Lawyers for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on Monday highlighted testimony on marijuana’s medical benefits and its relative safety compared to other substances such as alcohol and opioids on the opening day of a hearing on the Trump administration’s cannabis rescheduling proposal.
While the proceedings were not livestreamed to the public in line with requests from Marijuana Moment, a congressman and others, Marijuana Moment spoke to several people who were in the room for Monday’s hearing to get a sense of how the testimony is going.
According to those sources, DEA lawyer James J Schwartz began by noting that the government is formally the proponent of the proposed rule to move cannabis from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to Schedule III—noting that the hearing is “not about recreational use of marijuana” and is about “regulation, not legalization.”
“The government is not putting forth any evidence to suggest marijuana is not dangerous. All controlled substances are dangerous,
he said. “However, controlled substances must be evaluated by risks they pose, balanced by medical benefits they provide.”
Dominic Chiapperino, who serves as director of the controlled substance staff with the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research and
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