WASHINGTON, DC — Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) and the States of Idaho, Indiana, and Nebraska today filed a joint response in the DEA marijuana rescheduling hearing (Docket No. 26-96) asking Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek C. Julius to admit the new Government Accountability Office report into evidence and to allow the parties to brief its significance before any decision on moving marijuana to Schedule III. The GAO report, published nine weeks after the hearing closed, found that neither the DEA nor the FDA has policies or procedures describing how staff should conduct the eight-factor analysis or evaluate a drug’s abuse potential relative to other substances.
In its October 9 response, the government did not dispute any of GAO’s findings. It stated it does not oppose admitting the report, acknowledged GAO’s warning that the gaps “may pose a risk to the consistency” of agency operations, and admitted the FDA’s memorandum of understanding with NIDA is 40 years old. It argued only that further briefing would cause “further delay.”
“The government’s own watchdog says the FDA and DEA have no written rules for how they schedule drugs, and the government’s response is to ask the judge not to look. That tells you everything,” said Dr. Kevin Sabet, President and CEO of SAM. “Rescheduling marijuana would be the biggest change in federal drug law in fifty years. It cannot rest on an analysis that the agency made up as it went along and that its own watchdog says exists nowhere on paper. The judge should let this evidence in and let the parties brief it.”
