In-person testimony in the DEA’s upcoming hearing on marijuana rescheduling will not begin until early next year, according to legal documents obtained and provided online by Marijuana Moment.
According to an order filed by DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge John Mulrooney II, designated participants should anticipate in-person hearings to begin in either January or February 2025. In the interim, the judge is seeking further clarification regarding participants’ positions and how they “would be sufficiently ‘adversely affected or aggrieved’ by the proposed scheduling action to qualify as an ‘interested person’ under the [federal] regulations.”
He wrote: “Those among the Designated Participants seeking active participation in this hearing must establish that they have made timely application and are eligible as an ‘interested person.’ To the extent that any of this has been done or adjudicated, it is not transparent in the present record. The record currently contains no hearing requests, notices of appearance, or correspondence between the Agency and the Designated Participants or those who sought that status. As the record currently stands, although the Agency has fixed a December 2, 2024 hearing date, there is no way to discern from the present record which DPs support or oppose the [proposed rescheduling rule].
“To effectively preside over this hearing, additional information must be furnished to the tribunal forthwith.”
In all, 25 organizations and/or representatives have been selected by DEA to participate in the hearing — many of which represent interests that are opposed to the proposed rescheduling order. Although NORML filed a Notice of Appearance and Notice of Intent to Participate in the hearing, and has been a party to past administrative petition efforts and hearings, it was not among those selected by the Agency.
NORML’s Deputy Director Paul Armentano said that he was disappointed but hardly surprised by the DEA’s decision to disproportionately include groups opposed to marijuana policy reform as designated participants. “The fight to end our nation’s outdated and failed cannabis prohibition laws has never been fought on a level playing field,” he said.
Armentano also said that the Judge’s decision to push back the timeline for in-person testimony was not unexpected.
“It’s always been a possibility that this process could drag out longer than many either anticipated or would like. The administrative process is cumbersome and, as we have seen historically, administrative challenges to marijuana’s Schedule I status take years to resolve,” he said.
“That said, unlike in the past, it is our political opponents who are presented with the burden of arguing against the findings of both HHS and the FDA — which has determined that cannabis does not meet the scientific criteria of either a Schedule I or Schedule II controlled substance. And it is unlikely that they will be able to do so. As previously determined by HHS, ‘The risks to the public health posed by marijuana are low compared to other drugs of abuse, such as heroin (Schedule I), cocaine (Schedule II), benzodiazepines (Schedule IV) and alcohol (unscheduled). These facts are not in dispute. As a result, I remain optimistic that common sense and evidence will ultimately trump ideology, and that advocates will one day be able to look back upon this process as marking the beginning of the end of federal cannabis prohibition.”
The Biden Administration initiated the regulatory process to review cannabis federal scheduling in late 2022. The Department of Health and Human Services recommended marijuana be moved to Schedule III last August and the Justice Department published a proposed rule to change cannabis’ classification in May.
In its public comments to DEA in July, NORML concurred with views expressed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that cannabis “has a currently accepted medical use” and that its relatively low abuse potential is inconsistent with the criteria required for substances in either Schedule I or Schedule II.
NORML’s public comments concluded: “The determination by HHS that cannabis use does not possess the same public health burden as does the use of alcohol (unscheduled), tobacco (unscheduled) or other controlled substances currently regulated in lower schedules of the CSA (e.g., benzodiazepines) is consistent with decades of worldwide scientific literature. While HHS ultimately recommends transferring cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III, NORML wishes to emphasize that these findings similarly provide a factual basis for removing cannabis from the CSA entirely. Although the HHS is not recommending descheduling at this time, NORML asserts that this position is the most appropriate one and that descheduling cannabis should be adopted by future administrations.”
