Inside DEA Marijuana Rescheduling Hearing: Key Takeaways, Part 2

The first six days of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s marijuana rescheduling hearing focused on the scientific, medical and regulatory case for moving cannabis to Schedule III. In the second half, however, the discussion shifted more toward what rescheduling could mean in practice.

During Day 7 of the DEA hearing, the state-legal cannabis market was subject to intense examination. Pain specialist Kenneth Finn, who testified against rescheduling, said that medical and recreational dispensaries often sell essentially the same products.

“I think the only real difference is the tax structure,” he noted. “It’s more cost-prohibitive to get a recreational marijuana product, where that same product will be cheaper at a medical dispensary.”

He also criticized loose medical-card requirements and the role of budtenders in advising patients.

On Day 8 of the hearing, the focus was shifted to whether state-legal cannabis is ending up in the illegal interstate market.

According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the state-level equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which opposes Schedule III, criticized HHS for failing to adequately consider diversion from states where marijuana can be legally produced and pointed to a recent seizure of roughly 7,000 pounds of THC products allegedly shipped from California to Tennessee as “auto parts.”

But under government cross-examination, TBI’s witness acknowledged that much of the testimony concerned criminal activity and marijuana obtained through illicit channels rather than compliant, state-legal operations.

Day 9 raised a question around Schedule III and the existing dispensary model.

California pharmacist Phillip Drum, another opponent of cannabis rescheduling, said the policy change would recognize cannabis as having medical use without the standardized dosing, labeling and prescribing information pharmacists normally rely on.

He also questioned whether dispensary staff can adequately monitor drug interactions, in addition to criticizing testing and recall practices in cannabis markets across states.

However, Drum did accept the fact that all controlled substances can be dangerous “if not used properly.”

Day 10 saw one of the hearing’s strongest challenges to the science behind support for Schedule III.

Yale psychiatrist Deepak D’Souza testified that the evidence of cannabis’ psychiatric risks is stronger at the moment, compared to the evidence of its benefits. Asked whether marijuana’s benefits currently outweigh its risks, D’Souza, whose work has been cited in both HHS’s rescheduling review and DEA’s own analysis, answered: “No.”

In the meantime, emergency physician Karen Randall was asked how the existing dispensary model would fit into a federal medical framework. She raised concerns that rescheduling could make marijuana appear more formally approved and regulated than it actually is.

“When we’re making the decision that we’re going from a CS III to a — or a CS I to a CS III, I think we are reinforcing the public’s opinion that this is FDA approved, that safety precautions have been in place, and that this, what we want to call medicine, is being regulated and is safe,” Randall said.

Randall, however, also faced pushback from Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek C. Julius, who cautioned that parts of her testimony about advertising, packaging and normalization were “less relevant” to the core rescheduling questions and risked moving beyond her area of expertise.

One of the highlights from Day 11, the last day of the hearing, is that D’Souza, whose testimony revolved around cannabis-related psychiatric risks, acknowledged under DEA questioning that most cannabis users do not experience psychosis or other negative consequences.

“Most people will not experience psychosis,” he said when asked whether most people who consume marijuana develop mental health issues or psychosis.

However, D’Souza cautioned the issue requires some nuance. “But I just want to add some nuance to that and that is that as we’ve seen the potency of cannabis increasing over the last couple of decades, and we are seeing products that have very high THC content, we do seem to be noting an increase in the rates of psychosis,” he said.