Lawyers for marijuana reform opponents that are participating in a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) hearing on the Trump administration’s cannabis rescheduling proposal put significant focus on the second day of the proceedings on pressing a government witness about recently adopted changes to an analysis used to determine whether drugs have accepted medical value.
A separate government witness who began his testimony on Tuesday focused on cannabis’s role in treating pain patients and its relative safety compared to opioids.
Under federal law, drugs that have a currently accepted medical use (CAMU) cannot be classified in Schedule I, the most restrictive category. For years, officials had used a five-part test to determine a substance’s medical utility that involved an analysis of whether its chemistry is known and reproducible, safety studies, research proving efficacy, acceptance by qualified experts and widely available scientific evidence.
But in 2023 to evaluate marijuana, they switched to a new two-part analysis that looks at whether there is widespread, current experience with medical use of the substance by licensed health care providers operating in accordance with state laws and, if so, whether there is some credible scientific support for at least one of the medical conditions it is being used for.
Opponents of reform say the switch was improper, however. Their attorneys pressed Dominic Chiapperino, who serves as director of the controlled substance staff with the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research and is one of the DEA’s two witnesses, on the issue during cross-examination on Tuesday.
An attorney for the states of Idaho, Indiana and Nebraska, for example, focused on how a prior analysis on marijuana, conducted in 2015 under the older test, concluded that it should not be rescheduled because it did not have a currently accepted medical use.
Under questioning, FDA’s Chiapperino testified that the new two-part test did not exist when he and agency colleagues began the most recent analysis of marijuana that led to its rescheduling recommendation and that in July 2023—just two months before they finished their work—officials were informed of the new approach in a letter from the assistant secretary of health.
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