The Drug Enforcement Administration on Tuesday announced it still intends to hold a hearing next week regarding the proposed rescheduling of marijuana, despite plans to not hear any actual testimony or substantive discussion on the historic policy change.
The hearing, slated to begin on Dec. 2 at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time at DEA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, will “serve as a procedural day to address legal and logistical issues and discuss future dates for the evidentiary hearing on the merits,” the agency said in a statement.
“No witness testimony will be offered or received at this time,” the DEA reminded stakeholders, though the hearing will be open to “designated participants” and certain members of the media, the agency said. Everyone else will have to watch the proceedings via a livestream.
The hearing was originally slated to include testimony from more than two dozen stakeholders who want to weigh in on the proposed moving of cannabis to Schedule III from Schedule I, but a dispute over the witness list persuaded an administrative law judge to delay the testimony portion until next year. A date for the new hearing has not been selected yet.
In addition, there have been at least two lawsuits filed in federal court, and both are still pending. The first was from a Cherokee cannabis researcher in Washington state who asked that a judge halt the rescheduling process altogether until Native American tribes and other stakeholders can provide more input to DEA, and the second was from a group of pro-cannabis organizations and businesses that want the DEA replaced as the federal authority overseeing rescheduling.
All of this will likely leave most of the U.S. cannabis industry feeling a bit unsatisfied.
Which is exactly where things are, given the transition underway between the administrations of President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump. While Biden has never gone as far with marijuana reform as most activists and businesses would prefer, Trump has always been a wild card on cannabis policy, neither solidly in support or opposition to either legalization or commercialization.
That means there’s only one conclusion to draw at the moment: The continual delays by the DEA and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Justice, reflect a simple political reality that nothing is set in stone for federal cannabis reform.
[[{“value”:”The hearing initially expected to include extensive testimony, but that aspect has been delayed until 2025.
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