court. Thus, CBIH cannot identify any reasoned direct prejudice to any party due to this individual’s fact based testimony.”
The letter brief also includes a summary of testimony that would be offered at the February 4 hearing that CBIH is scheduled to participate in. It details the extensive, invasive treatment she’s received since she was eight years old to address her condition, her advocacy for reform and the steps her family has taken to ensure that she can access medical cannabis, including moving from Texas to Colorado, where marijuana is legal at the state level.
“Ms. Bortell’s ability to travel freely within the country for tourism, work, or education—such as her goal of studying medicine—is hindered by federally mandated drug testing policies for THC, which would prevent her, even though her use of marijuana is medically necessary,” the summary says. “She also contends with stigma and judgment for using a medication that has been essential in saving her life.”
“The current federal classification of cannabis as a Schedule I drug continues to significantly impact the daily lives of many people dealing with this health condition and their lives,” it says. “These restrictions, consequences, and ramifications have severely limited her career opportunities, dictate where she must live, and create completely unnecessary barriers to accessing her life-saving medication.”
Rosangel Andrades, director of research and development at CBIH, said in a press release on Monday that Bortell’s story is “the reason why this reclassification should happen,” referencing the proposal to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
From childhood to adolescence, Alexis has faced unimaginable suffering,” she said. “Shouldn’t our society prioritize protecting its children and youth rather than forcing them to fight for their right to survive? The stigma of a Schedule I classification not only denies access to essential medication but also criminalizes those who seek to live healthier, fuller lives.”
John Jones, CBIH’s treasurer and director, said they hope the DEA judge will “recognize Alexis as CBIH’s witness for the DEA Hearings, as her personal journey is a Mcompelling testament to the undeniable medical benefits of cannabis.”
CBIH Files Petition to Include Alexis Bortell as Witness in DEA Rescheduling Hearinghttps://t.co/KXOka1y7Be
— CBIH (@CBIHstock) December 16, 2024
“Her experience clearly demonstrates that cannabis can no longer be classified as a Schedule I drug, which inaccurately claims it has no proven medical use,” he said.
Meanwhile, attorneys for another designated participant, Ellen Brown, separately requested on Friday that the judge accept a motion to allow a witness substitute.
They’re asking to swap in Staci Gruber, a Harvard Medical School associate professor and director of the Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND) program at McLean Hospital. Gruber has served as an expert witness in a number of contexts, including during a U.S. Senate hearing on cannabis policy in 2019.
Separately, one of the nation’s leading marijuana industry associations is asking the judge to clarify whether it will be afforded the opportunity to cross-examine DEA during the upcoming hearings on the cannabis rescheduling proposal.
DEA, for its part, separately turned in materials to the agency judge on the “homework” deadline he set for last Friday. And it asked Mulrooney to approve subpoenas to compel Food And Drug Administration (FDA) officials to testify at upcoming hearings on the marijuana rescheduling proposal.
DEA also said it will be introducing tens of thousands of public comments it received as part of the rulemaking process as evidence, even though the judge said in a prehearing ruling that such comments “are not evidence” and “cannot be,” admonishing the agency not to attempt to insert the submissions.
Meanwhile, a coalition of health professionals that advocates for cannabis reform also recently asked that the DEA judge halt future marijuana rescheduling hearings until a federal court is able to address a series of allegations they’re raising about the agency’s witness selection process.
That came on the same day the Mulrooney issued a ruling that laid out the timeline for merit-based hearings on the rescheduling proposal.
Doctors for Drug Policy Reform (D4DPR) requested that the DEA judge stay the hearings—which are currently set to commence on January 21—pending a review from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Circuit. A separate organization that was also denied participation, Veterans Action Council (VAC), similarly filed a petition with the same court last month to request a review of the agency’s decision to exclude it from the proceedings.
Mulrooney also recently addressed motions seeking to remove DEA from the proceedings altogether, in part due to the alleged unlawful communications with the president of one designated participant, the prohibitionist group Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), signaling that he considered it statutorily complex and potentially impractical to force the agency to turn over its records on the reported ex parte communications.
“If people were going to be bad people, would they write it down in a memo so that everyone could read it?” he asked attorney Matt Zorn, who filed a Freedom of Information Act request and subsequent lawsuit to obtain any records of the talks and represents D4DPR in the latest motion. “What are you chasing? Are you chasing a note that somebody wrote, ‘I had an improper conversation with somebody else, I wanted to put it the memo in case someone wants to indict me?’”
The rescheduling proceedings have generated significant public interest. While moving marijuana to Schedule III wouldn’t federally legalize it, the reform would free up licensed cannabis businesses to take federal tax deductions and remove certain research barriers.
But while DEA is designated as the “proponent” of the proposed rule, there’s been skepticism about where the agency’s leadership actually stands on the issue and whether it may insert bias into the hearing process.
In a prehearing statement submitted last month, DEA previewed the testimony its two agency witnesses plan to provide at the upcoming hearing—without clarifying where it stands on the rescheduling proposal.
The agency also said that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—which carried out a scientific review that informed the proposal to move cannabis to Schedule III—“rejected” its request to provide witnesses.
While the initial preliminary hearing happened on Monday, the merit-based proceedings were delayed until at least early 2025 after Mulrooney notified DEA that it provided insufficient information about the 25 selected witnesses that Milgram submitted.
Meanwhile, Mulrooney also denied a motion to remove the agency from hearings on the cannabis proceedings. However, he sharply criticized responses from DEA and a prohibitionist group over an allegation that they unlawfully communicated during the cannabis rulemaking process.
An attorney subsequently filed a lawsuit against DEA for allegedly violating federal public records laws, requesting that a court compel the agency to disclose communications with SAM.
Separately, the judge denied a request from a cannabis and psychedelics researcher to postpone the upcoming rescheduling hearing over the agency’s alleged “improper blocking” of witnesses, while arguing that the process should be halted at least until President-elect Donald Trump’s administration comes into power so it can review the rulemaking.
