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Medical marijuana suffered a legal setback today when the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against an effort to try to get marijuana rescheduled.
Under federal law marijuana is still classified as schedule I meaning it has no accepted medical value. That is why it is illegal to prescribe or take it as medicine under federal law. Individuals though are allowed to petition the executive branch about rescheduling a drug based on new scientific research. The executive branch has the legal authority to change any drugs classification without the need for Congressional approval.
So far every such petition regarding marijuana has been rejected by the government with the most recent rejection in 2011. In response Americans for Safe Access and medical marijuana patients filed suit arguing the Drug Enforcement Agency was ignoring the scientific evidence.
While the court ruled that defendants in the case did have standing to bring the suit they concluded that the DEA acted within its authority. The DEA’s actions did not meet the arbitrary and capricious standard. From the Court:
On the merits, the question before the court is not whether marijuana could have some medical benefits. Rather, the limited question that we address is whether the DEA’s decision declining to initiate proceedings to reschedule marijuana under the CSA was arbitrary and capricious. These questions are not coterminous. “The scope of review under the ‘arbitrary and capricious’ standard is narrow and a court is not to substitute its judgment for that of the agency.” Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n of the U.S., Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 43 (1983). On the record before us, we hold that the DEA’s denial of the rescheduling petition survives review under the deferential arbitrary and capricious standard. The petition asks the DEA to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III, IV, or V drug, which, under the terms of the CSA, requires a “currently accepted medical use.” The DEA’s regulations, which we approved in Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics v. DEA, 15 F.3d 1131 (D.C. Cir. 1994), define “currently accepted medical use” to require, inter alia, “adequate and well-controlled studies proving efficacy.” Id. at 1135. We defer to the agency’s interpretation of these regulations and find that substantial evidence supports its determination that such studies do not exist.
With the court deciding not act it appears that it ultimately up to Obama administration whether or not change marijuana’s legal status to permit medical marijuana under federal law.
The Obama administration can choose to do so at anytime. Since the last petition was rejected in 2011, governors of several states with medical marijuana laws have already filed new petitions requesting the federal government move marijuana to a lower schedule.
7 Comments
This may be helpful in any future fights: The DEA does make up the Schedule of Narcotics but they are compelled to follow the advice from HHS (Health and Human Services.) The DEA does not, nor is expected to, do science. HHS has the staff and ability to make a judgement on the science or the validity of the use. Of course HHS continues to deliver non-science (nonsense) on the topic of cannabis.
But! It is important to know who you’re really fighting and where the fulcrum is. Yes?
Both agencies fall under the president and the president appoints the heads of each. Our current president labors under a victim/savior model where he feels compelled to use the power his office to “save the children” from drugs. If I had lived in an state where the electoral outcome was more clear, Obama would have never gotten my vote.
I’m not a pot user and I don’t feel it is a very important issue by itself, but what is critically important is that adult U.S. citizens are being tossed in jail and getting criminal records over this and that those are mainly the poor and minorities. Interdiction also funds horrifying criminal gangs (many estimate 80% of the Mexican drug gang’s profits come from cannabis.) It is, frankly, frightening to me that you can be stopped and, based upon a claimed ‘odor,’ be treated as a criminal. This has to stop.
Please give the president a piece of your mind on this. Give him hell on it. Just google write the president. It’s completely within his power to make this stop.
Hey, the war on drugs is too lucrative and too dear to the pearl clutching set’s heart to stop it now, just like the global war on everywhere. Besides, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Swirling colored light you can taste.
And if “it will save the life of just one child”, we have to keep at it. That is now the standard for everything repressive freedomicious. It’s so easy to say now, it rolls off the tongue. If maintaining the absolute criminal contraband status of marijuana will save the life of just one child, (by a convoluted speculative path of reasoning by which we assume a pot smoker always graduates to mainlining smack or an iron lung full of vaporized crystal methamphetamine) then we must keep hammering away at the drug war no matter the collateral damages and the cost. If it would save the life of just one child, then we must continue with blanket surveillance and other violations of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, forever. If it would save the life of just one child, then we must resign ourselves to the use of drone warfare against potentially subversive elements. And on it goes…
Counting on the president ……..
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals made a non-progressive ruling? Who could have predicted such a thing?
Why isn’t this being used as a wedge issue to divide Republicans? Go after the libertarians to have them demand the government get out of people’s lives. If you get maybe as few as 50 Republicans in Congress to push for repeal, that will result in bipartisan removal of pot from the illegal drugs list and eliminate the penalties.
Executive action would be temporary, and I’m sure some mass murderer illegally smoked tobacco and pot, but you know the pot would be blamed for the mass murders.
Why do progressives so hate democracy and the Constitution that place the power in Congress?
It’s ultimately up to the Obama administration, yes. And I just don’t see them developing a reasonable new perspective on marijuana, unfortunately.
Our government will bankrupt our nation before releasing hemp to the open market in the US or anywhere in the world because the backbone of the world economy is rooted in corporations that depend on hemp prohibition remaining in place.
The oil industry,,with bio-fuel produced from renewable hemp crops,,how would they keep their profits and assets secure if they couldn’t have fuel shortages and price control when they cannot control farmers but they can turn off oil wells? And they are a major part of the foundation of our economy.
And of course the pharmaceutical corporations,,if you are familiar with all the health issues cannabis can treat,,imagine the losses they will suffer from cannabis legalization.
The arms manufacturers,,imagine no wars over oil or the loss of control when any country can grow enough hemp to fuel their own transportation systems and energy production.
And all the other hemp products from lumber to plastic that our markets depend on selling other countries.
It is going to take a serious in their face situation to ever change and it may take more patriot’s blood to cleanse the roots of freedom.
It is time to get up from our chairs and march,,4/20/2013 falls on a Saturday so maximum participation can be expected. March on every state capitol and for any close enough or can afford the logistics,DC.
It would br helpful if FDL,NORML,ASA,DPA and any other reform organization would get behind this,but if they can’t get past the politics involved then they can sit and watch.