Since 1970, marijuana has been listed in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, a category supposedly reserved for drugs with “a high potential for abuse” that “have no currently accepted medical use” and cannot be used safely even under the supervision of a doctor.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has consistently rejected petitions asking to reclassify marijuana, citing advice from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). But HHS changed that advice in August 2023, and its rationale, explained in a document released five months later, confirms that marijuana classification has always been a political question, not a medical one.
HHS was responding to an October 2022 directive from President Joe Biden, who directed the department and Attorney General Merrick Garland to “begin the administrative process to expeditiously review how marijuana is scheduled under federal law “. Biden noticed that “we classify marijuana at the same level as heroin” and treat it as “more serious than fentanyl,” which he says “doesn’t make sense.” After conducting its review, HHS recommended that the DEA move marijuana to Schedule III, which includes prescription drugs such as ketamine, Tylenol with codeine, and anabolic steroids.
As recently as 2016, HHS continued to maintain that marijuana should remain in Schedule I. Its reversal was not based on new scientific evidence. It was based on a reinterpretation of the Annex I criteria that could have been implemented much earlier.
The DEA has long held that a substance can only have a “currently accepted medical use” if there is sufficient evidence to meet the Food and Drug Administration’s requirements for approval of a prescription drug. HHS replaced that dubious interpretation of the law with a two-part test that takes into account clinical experience with marijuana in the 38 states that have approved its medical use and asks whether there is “credible scientific support” for one or more apps. HHS has found such support for the treatment of pain, nausea and vomiting, and “anorexia related to a medical condition.”
Regarding abuse potential and safety, HHS noted that marijuana compares favorably to “other drugs of abuse,” such as heroin (Schedule I), cocaine (Schedule II), benzodiazepines such as Valium and Xanax (Schedule IV) and alcohol (unscheduled). “The vast majority of people who use marijuana,” it reads, “do so in a way that does not lead to dangerous results for themselves or others.”
This was nothing new to most Americans. Way back in 1988, the DEA’s chief administrative law judge concluded that marijuana did not meet the Schedule I criteria, only to be overruled by the agency’s head. This time, given HHS’s late reversal, the outcome may be different.