“Reports of the marijuana rescheduling proceeding’s death are greatly exaggerated… This is a procedural pause, nothing more.”
By Eric P. Berlin and Joanne Caceres, Dentons
Reports of the marijuana rescheduling proceeding’s death are greatly exaggerated.
Despite the alarm set off by a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) proceeding to move cannabis from schedule I to schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) is very much alive. The record has been in the hands of DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Derek Julius since August 17, and with the midterm elections approaching, the industry expected, or at least hoped, for a rescheduling recommendation this month.
That timeline has now slipped—but this is a delay, not a defeat, and the industry should not panic.
This is a procedural pause, nothing more.
The GAO report raised questions about process, not substance, and the stay it prompted should cost the proceeding time, not its outcome. Moreover, it has no bearing on the rescheduling of medical marijuana. Like the other substances the GAO reviewed, medical marijuana has already been formally rescheduled, and the attorney general’s medical marijuana decision rested on 21 U.S.C. § 811(d), and the United States’s
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