The head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is aiming to present President Joe Biden with a federal cannabis scheduling decision “this year” as agencies work “as quickly as we can” to complete an administrative review, Secretary Xavier Becerra told Marijuana Moment during a press briefing in Sacramento on Thursday.
While Becerra and other federal officials have previously emphasized that they are working “expeditiously” to carry out the cannabis review, which the president directed late last year, there’s been a lack of clarity about the specific timeline. Now the secretary has disclosed when he hopes to deliver on the president’s directive.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under HHS is carrying out an eight-step scientific review into marijuana to determine whether it should be rescheduled, descheduled or remain in Schedule I, which is reserved for the most strictly controlled drugs under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
“What I can tell you is that the president instructed us at HHS—FDA in particular—to take a look at how we treat marijuana to see if we can update our review of marijuana as a drug and how we can make sure how we treat it going forward on the
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