The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says it has no problem with reopening the record for a hearing on the Trump administration’s marijuana rescheduling proposal to include a federal watchdog report that found there are “gaps” in the government’s process for evaluating controlled substances—though it doesn’t want further briefings on the matter.
Opponents of the reform, meanwhile, are pushing to further delay a decision in the proceedings by asking the judge to order a new round of testimony and discovery.
Opponents of cannabis rescheduling had asked that the recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on drug scheduling be included in the record, and DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek Julius last month paused the proceedings and ordered DEA to weigh in on whether the document should be made a part of the process.
DEA’s newly filed brief argues that it defers to the judge on whether the GAO report should be included in the record, but it opposes opponents’ request for additional briefings to be ordered concerning what the report’s findings mean for cannabis rescheduling.
Those opponents have “mischaracterized the GAO Report and its impact” on the marijuana rescheduling process, the agency said, adding that it “does not present any new evidence salient to the issue before this Tribunal.”
That report found, among other things that DEA “does not have any policies or procedures regarding how its staff are to conduct evaluations or schedule substances” and the Food and Drug Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “does not have policies or procedures specifying how its staff are to conduct evaluations or develop scheduling recommendations for substances.”
DEA said, however, that the GAO report merely identified “gaps in the memorialization of rescheduling process, not any flaws in the rescheduling process itself.”
“Rather, the Report issued a recommendation that DEA and FDA ‘fill gaps’ in their written policies surrounding the process of rescheduling. This recommendation is immaterial to the actual scientific processes and analysis these agencies used. More importantly, the GAO makes no critical finding as to the actual scientific processes and analyses used by FDA and DEA in scheduling controlled substances and makes no recommendations as to other scientific processes and analyses that FDA and DEA should use in determining what schedule to place a substance. Moreover, the GAO Report does not ever opine on FDA’s ultimate conclusion that marijuana should be transferred to Schedule III. While the Government defers to this Tribunal as to whether the GAO Report should be late admitted into evidence, the Government asserts that any briefing on the GAO Report – a document that has no bearing on the ultimate issue of whether marijuana should be transferred to Schedule III – is unnecessary.”
“When a document’s meaning is clear, the court need not allow additional argument to interpret the document,” DEA said in the brief that was filed on Friday but obtained by Marijuana Moment on Tuesday, urging the judge not to further delay his rescheduling recommendation by allowing additional briefings from parties.
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