Earlier this year, tens of thousands of people spoke out after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) proposed re-regulating marijuana under federal drug laws and put the issue out for public comment. Marijuana laws, but prohibitionist lawmakers won.
In May, the DEA filed a rule in the Federal Register proposing to change the classification of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act from Schedule I, which is classified as having “no currently accepted medical use and a high likelihood of abuse.” drugs) were changed to Schedule III, which means those with “moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.” With the change, marijuana will no longer be regulated as a dangerous substance similar to heroin or ecstasy, but will be in the same category as testosterone and Tylenol and codeine.
Changing from Schedule I to Schedule III does not mean full legalization, or even close to it: while the change will open up the possibility that doctors can prescribe cannabis or its derivatives as medicine, it will remain as a controlled substance With regulation, anyone selling marijuana in a state where it is legal recreationally would still be violating federal law.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) first requested the rescheduling in August 2023, saying in a letter to DEA Administrator Anne Milgram that “marijuana currently has an acceptable status in the United States.” Medical use. The DEA said in the new rule that the change is “consistent” with the view of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
When the administration proposes new rules, there is typically a 60-day public comment period during which the public can comment on the proposal. The public comment period on the marijuana rescheduling expired last week, and the DEA has posted 42,916 comments, the vast majority of which either support the measure or say it doesn’t go far enough.
According to the Drug Policy Alliance’s analysis, 29,750 comments (69.3% of the total) “supported deregulating, decriminalizing, or legalizing marijuana at the federal level.” To come to this conclusion, the group scoured all comments dozens of key terms, such as schedule, decriminalizationand legalizationand then run the results through ChatGPT to check for accuracy.
Marijuana industry data analytics company Headset conducted a similar analysis and found that 92.45% of people favor some kind of change in the classification of marijuana. Of those, 61.7% “advocated deregulating cannabis entirely,” and 38.3% supported “rescheduling to a less restrictive category.”
“This comment period shattered the DEA’s previous record and even surpassed the controversial 2020 telemedicine rule, which received approximately 38,000 comments,” the Headset report states. “To put this in perspective, the recent DEA Proposals typically receive anywhere from a few hundred to approximately 1,500 comments, even on major issues such as scheduling new substances or adjusting production quotas for controlled substances.”
These numbers should come as no surprise: A March 2024 Pew Research Center poll found that 57% of respondents said marijuana should be legal for both medical and recreational use, while another 32% supported legalization only for medical purposes change.
The results paint a clear picture: Americans are ready for marijuana to no longer be entirely illegal at the federal level. But of course, lawmakers are likely to delay it as long as possible.
“The circumstances surrounding this proposed rule are unusual,” wrote Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Brett Guthrie, R-Wash., chairmen of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “We are concerned about the process that led to this decision,” wrote Xavier Becerra.
McMorris Rodgers and Guthrie note that as recently as 2016, “both DEA and HHS agreed that marijuana continued to meet the criteria to be considered a Schedule I substance. In fact, HHS concluded that[…]Marijuana has a high potential for abuse, has no accepted medical uses in the United States, and lacks acceptable levels of safety even when used under medical supervision. Less than a decade later, President Biden issued a public statement on October 6, 2022…requiring HHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to initiate administrative proceedings to expeditiously review the regulatory status of marijuana under federal law.
Lawmakers are right to say that there is a stunning reversal in the positions of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services. But the government’s stance on the ban has long been tenuous and it opposes reclassification. The DEA has long argued that marijuana lacks “currently recognized medical uses,” despite the fact that its Schedule I classification makes research on its potential medical uses nearly impossible.
In its 2023 recommendations, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) violated that standard, instead concluding based on “extensive clinical experience” that there is “robust scientific support” for the use of marijuana to treat certain conditions. and as reasonJacob Sullum points out that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drugs containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, back in 1985, first listing it on Schedule II , and then downgraded to Schedule III.
While the administration’s change of heart was almost certainly spurred by Biden’s public insistence on 2022, the fact remains that its previous position is increasingly untenable, especially in the face of public opinion and a growing number of states and districts Legalizing Marijuana for Medical Use. The move to Schedule III classification should be a minimum requirement rather than a troubling trend.
