Tomorrow (July 15, 2026) the landmark administrative listening to on US hashish rescheduling will come to an in depth.
Immediately (July 14), the final of the seven designated members referred to as to testify will put their case on file, marking the tip of a dramatic two weeks wherein the federal government’s medical-use evaluation, the authorized take a look at used to achieve it, and the projected downstream penalties of rescheduling have all confronted intense scrutiny.
We’ve seen witnesses beneath oath affirm an intra-agency divide, and main opposition consultants acknowledge that hashish satisfies the authorized customary for Schedule III classification.
Because the listening to enters its closing levels, and Chief Administrative Regulation Choose Derek Julius prepares to weigh up the proof and concern his suggestion to the DEA, right here’s what we’ve discovered from the opposition’s testimony over the past fortnight.
An company divided
Final week (July 07), long-time anti-cannabis marketing campaign group Good Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) referred to as Dr Luli Akinfiresoye, a pharmacologist within the DEA’s Drug and Chemical Analysis Part, who holds a PhD in pharmacology and authored the DEA’s personal 2024 Scientific Information Overview of hashish.
Referred to as beneath subpoena, Akinfiresoye’s participation had been resisted by the DEA, which issued a letter limiting the scope of her testimony, however parts of these restrictions have been overruled by Julius.
Akinfiresoye informed the tribunal that she had ready an unbiased eight-factor evaluation in 2024 and an extra overview in December 2024, figuring out gaps she stated the HHS evaluation had left unaddressed. Making use of the DEA’s conventional five-part CAMU take a look at, which she argued is extra rigorous and has been upheld in court docket, she concluded that hashish lacks at the moment accepted medical use.
She testified that hashish just isn’t persistently reproducible, that state medical programmes are a major supply of diversion, and that the DEA’s personal scientific overview addressed important points the HHS evaluation omitted.
The federal government declined to cross-examine her, leaving her conclusions unrebutted within the listening to file. It believes that Akinfiresoye’s evaluation rests on a authorized customary that has been outdated, and her testimony is aimed on the file for the D.C. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals slightly than at persuading Julius.
SAM’s different marquee scientific professional was Dr Bertha Okay Madras, Professor of Psychobiology at Harvard Medical Faculty, a researcher at McLean Hospital, and a former senior official on the White Home Workplace of Nationwide Drug Management Coverage. She was the primary opposition witness to contest the medical-use proof immediately slightly than its downstream penalties.
Madras testified that hashish lacks the purity, batch-to-batch consistency, and validated dosing anticipated of pharmaceutical merchandise, and that a number of medical trials cited by the FDA have been unblinded or carried out at potencies nicely under these present in present dispensaries. She argued that state programmes authorise use with out the managed trials required for typical pharmaceutical approval.
Beneath cross-examination by the DEA, nonetheless, Madras acknowledged that hashish meets the statutory standards for Schedule III, in response to The Marijuana Herald, whose reporting was corroborated by The Dales Report’s Washington correspondent Gretchen Gailey, who lined the listening to from contained in the courtroom.
She additionally testified that hashish doesn’t produce the respiratory-depression deaths related to opioids, as a result of cannabinoid receptors don’t regulate inhaling the identical method. This level helps the federal government’s comparative security argument immediately.
Different opposing positions
The Nationwide Drug and Alcohol Screening Affiliation (NDASA), which opened the opposition’s case on July 02, had argued that rescheduling would undermine the authorized framework for employer hashish testing.
Nevertheless, its personal director, Mary Jo McGuire, conceded beneath DEA cross-examination that personal employers can proceed testing regardless, beneath firm coverage
The federally mandated Division of Transportation programme, which covers safety-sensitive staff equivalent to truck drivers and airline pilots, can be affected, non-public employer testing wouldn’t.
DUID Sufferer Voices, which testified on July 07, estimated that rescheduling might produce roughly 6,000 extra drug-related site visitors deaths per yr. The federal government declined to cross-examine, in response to Vicente LLP’s authorized evaluation of the proceedings.
Dr Kenneth Finn, a ache doctor who testified on July 08, took goal on the medical trials the FDA used to ascertain hashish’s medical credentials. He argued that they have been carried out with lower-potency merchandise than these now generally bought in state dispensaries.
Rescheduling, he argued, would successfully legitimise a industrial market promoting merchandise with little resemblance to the hashish the analysis was truly primarily based on.
DEA’s transient cross-examination established that hashish carries some medical profit, with out immediately rebutting Finn’s product-mismatch argument.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) closed the listening to’s second week on 10 July with operational law-enforcement testimony from particular agent Erica Stephens, who described seizing greater than 10,000 kilos of hashish from what she referred to as ‘deregulated states’.
When requested to make clear what she meant by ‘deregulated’, Stephens replied ‘rescheduling’. The knowledgeable her that Schedule III standing wouldn’t decriminalise hashish, finish federal controls, or legalise diversion.
Additional cross-examination from the federal government famous that Schedule II substances together with OxyContin and Adderall are diverted with out their scheduling standing getting used as grounds for reclassification. The listening to paused for at some point on 9 July after ending forward of schedule, earlier than resuming with the TBI’s case.
What’s subsequent?
The states of Nebraska, Idaho, Indiana and Louisiana are presenting their case at this time (July 14) with Dr Deepak Cyril D’Souza, founding director of the Yale Centre for the Science of Hashish and Cannabinoids and editor of Marijuana and Insanity, as their principal scientific professional, alongside Humboldt County, California Sheriff William Honsal. Proceedings are scheduled to conclude no later than 15 July.
After testimony closes, events will submit proposed findings and post-hearing briefs. Julius will concern a really useful resolution, towards which events have 20 days to file exceptions.
The total file then passes to the DEA Administrator, who makes the ultimate name on rescheduling. That call will be challenged within the US Courtroom of Appeals, and constructing a powerful file for precisely that problem is what most opposition members have been doing all through.
