DEA to hold hearings on moving marijuana to Schedule III

The Drug Enforcement Administration will soon begin hearings on a proposal to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. If approved, the reclassification would represent a federal determination that all cannabis products have a currently accepted medical use.

Medical use criteria Drugs become medicines by demonstrating safety, efficacy, manufacturing consistency, known dosing, and an acceptable risk-benefit profile through rigorous scientific evaluation. The marijuana sold in state-legal dispensaries meets none of these criteria, according to the source.

Three different cannabinoids have received FDA approval, but the evidence does not support classifying crude cannabis as a safe and effective pharmaceutical.

Health and Human Services has pointed to state medical marijuana programs as evidence of acceptance by the medical community. Data from Colorado show that 0.1 percent of healthcare practitioners with prescribing authority accounted for more than 70 percent of all medical marijuana certifications. Roughly 98 percent of eligible practitioners issued no marijuana certifications at all.

Research and public messaging President Trump’s executive order directed the attorney general to complete the Schedule III rulemaking in the most expeditious manner permitted by law. Roughly 4,000 scientific papers on cannabis appear annually, and the NIH database indexes more than 53,000 cannabis publications.

Rescheduling would send the message that marijuana is a validated treatment, the source stated. Data from more than 11,000 participants in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study showed reduced acquisition of memory, attention and thinking skills in teenaged users compared to non-users.