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The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been trying to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III under federal law — a shift that would represent the most significant change to American cannabis classification in decades. As of this week, that process is stuck in a procedural dispute that reveals something uncomfortable: the agencies tasked with evaluating controlled substances apparently lack written procedures for doing so.
That is not an activist claim. It is the finding of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the independent federal watchdog that audits US government operations. According to the GAO report now at the centre of this dispute, the DEA “does not have any policies or procedures regarding how its staff are to conduct evaluations or schedule substances,” and the Food and Drug Administration similarly lacks written procedures “specifying how its staff are to conduct evaluations or develop scheduling recommendations for substances.”
What the Dispute Is Actually About
Opponents of cannabis rescheduling — including the prohibitionist organisation Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), three US states (Idaho, Indiana, and Nebraska), and several advocacy groups opposed to reform — want the GAO report entered into the official hearing record. They also want additional rounds of testimony and document discovery before a final recommendation is issued.
The DEA, for its part, has told the presiding judge — Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek Julius — that it has no objection to including the GAO report in the record. But the agency firmly opposes any further briefings, arguing that the report “does not present any new evidence salient to the issue before this Tribunal” and that opponents have “mischaracterized the GAO Report and its impact.”
The agency's position, set out in a brief filed on Friday and reported by Marijuana Moment, is that the GAO identified gaps in the documentation of the scheduling process — not flaws in the scientific analysis itself. “The Report issued a recommendation that DEA and FDA ‘fill gaps’ in their written policies surrounding the process of rescheduling,” the brief reads. “This recommendation is immaterial to the actual scientific processes and analysis these agencies used.”
Opponents are not convinced. Groups including the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association (NDASA) and DUID Victim Voices filed a joint brief arguing that “additional briefing is necessary because this dispute goes beyond whether the Report is admissible — it concerns what the Report means and why it matters.”
Why Policy Watchers Elsewhere Should Take Note
For readers in Malta and across Europe, the internal mechanics of US administrative law might seem remote. But the underlying question — how should a government agency formally evaluate the evidence for reclassifying a substance, and what happens when those procedures are absent or undocumented? — is not uniquely American.
The European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA), which monitors drug trends across EU member states, operates within a different legal architecture entirely, and EU member states each carry their own scheduling frameworks. Malta's approach, built around Malta's 2021 cannabis reform and the adult-use CHRA (Cannabis Harm Reduction Association) model, side-stepped federal scheduling debates by creating a distinct non-commercial, association-based framework. But the broader question — whether government bodies have transparent, documented criteria for how they classify and evaluate cannabis — is live everywhere.
The GAO's finding that no written procedures exist is striking precisely because the US scheduling system is the one that most of the world modelled its own frameworks on, at least partially, via UN treaty obligations. If the originating system turns out to have been operating on institutional memory rather than documented process, that is worth sitting with.
Where Things Stand
Until last month, the only remaining step in the US proceedings was for Judge Julius to issue his own recommendation to the DEA administrator, who would then make a final determination. That step is now on hold. The stay granted to the opposing parties means no timeline is certain.
Reform advocates in the United States had hoped a rescheduling decision might arrive before the end of 2025. Procedural delays of this kind — especially ones that invite new rounds of evidence and argument — tend to push timelines out by months, not weeks.
The irony is not subtle: a report criticising the lack of formal procedures has itself become the instrument for further procedural delay. Whether that delay ultimately changes the outcome, or simply postpones it, remains to be seen.
For now, cannabis remains a Schedule I substance in the United States — classified alongside heroin as having no accepted medical use — while 38 US states and the District of Columbia permit it in some form, and a growing number of European countries are moving toward regulated adult-use frameworks of their own. The gap between law on paper and practice on the ground is not a uniquely Maltese problem.
The core insight here is this: procedural legitimacy matters. When a reclassification process lacks documented methodology, it becomes vulnerable to challenge regardless of the underlying science — and that is a lesson every regulator, not just the DEA, should carry forward.
Sources:
Marijuana Moment — DEA Is OK With Including New Report In Marijuana Rescheduling Hearing As Opponents Seek More Testimony And Document Discovery
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/dea-is-ok-with-including-new-report-in-marijuana-rescheduling-hearing-as-opponents-seek-new-testimony-and-document-discovery/
Featured image: Photo by Mark Stebnicki on Pexels
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