The Drug Enforcement Agency will not remove marijuana from the Schedule I drugs list, its head Chuck Rosenberg has announced, despite a bipartisan group of state legislators calling for it.
Rosenberg’s decision was relied heavily on a report by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that marijuana has “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States” and is subject to abuse – the standard for Schedule I drugs as defined by the US Controlled Substances Act
The move came with one caveat: the DEA will allow universities to apply to grow marijuana for research purposes. Currently, only the University of Mississippi is licensed to do so, which scientists say limits their ability to research the medical uses of marijuana. The FDA and DEA claimed that the lack of scientific data on medical marijuana motivated their decision not to change marijuana’s Schedule I classification.
“If our understanding of the science changes,” said Rosenberg, “that could very well drive a new decision.”
Dr Igor Grant, the director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine – one of the main recipients of federal funds for cannabis research – hailed the loosening of one restriction on research. “Actions that reduce obstacles to conducting serious, rigorous science regarding the use of cannabis to treat diseases is a good thing,” he said. “There is significant evidence that cannabis possesses therapeutic value, and it is worthy of continued, even accelerated, investigation and development.”
But marijuana advocates say that the federal government is simply ignoring the results of scientific research performed despite the current limits on growing marijuana for the purpose of studying its medical uses.
“President Obama always said he would let science – and not ideology – dictate policy,” Tom Angell, the chairman on Marijuana Majority, said in a statement. “But in this case, his administration is upholding a failed drug war approach instead of looking at real, existing evidence that marijuana has medical value.”
Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (Norml), agreed. “While this announcement is a significant step toward better facilitating and expanding clinical investigations into cannabis’ therapeutic efficacy,” he said, “ample scientific evidence already exists to remove cannabis from its Schedule I classification and to acknowledge its relative safety compared to other scheduled substances, like opioids, and unscheduled substances, such as alcohol.”
Both men called for congressional action to change the federal regulation of cannabis in a way that would allow states to regulate marijuana as they see fit.
The ability of states to legalize marijuana – for medical or recreational use – without interference from the federal government is a key issue in many states. Federal law hasinfamously been used to prosecute marijuana growers and dispensaries in states that legalized cannabis, despite a 2009 memo from the Obama justice department suggesting that targeting medical marijuana users and suppliers should be a low priority for law enforcement. (The guidance was “clarified” in 2011 to suggest that significant marijuana businesses even in states where it was legal were not exempt from criminal scrutiny.) In 2013, the justice departmentannounced it would not seek to override recreational use laws in Washington and Colorado by prosecuting all producers and sellers, as long as laws were put into place to prevent the movement of marijuana across state lines and keep it out of the hands of children.
But as long as marijuana remains classified as a Schedule I drug, this guidance can be overturned. And because federal banking laws prohibit financial services companies from doing business with companies engaged in illegal activity – which the sale of marijuana still is at the federal level – nothing short of a reclassification can provide more safety and stability for marijuana-related businesses in the long term.
That was the thinking behind the 2011 petition by Washington state governor Christine Gregoire and then Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee, which the DEA announced on Wednesday that it would deny. And, just hours before thatannouncement, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCLS) adopted a resolution that means the organization will, under its bylaws, “lobby the Congress, the White House and federal agencies” to change marijuana’s designation under the law. Schedule I is the strictest designation under the federal law. Among those drugs listed in the less restrictive Schedule II are methamphetamine and opium.
Oregon state representative Ann Lininger, who introduced the resolution, explained that, since 25 states plus the District of Columbia and Guam have legalized marijuana under some circumstances – be it for medical or recreational use – the continuing classification of marijuana as a Schedule I substance creates both risks for businesses in states that have deemed it legal and difficulties for states seeking to regulate a growing industry.
“There are 5,000 legal cannabis businesses in the United States” said Lininger, a Democrat. “And they don’t have reliable access to banking services.”
“It creates a public safety risk,” she said, because the classification of marijuana means that banks and other federally regulated financial services companies cannot do business with dispensaries. That, in turn, necessitates that all marijuana businesses operate strictly in cash, which often leads to robberies and muggings. Besides, which, she said, “there’s an inability to track sales for oversight and regulation,” she said. “And it probably affects tax compliance.”
The resolution notes that “the federal Bank Secrecy Act and its implementing regulations impose substantial administrative and operational burdens, compliance risk and regulatory risk that serve as a barrier” to financial services companies wishing to do business with legal marijuana companies, and that the2014 “clarification” memo issued by the Department of Treasury’s financial crimes enforcement network “is inadequate to create a regulatory environment as it does not change applicable federal laws, imposes significant compliance burdens and is subject to change at any time” – including with a new administration in the White House.
“States should have to ability to chart their own way forward on cannabis regulation, outside of federal oversight,” Lininger said, calling it a states’ rights issue that had led many legislators of a more conservative bent on marijuana policy to support the resolution.
The National Conference of State Legislatures, which is made up of member state legislatures and legislator participants, serves as both a research and advocacy organization for the interests of state legislatures, as determined by a bipartisan plurality of participants. The resolution process determines the organization’s priorities in its efforts “to fight unwarranted federal preemption of state laws, unfunded mandates and federal legislation that threatens state authority and autonomy”.
