Yes guess who’s involved in this!
Marijuana Moment
A GOP-led House committee is directing the Biden administration to account for how it arrived at the decision to reschedule marijuana, while also expressing concerns about cannabis-impaired driving and the market for intoxicating hemp-based cannabinoids.
In a series of reports attached to 2025 Fiscal Year spending bills being considered by the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, lawmakers addressed a variety of marijuana-related issues. One of those is the Justice Department’s proposal to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
Just one day after the committee approved appropriations legislation with a section that would block DOJ from using its funds to reschedule or deschedule cannabis, members are taking up several other bills with reports addressing the proposed scheduling change, as well as other marijuana and psychedelics topics.
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The implied criticism of the review process, as well as the discussion about THC potency, echo points made by prohibitionist organizations such as Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), which has taken credit for influencing lawmakers to raise its concerns in various legislation.
“Marijuana Rescheduling.—The Committee is concerned about deviations from established drug scheduling evaluation standards in the FDA 2023 marijuana scheduling review. The Committee directs the HHS Inspector General to complete a report on the 2023 marijuana scheduling review including but not limited to: deviations from the established five-factor currently accepted medical use test, justification for a new, two-factor currently accepted medical use test and whether this will be the standard for all future reviews, use of a limited number of hand-selected comparator substances, and inclusion of research results that are not statistically significant or inconclusive. The Committee is concerned about reports of the mental health hazards of regular use of high-potency marijuana, particularly among adolescents. The Committee encourages the FDA to support research on high-potency marijuana and its effects on the adolescent brain, specifically regarding addiction and mental illness such as schizophrenia or psychosis.”
There’s a similar section included in the report for the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LaborH) spending bill. However, it lacks an explicit directive to complete a report and instead simply says it “supports efforts” to do so.
