We shall see
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he head of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is aiming to present President Joe Biden with a federal cannabis scheduling decision “this year.” Agencies are working “as quickly as we can” to complete an administrative review, Secretary Xavier Becerra told Marijuana Moment during a June 15 press briefing in Sacramento, California.
While Becerra and other federal officials have previously emphasized that they are working “expeditiously” to carry out the cannabis review, which the president directed late last year, there’s been a lack of clarity about the specific timeline. Now the secretary has disclosed when he hopes to deliver on the president’s directive.
It’s not a definitive deadline, but it is the clearest timetable offered yet by a top federal official.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under HHS is carrying out an eight-step scientific review into marijuana to determine whether it should be rescheduled, descheduled or remain in Schedule I, which is reserved for the most strictly controlled drugs under the Controlled Substances Act.
“What I can tell you is that the president instructed us at HHS—FDA in particular—to take a look at how we treat marijuana to see if we can update our review of marijuana as a drug and how we can make sure how we treat it going forward on the federal level,” Becerra said. “Places like California have already changed the laws, the federal government has not, and so we’ve been instructed and we’re underway with that review as we speak.”
He said that HHS, along with other agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), are “working together to try to see if we can give the president an answer that’s based on the science and the evidence. Stay tuned. We hope to be able to get there pretty soon—hopefully this year.”
It’s not a definitive deadline, but it is the clearest timetable offered yet by a top federal official—providing new insight into what the secretary thinks may be achievable within the next six months.
The DEA could theoretically flout the resulting recommendation.
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Feds Say They Aim to Finish Cannabis Scheduling Review “This Year”