{"id":5246,"date":"2015-12-23T21:10:12","date_gmt":"2015-12-23T21:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marijuana.com\/?p=45900"},"modified":"2015-12-23T21:10:12","modified_gmt":"2015-12-23T21:10:12","slug":"fda-issues-marijuana-rescheduling-recommendation-to-dea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/fda-issues-marijuana-rescheduling-recommendation-to-dea\/","title":{"rendered":"FDA Issues Marijuana Rescheduling Recommendation to DEA"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0 5px 5px;float:right;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/fda-issues-marijuana-rescheduling-recommendation-to-dea\/\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><p>Top federal health officials\u00a0recently told the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) whether marijuana should be reclassified\u00a0under federal law, a document obtained by Marijuana.com reveals, but it is not yet known what that recommendation entails.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;DEA recently received the [Department of Health and Human Services]\u00a0scientific and medical evaluations as well as a scheduling recommendation that\u00a0HHS prepared in response to&#8221; two\u00a0petitions to reclassify cannabis under federal law, Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik\u00a0wrote in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/293916593\/DEA-Weighing-FDA-Marijuana-Rescheduling-Recommendation\">September 30 letter<\/a> to Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR). &#8220;DEA is currently reviewing these documents and all other relevant data to make a scheduling determination in accordance with the [Controlled Substances Act].&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Cannabis is currently classified in the Controlled Substances Act under Schedule I, a category that&#8217;s supposed to be reserved for drugs with no medical value.<\/p>\n<p>One of the two pending rescheduling petitions currently under review was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.digitalarchives.wa.gov\/GovernorGregoire\/priorities\/healthcare\/petition\/combined_document.pdf\">filed<\/a> in 2011 by then-Governor Christine Gregoire of Washington State and then-Governor Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. Both states have medical marijuana laws.\u00a0It isn&#8217;t immediately clear what other petition Kadzik referred to in the letter to Blumenauer.<\/p>\n<p>HHS tasks its\u00a0Food and Drug Administration component with conducting the medical and scientific review needed for rescheduling recommendations. It isn&#8217;t known how long it will take DEA to review the HHS\/FDA proposal\u00a0and issue its own ruling.<\/p>\n<p>DEA&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov\/fed_regs\/rules\/2011\/fr0708.htm\">most recent rejection<\/a> of a cannabis rescheduling petition, in June 2011, came four and a half years after it received FDA&#8217;s input in December 2006. Previous to that, DEA&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deadiversion.gov\/fed_regs\/notices\/2001\/fr0418\/fr0418a.htm\">rejection<\/a> in March\u00a02001 of a separate rescheduling petition came just two months after getting a recommendation from FDA. In both cases the health officials suggested keeping marijuana in Schedule I, which DEA agreed with.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Upon completion of the determination, DEA will notify the petitioners of its decision and plans to publish the full analyses of both HHS and DEA in the Federal Register,&#8221; Kadzik said\u00a0of the currently ongoing review.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gpo.gov\/fdsys\/pkg\/USCODE-2011-title21\/html\/USCODE-2011-title21-chap13-subchapI-partB-sec811.htm\">federal law<\/a>,\u00a0HHS must consider several factors in making a\u00a0recommendation to DEA, including scientific evidence of a drugs&#8217;s\u00a0pharmacological effect,\u00a0<span style=\"line-height: 1.5\">risk to public health,\u00a0psychic or physiological dependence liability and\u00a0actual or relative potential for abuse.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5\">The previously unreleased letter to Blumenauer was referenced in a <\/span><a style=\"line-height: 1.5\" href=\"http:\/\/www.marijuana.com\/blog\/news\/2015\/12\/u-s-senators-press-federal-agencies-on-medical-marijuana-research\/\">separate letter<\/a><span style=\"line-height: 1.5\"> that a group of eight U.S senators sent this week pressing\u00a0DEA and other federal agencies to remove roadblocks to research on marijuana&#8217;s medical benefits.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Kadzik&#8217;s revelation to Blumenauer that DEA had received a rescheduling recommendation from FDA as of September 30, the senators wrote, is in contrast to what officials for DEA, HHS and the Office of National Drug Control Policy reportedly told a group of Capitol Hill staffers at a briefing on November 13. At the meeting, according to the senators, staff pressed for a timeline on processing the rescheduling petition but were told by the the federal agency officials that they &#8220;could not provide the requested information.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That was more than six weeks after Kadzik told Blumenauer that the FDA had already made its recommendation to DEA.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;At best, this was a remarkably embarrassing mistake,&#8221; Mike Liszewski of <a href=\"http:\/\/safeaccessnow.org\">Americans for Safe Access<\/a> told Marijuana.com in an interview. Pointing to recent instances of the Justice Department operating in bad faith, such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marijuana.com\/blog\/news\/2015\/08\/exclusive-justice-department-admits-misleading-congress-on-marijuana-vote\/\">offering differing interpretations<\/a>\u00a0of a Congressional medical marijuana enforcement rider before and after it was enacted, he added,\u00a0&#8220;this latest revelation is especially concerning. We hope the agencies will become more transparent and give medical marijuana patients the respect they deserve.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Read <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/293916593\/DEA-Weighing-FDA-Marijuana-Rescheduling-Recommendation\">Kadzik&#8217;s\u00a0full letter to Blumenauer<\/a> below.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"scribd_iframe_embed\" src=\"\/\/www.scribd.com\/embeds\/293916593\/content?start_page=1&#038;view_mode=&#038;access_key=key-lhITwOkuaZo2c42IOu36\" data-auto-height=\"true\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"scribd_293916593\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"font-size:10px;text-align:center;width:100%\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/293916593\">View this document on Scribd<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Top federal health officials\u00a0recently told the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) whether marijuana should be reclassified\u00a0under federal law, a document obtained by Marijuana.com reveals, but it is not yet known what that recommendation entails. &#8220;DEA recently received the [Department of Health and Human Services]\u00a0scientific and medical evaluations as well as a scheduling recommendation that\u00a0HHS prepared in [&#8230;] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2421,2417,9,1,3],"tags":[2427,2419],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}