Four Things Nobody Told You About the DEA Cannabis Hearings — But You Probably Wanted to Ask

By the time the Drug Enforcement Administration released the 2,533-page transcript of its cannabis rescheduling hearing, the broad storyline was already everywhere: DEA defended Schedule III and the agency wants its judge to recommend rescheduling.

You probably read that in your inbox this morning.

So we went looking for the weird stuff.

The 11-day hearing produced a record considerably messier than the simple “DEA versus prohibitionists” narrative suggests.

DEA’s own scientists disagreed with the government’s position, a witness forecasting cannabis-related traffic deaths admitted the data could not establish impairment, and one of the biggest warnings about rescheduling—millions of workers suddenly escaping drug testing—became considerably less straightforward under questioning.

Here are four things buried in the transcripts worth knowing.

1. A Drugged-Driving Witness Admitted THC Detection Doesn’t Prove Impairment

One of the opposition’s central arguments was predictable: more cannabis use could mean more impaired driving.

But Ed Wood, founder of DUID Victim Voices, made an important concession while discussing studies showing more THC-positive drivers after cannabis legalization.

Wood explained that if cannabis consumption increases substantially, researchers should expect THC to appear in more drivers regardless of whether cannabis caused the crashes. In his words, such detection data by themselves “proved nothing” about impairment.

That matters because Wood subsequently attempted to estimate additional traffic fatalities that could follow rescheduling. Yet he acknowledged: “We don’t have good data on this from government sources.” His projection instead relied on comparisons of traffic fatality rates between states with and without commercial cannabis.

In other words, one of the hearing’s starkest public-safety predictions rested on a causal relationship the witness himself acknowledged is difficult to establish from THC-positive crash data.

2. One Witness Apparently Read Testimony He Wasn’t Supposed to Read

Wood’s appearance produced another unusual moment.

During his testimony, he referenced statements made by an earlier government witness. That prompted an objection because witnesses had been subject to a sequestration order intended to prevent them from tailoring testimony around what previous witnesses had said.

The exchange established that Wood had read transcripts from earlier proceedings, while Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek Julius reiterated that witnesses were not supposed to read or listen to prior testimony.

It doesn’t decide the rescheduling case. But in an administrative proceeding where evidentiary weight and the integrity of the record matter enormously, it is a curious wrinkle—particularly for testimony DEA later sought to strike.

3. The “7 Million to 9 Million Workers” Warning Wasn’t Quite That Simple

The National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association came to the hearing with one of the most economically consequential arguments against Schedule III.

Its position was that federal workplace-testing authority tied to Schedules I and II could mean that 7 million to 9 million safety-sensitive workers would no longer be federally tested for marijuana after rescheduling.

Cross-examination complicated the headline.

NDASA Executive Director Jo McGuire acknowledged that employers could still conduct marijuana testing under company policies, while maintaining that existing Department of Transportation testing requirements presented a separate problem.

And the practical landscape has already moved: DOT has since said state-legal medical cannabis remains no excuse for a positive test among safety-sensitive transportation workers.

So “Schedule III ends marijuana testing for millions of workers” makes for a dramatic argument. The actual regulatory question is considerably more complicated.

4. DEA Was Arguing Against DEA

Perhaps the strangest contradiction in the entire proceeding came from inside the agency itself.

DEA pharmacologist Dr. Luli Akinfiresoye testified that her Drug and Chemical Evaluation Section used DEA’s traditional five-part test for currently accepted medical use rather than the newer two-part framework endorsed by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

And this wasn’t merely her personal analysis.

Asked whether that decision had been made individually or with colleagues, Akinfiresoye said it was made “in conjunction with my colleagues within the Drug and Chemical Evaluation Section.”

Even more strikingly, her section concluded marijuana failed the adequate-and-well-controlled-studies component of the traditional test. She testified that she was aware HHS had found currently accepted medical use for certain indications—and disagreed with HHS’s findings.

Meanwhile, DEA’s lawyers spent the hearing arguing the opposite institutional position: that the newer test is legally valid, HHS’s scientific findings deserve significant deference and marijuana has a currently accepted medical use that makes Schedule I inappropriate.

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