Via Cannabis Business Times
Header Image:m Attorney Megan Sheehan of Rhode Island.
WASHINGTON, April 8, 2024 – PRESS RELEASE – Megan Sheehan and Associates, lawyers representing MMJ BioPharma Cultivation preparing for a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) administrative law trial on April 10, 2024, regarding the company’s DEA bulk manufacturing application to grow pharmaceutical marijuana, discovered that the DEA Director Anne Milgram illegally appointed the administrative law Judge Teresa Wallbaum hearing the case.
Immediately, MMJ BioPharma filed for relief in Rhode Island federal court, seeking an order to halt the DEA’s unconstitutional actions. The trial focused on the DEA’s apparent disregard for presidential and congressional marijuana laws.
Despite these developments, Wallbaum, the DEA judge overseeing MMJ BioPharma Cultivation’s case, opted to voluntarily stay the proceedings.
In her statement, she said, “Considering the unique circumstances and the available facts, a stay seems appropriate. MMJ’s challenge to this tribunal’s authority under Axon, which permits federal courts to address interlocutory structural challenges, presents a novel issue that complicates assessment of the DEA’s likelihood of success.”
Furthermore, she cited the Axon court’s ruling, emphasizing that subjecting a party to proceedings conducted within an unconstitutional structure could constitute legal harm in itself.
In recent congressional committee sessions, U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., expressed concerns about delays in medical cannabis treatments and research, labeling such setbacks as politically damaging to the Biden administration, such is the MMJ BioPharma Cultivation’s case as an example.
Since December 2018, MMJ BioPharma Cultivation has been awaiting DEA approval to legally cultivate marijuana for research and development for use in Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clinical trials for conditions such as multiple sclerosis and Huntington’s disease. The company claims that its applications have been in limbo with the DEA for over five years, resulting in devastating impacts on its business, including inability to hire employees and loss of projected revenues.
Duane Boise, the company’s president, criticized the DEA, saying, “We are dealing with heartless individuals at the DEA who continue to hinder marijuana research and development. MMJ has meticulously followed the law, yet the DEA fails to do the same. Ultimately, it is the patients in need who suffer due to government inaction.”
The American public needs to know that President Biden’s administration is just feeding the public lip service with no meaningful marijuana policy action. The DEA continues to act in a shroud of secrecy. With six approved DEA growers, none are growing any amount of marijuana cultivars for research and development. None can meet the DEA quota requirements and the same old University of Mississippi MUD is all that is available.
Tim Moynahan, an attorney and the company’s chair, said, “I’m hoping that by both challenging the constitutionality of the DEA system while at the same time giving the DEA a roadmap to correct all of their errors. Someone within the DEA should settle this case particularly since MMJ is vital to completing drugs that we need to help patients suffering from multiple sclerosis and Huntington’s disease.”
MMJ is represented by Attorney Megan Sheehan of Rhode Island.
