Did the DEA rig marijuana rescheduling process?

Longstanding suspicions that the U.S.Drug Enforcement Administration is adamantly opposed to marijuana rescheduling – and weighted a public process to ensure it could reject moving the drug from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 under federal law – are confirmed by agency decisions made public during an ongoing lawsuit.

At least, that’s the allegation made in a Feb.17 federal court filing by a group of doctors who were shut out of the rescheduling process.

ADVERTISEMENT According to DEA documents made public in as part of a lawsuit brought by Doctors for Drug Policy Reform (DDPR), an organization of pro-cannabis research medical professionals, the federal drug agency: Considered a total of 163 applicants.Selected only 25 based on still-unknown criteria.

Rejected participation requests outright from New York and Colorado officials, which supported rescheduling.Attempted to aid almost a dozen opponents of marijuana rescheduling.

It’s the fullest disclosure to date of the DEA’s actions during the marijuana rescheduling process.“It confirms what we thought,” Dr.

Bryon Adinoff, a Colorado-based addiction psychiatrist, academic and president of the DDPR, told MJBizDaily.The DDPR’s court action – first filed in November – seeks to compel the DEA to redo its witness-selection process or, failing that, to at least make the agency explain its actions.

That matter, filed by attorney Austin Brumbaugh of the Houston-based Yetter Coleman firm, is still pending in the U.S.Court of Appeals for the D.C.

Circuit.Part of the DDPR’s objective was to determine if the DEA’s process “was fixed,” Adinoff said.

“And it appears to be,” he added.Adinoff believes pausing the process or forcing a restart are both preferable to seeing it through to the foregone conclusion of a rescheduling rejection.

“We’re better off arguing the case where we are now than going forward and having it not work in our favo...