A top marijuana reform group is asking the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to reconsider the decision to exclude it from participating in a hearing on the Trump administration’s cannabis rescheduling proposal that is scheduled to begin next week.
Counsel for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), which represents the interests of people who use cannabis, filed the “emergency request for reconsideration” on Friday, saying that the “public interest will be substantially harmed if the record omits the consumer perspective.”
DEA last week announced that it had selected participants for the marijuana rescheduling hearing—and only opponents of the reform have been invited to take part, some of whom have filed litigation in an attempt to block the reform. No reform supporters who expressed intent to participate were invited.
“NORML’s exclusion, if not corrected immediately, will deprive NORML and the cannabis consumers it represents of meaningful participation in prehearing procedures, witness presentation, exhibit designation, cross-examination, legal briefing, and any other proceedings necessary to compile a complete record,” Joseph A. Bondy, who serves a chair of NORML’s board of directors, wrote to DEA Administrator Terrance Cole. “The prejudice is immediate. It cannot be cured after the hearing closes.”
According to several rejection letters Marijuana Moment has seen from cannabis reform supporters, DEA said they do not meet the definition of an “interested person” to participate because they are not “adversely affected or aggrieved by any rule or proposed rule issuable.”
NORML said in its request for reconsideration, however, that “DEA’s denial rests on a mistaken premise: that NORML is not adversely affected or aggrieved by the proposed rule because NORML supports removing marijuana from schedule I and recognizes that schedule III is preferable to schedule I.”
“That is not NORML’s position. NORML supports removal from schedule I. But NORML does not concede that schedule III is the correct final federal treatment for marijuana,” Bondy wrote. “NORML’s position is that marijuana should be removed from the CSA schedules and regulated under a cannabis-specific federal framework directed to public health, consumer safety, product integrity, youth prevention, truthful labeling, testing, research access, impaired-driving policy, anti-diversion, state-regulated market realities, and illicit-market displacement.”
“Schedule III may be better than schedule I. But it is not complete relief. It is not a coherent federal endpoint. And it is not a framework that recognizes adult cannabis consumers as lawful consumers rather than patients, research subjects, registrants, or offenders. NORML’s position is therefore directly adverse to the proposed rule. NORML does not seek participation merely to endorse the transfer of marijuana to schedule III. NORML seeks participation because the proposed rule would leave millions of adult cannabis consumers federally exposed, federally unrecognized, and subject to continuing criminal and collateral consequences, even when they participate in state-regulated adult-use systems enacted by voters and legislatures.”
The attorney wrote that the injury from Schedule III status for marijuana is “not mere ideological disappointment.”
“NORML’s members would remain subject to federal controlled-substance status and the legal consequences that flow from it. Adult-use consumers who lawfully participate in state-regulated markets would remain outside coherent federal recognition,” Bondy said. “Schedule III would preserve federal illegality for cannabis activity outside federally authorized medical, research, or registrant channels. It would continue federal-state conflict, public confusion, stigma, collateral consequences, and consumer-safety harms.”
Beyond the consumers the group represents, NORML as an organization would also be “injured in its own right.”
“A final schedule III rule that medicalizes marijuana while leaving adult-use consumers federally exposed would require NORML to devote additional organizational resources to public education, legal referrals, member communications, administrative advocacy, litigation support, chapter coordination, legislative advocacy, and correction of public confusion concerning the scope and consequences of federal rescheduling. That impairment of mission and diversion of resources independently supports NORML’s status as an interested person.”
“Excluding NORML from the hearing would cause immediate and irreparable procedural prejudice, impair the completeness and balance of the administrative record, and disserve the public interest in a full and reasoned proceeding concerning the federal legal status of marijuana,” the request for reconsideration says.
The hearing, which will be overseen by a DEA administrative law judge, will begin on June 29 and is set to conclude no later than July 15.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in April issued an order that immediately reclassified state-licensed medical cannabis, as well as marijuana products approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to Schedule III.
Under a separate order the acting attorning general signed, the upcoming hearing will consider more comprehensively moving marijuana to Schedule III.
In order to be considered for participation in the hearing, parties needed to file requests articulating their interest in the proceeding, the objections or issues they wish to be heard on and their position on those issues.
“The purpose of the hearing is to ‘receiv[e] factual evidence and expert opinion regarding’ whether marijuana should be transferred to schedule III of the list of controlled substances,” Blanche’s initial notice, filed in April, said.
The attorney general also selected an administrative law judge (ALJ) to oversee the proceedings.
“The ALJ’s authorities include the power to hold conferences to simplify or determine the issues in the hearing or to consider other matters that may aid in the expeditious disposition of the hearing; require parties to state their position in writing; sign and issue subpoenas to compel the production of documents and materials to the extent necessary to conduct the hearing; examine witnesses and direct witnesses to testify; receive, rule on, exclude, or limit evidence; rule on procedural items; and take any action permitted by the presiding officer under DEA’s hearing procedures and the” Administrative Procedures Act, Blanche wrote.
A prior hearing process on the marijuana rescheduling process that was initiated by the Biden administration stalled last year amid litigation over alleged improper communications and witness selection.
The current marijuana rescheduling process is being challenged with several lawsuits that have been consolidated by a federal appeals court. Those pieces of litigation against the cannabis reform have been filed by state attorneys general, marijuana legalization opponents and a cannabis-focused biopharmaceutical corporation.
Meanwhile, the already-enacted rescheduling of state-licensed medical cannabis is already having broad impacts.
The Congressional Research Service published a report on the current cannabis rescheduling move explaining that certified patients who possess medical marijuana from state-licensed dispensaries now have certain protections under Schedule III. “The order appears to authorize end users to possess marijuana for medical use without a CSA-compliant prescription,” it says.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has posted a draft update to a gun purchase form to acknowledge the federally legal status of medical marijuana under rescheduling. The revised section in question notably says that only “use or possession of marijuana for recreational purposes” is federally prohibited, leaving out the prior form’s mention of medical cannabis.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said they plan to issue new tax guidance for the marijuana industry following rescheduling. The reform will benefit state-licensed marijuana businesses by allowing them to take federal tax deductions they’re currently barred from under an IRS code known as 280E that doesn’t apply to Schedule III substances.
Even DEA, which has long opposed cannabis legalization and was accused of stalling the rescheduling process initiative by the Biden administration, has launched a registration process for state-legal marijuana businesses to take advantage of federal benefits that come with the reform.
The Department of Transportation, on the other hand, issued guidance saying that use of state-legal medical cannabis is still no excuse for a positive drug test by truck drivers, pilots and other safety-sensitive workers.
A congressional committee recently voted to block federal officials from taking further steps to carry out cannabis rescheduling.
Read NORML’s emergency request for reconsideration below:
The post NORML Asks DEA To Reconsider Its Request To Participate In Marijuana Rescheduling Hearing appeared first on Marijuana Moment.
