 President Biden ordered a review of marijuana’s classification as a Schedule 1 drug because he said it, “makes no sense.”
The last time marijuana was reviewed for it’s status on the Controlled Substances Act, the review took 22 years. But this time, President Biden ordered this to be done “expeditiously.” Many experts believe that the President’s intention is to get the review completed before his term ends in 2024. So how does that process work? United States Code, under Section 811 of Title 21,[24] lays it out. The first step begins with the Food and Drug Administration. They will need to conduct a scientific evaluation of cannabis. In that they will look at eight different aspects of the drug. Those are: • The potential for abuse • Scientific evidence of its pharmacological effect • Current scientific knowledge • History and current pattern of abuse • The scope, duration, and significance of abuse • What, if any, risk there is to the public health • Its psychological or physiological dependence liability • Whether the substance is an immediate precursor of a controlled substance (otherwise known as gateway drug) When the FDA completes their evaluation, they will send their report to the secretary of Health and Human Services, who will review it and then give his recommendation to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The Health and Human Services Secretary holds a tremendous amount of power in this decision making process. His decision is binding over the DEA.[25], and over the Attorney General. 21 U.S.C. § 811(b). Ultimately, though, as head of the Department of Justice, the Attorney General is the one who will announce the final scheduling decision. Immediatley after President Biden’s announcement, those involved in this process confirmed their support. The Department of Justice sent out a press release within hours confirming that they will “expeditiously” review pardons and work with Health & Human Services to review scheduling status. The Health & Human Services Secretary, Xavier Becerra, tweeted that he was “looking forward” to working with the Attorney General to look into this. Interestingly, he sent out his tweet at 4:20 p.m., perhaps as a nod to stoner culture. Becerra has been a strong advocate for cannabis reform. In Congress, Becerra repeatedly voted in favor of cannabis initiatives. When working as California’s attorney general, Becerra helped administer the state’s medical marijuana program and strongly criticized it’s Schedule I status. In 2017 he told the Los Angeles Times that “The federal government has to catch up and get into the 21st century.” The Attorney General, Merrick Garland, has also been supportive of cannabis. In his 2021 confirmation hearings, Garland criticized federal marijuana law enforcement, saying it is an ineffective use of resources, as well as racially discriminatory in effect. The federal government has reviewed this issue multiple times in the past, and each time concluded that marijuana is dangerous and has no accepted medical use. But, the most recent of these reviews was in 2016, and since then, there have been major medical cannabis developments. The country’s leading academic body for scientific research, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, concluded in 2017 that there is substantial evidence that cannabis is an effective treatment for chronic pain in adults. Additionally, one survey found that nearly half of all oncologists reported that they reccomend it to their cancer patients. And perhaps most importantly, in 2018, the FDA approved a pharmaceutical cannabinoid derrived from cannabis to treat rare forms of epilepsy. The drug showed benefits in randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials, which effectively proved that it has medical value. Time will tell what the final decision for cannabis is, but with the President himself saying that marijuana’s classification as a Schedule 1 drug “makes no sense,” along with support from Xavier Becerra and Merrick Garland, it’s hoped that marijuana will swiftly be removed from it’s erroneous placement as a Schedule 1 drug. Ultimately, cannabis advocates hope that it will not only be removed as a Schedule 1 drug, but actually removed from the list of controlled substances altogether. Rescheduling cannabis to a Schedule II or III would give oversight control to the FDA, as well as the DEA. This could cause problems in states where regulatory systems have already been in place. Currently, doctors in states with medical marijuana legalizaqtion are currently permitted to recommend, rather than prescribe, marijuana for certain medical conditions. Rescheduling marijuana as a Schedule II or III would mean it must be prescribed and subject to FDA regulation, and doctors would have to follow the same regulations that apply to other drugs in their state. A professor at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, Douglas Berman, said, “Big pharma might be the big exciting player here, because they have the most to gain if we were to reschedule but it was still something that was very highly regulated.” Lowering it’s status to Schedule V would put it on par with cough syrup with codeine, so there would still be some low level regulation. Cannabis advocates are hoping that marijuana receives a complete descheduling, rather than re-scheduling. Any rescheduling to another tier means that cannabis for recreational use would still be prohibited by federal law unless it were removed from the schedule entirely. Experts thinks that seems unlikely. And one more thing to consider, even if cananbis were to be completely descheduled, Congress would likely intervene to impose some control, as it has for tobacco, plus, the states could still place their own restrictions on the plant. Comments are closed.
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