The DEA’s long-awaited administrative hearing on moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III opened this week with the agency stating plainly that it supports the move, Cannabis Business Times reports.
According to the report, DEA attorney James Schwartz told the tribunal that the government would call only two witnesses, a scientist and a medical practitioner, to back the proposed rule.
In the lead-up to the hearings, the fact that zero pro-rescheduling parties were invited led some advocates to wonder if the agency was stacking the deck against its own rule, while others read it as consistent with a Trump directive to move the rulemaking along quickly.
Writing in an op-ed for Marijuana Moment, Cat Packer of the Drug Policy Alliance offered a firsthand account that details this point: her organization sought to participate as an interested party and was denied, along with requests from groups including NORML, Marijuana Policy Project, Cannabis Regulators of Color Coalition, Latino Cannabis Alliance, Law Enforcement Action Partnership, Doctors for Drug Policy Reform, the Parabola Center for Law & Policy, Supernova Women and Students for Sensible Drug Policy. Packer wrote that the seven parties DEA did designate to participate all share one thing
