Removal of cannabis from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act

In the United States, the removal of cannabis from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the category reserved for drugs that have "no currently accepted medical use", is a proposed legal and administrative change in cannabis-related law at the federal level.

Since there is still a considerable void in our knowledge of the plant and the effects of the active drug contained in it, our recommendation is that marijuana be retained within schedule I at least until the completion of certain studies now underway to resolve the issue.

The petition was ultimately denied after 22 years of court challenges, but a synthetic pill form of cannabis's psychoactive ingredient, THC, was rescheduled in 1986 to allow prescription under schedule II.

[7] At a congressional hearing in June 2014, the deputy director for Regulatory Programs at the FDA said the agency was conducting an analysis on whether marijuana should be downgraded, at the request of the DEA.

[9] However, the DEA announced that it will end restrictions on the supply of marijuana to researchers and drug companies that had previously only been available from the government's own facility at the University of Mississippi.

"[14] Specifically, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington DC, and West Virginia, have enacted legislation allowing the medical use of cannabis by their citizens.

He points out that there are a number of delivery routes that were not considered by the institute, such as transdermal, sublingual, and even rectal administration, in addition to vaporizers, which release cannabis' active ingredients into the air without burning the plant matter.

[17] A study published in the March 1, 1990 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences stated that "there are virtually no reports of fatal cannabis overdose in humans" and attributed this safety to the low density of cannabinoid receptors in areas of the brain controlling breathing and the heart.

[18][19] Gettman claims that the discovery of the cannabinoid receptor system in the late 1980s revolutionized scientific understanding of cannabis' effects and provided further evidence that it does not belong in Schedule I.

In 2003, the United States government patented cannabinoids, including those in marijuana that cause users to get "high" (such as THC) based on these chemicals' prevention of trauma- and age-related brain damage.

[citation needed] In 1992, DEA Administrator Robert Bonner promulgated five criteria, based somewhat on the Controlled Substances Act's legislative history, for determining whether a drug has an accepted medical use.

The United States Code, under Section 811 of Title 21,[27] sets out a process by which cannabis could be administratively transferred to a less-restrictive category or removed from Controlled Substances Act regulation altogether.

[40] It was co-sponsored by a bipartisan coalition of 84 House members, including prominent Republicans Newt Gingrich (GA), Bill McCollum (FL), John Porter (IL), and Frank Wolf (VA).

On September 6, 1988, DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young ruled that cannabis did not meet the legal criteria of a Schedule I prohibited drug and should be reclassified.

Lawn said he decided against rescheduling cannabis based on testimony and comments from numerous medical doctors who had conducted detailed research and were widely considered experts in their respective fields.

[19] This suggested that cannabis' psychoactive effects are produced by a different mechanism than addictive drugs such as amphetamine, cocaine, ethanol, nicotine, and opiates.

(In a 2005 footnote to the majority decision in Gonzales v. Raich, Justice John Paul Stevens said that if the scientific evidence offered by medical cannabis supporters is true, it would "cast serious doubt" on the Schedule I classification.

)[58] After nine years of delay, on May 23, 2011, the Coalition filed suit in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals to compel the DEA to formally respond to its 2002 rescheduling petition.

The writ of mandamus request alleged that the lack of decision by DEA, "presents a paradigmatic example of unreasonable delay under Telecommunications Research & Action Ctr.

[66] In response, ASA filed a supplemental brief on October 22, 2012, detailing how plaintiff Michael Krawitz was harmed by the federal government's policy on medical marijuana due to being denied treatment by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Krumm demanded an expedited ruling in order to protect his health and welfare, as well as that of all citizens of the United States who may benefit from this safe and effective medication.

[85][86][87] In July 2017, a lawsuit was brought in U.S. District Court against the heads of the DEA and Justice Department on the grounds that Schedule I listing of cannabis is "so irrational that it violates the U.S.

They argued that cannabis' Schedule I status under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) represented a risk to patients' health and perpetuated economic inequities in the U.S.

The petition in question in Sisley v. DEA was a one-page, handwritten letter from Jeramy Bowers and Stephen Zyszkiewicz, sent in January 2020 while they were inmates at California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

[103] On 6 October 2022, President Joe Biden instructed U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to review the classification schedule of cannabis, during a "Statement on Marijuana Reform.

[105][106] The Congressional Research Service had issued a report a year earlier noting that the President could "use executive orders to direct DEA, HHS, and FDA to consider administrative descheduling of marijuana".

[109][110][111][112] After reviewing the letter, a legal expert concluded it was "very likely that the DEA will move forward with the rulemaking process to reschedule marijuana",[113] a conclusion also reached by the Congressional Research Service in their report.

[118] On May 16, the Justice Department confirmed that rescheduling was moving forward under the Administrative Procedure Act, with a notice of proposed rulemaking submitted for publication in the Federal Register.

[123][124][125] Hearings were further postponed after the judge admonished the DEA for "deliberate defiance" regarding evidence for the planned proceedings, which he condemned as an "unprecedented and astonishing" failure to follow court instructions.

[132] On January 27, 2014, the Florida Supreme Court approved the ballot language for a proposed constitutional amendment allowing the medical use of marijuana, following a successful petition drive.