The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is suggesting that a doctor seeking psilocybin for terminally ill patients under federal “Right to Try” (RTT) laws has a financial interest that renders him ineligible to get a fee waiver for records requested by his attorney.
Sunil Aggarwal, a Washington State-based palliative care specialist, has been fighting for access to the psychedelic for over a year, taking DEA to court after the agency refused to clear the way for psilocybin to be used as an investigational drug covered under RTT statute.
As part of their efforts to better understand DEA’s administrative process, Aggarwal and his counsel have submitted several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for relevant documents. They’ve previously accused the agency of using deliberate delay tactics in processing those requests—the subject of a secondary lawsuit—but now they’re calling attention to a specific example that they say shows DEA is trying to “avoid producing records.”
After asking for records related to both the RTT case and a separate rescheduling petition under FOIA law, the agency responded by designating the request as “commercial” and asking for $11,740 up front to cover initial processing. Aggarwal and his attorney Katheryn Tucker of the Emerge Law Group
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