A federal appeals court has dismissed a petition to require the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to reevaluate marijuana\u2019s scheduling under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA)\u2014but one judge said in a concurring opinion that the agency may soon be forced to consider a policy change anyway based on a misinterpretation of the medical value of cannabis.<\/p>\n
In a ruling filed on Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit determined that scientists and military veterans seeking the scheduling review had failed to exhaust administrative remedies, and, therefore, it dismissed the case without weighing in on the merits.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit\u2014filed last year by cannabis researcher Sue Sisley of the Scottsdale Research Institute, the Battlefield Foundation and veterans Lorenzo Sullivan and Gary Hess\u2014received oral arguments in June<\/a> and largely centers on DEA\u2019s 2020 denial of a one-page marijuana rescheduling petition<\/a>\u00a0filed by a separate individual. In its response, the agency argued that marijuana has no currently accepted medical value.<\/p>\n Lawyers for the group appealed that decision, asking the court to order DEA to initiate a formal rulemaking process, which would involve expert testimony and public comment. They said that the agency\u2019s summary dismissal of past rescheduling petitions has not only been unconstitutional but also prevented important research into the drug\u2019s medical potential.<\/p>\n But in the new ruling, the three-judge panel held that \u201cpetitioners failed to exhaust their <\/span>administrative remedies with the DEA.\u201d And while \u201cthe CSA does not, in terms, require exhaustion of administrative remedies, the panel agreed with [an earlier court ruling] that the text and structure of the CSA show that Congress sought to favor administrative decision-making that required exhaustion under the CSA,\u201d the opinion<\/a> says.<\/p>\n \u201cPetitioners seek to bypass the normal administrative process by seeking review of the DEA\u2019s response to [Stephen Zyszkiewicz\u2019s] petition and then seeking to make arguments never advanced by Zyszkiewicz. Nothing prevents Petitioners from filing a petition of their own before the DEA, raising the arguments they seek to raise before us now. Because Petitioners have failed to exhaust their administrative remedies with the DEA, their petition for judicial review is dismissed.\u201d<\/p>\n The Ninth Circuit judges did reject a DEA argument that the plaintiffs lacked standing based on the fact that they were petitioning a rescheduling request filed separately by someone who wasn\u2019t party to the latest suit and only suffered a \u201cgeneralized grievance,\u201d however.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile it is undoubtedly true that the interests of third parties would be affected by a rescheduling of cannabis, this fact does not diminish Petitioners\u2019 direct and particularized interest in rescheduling,\u201d the panel found.<\/p>\n Moving forward, attorneys for the plaintiffs have a number of options at their disposal. That includes petitioning for a panel rehearing or even an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n The petitioners initially filed their lawsuit, Sisley v. DEA<\/em>, against the federal agency in May of last year, contending that DEA\u2019s justification for maintaining a Schedule I status for cannabis violates the Constitution on numerous grounds. DEA attempted to dismiss the case, but the Ninth Circuit\u00a0rejected that request in August<\/a>.<\/p>\n Justice Department lawyer Daniel Aguilar, who represented the federal government at the oral argument in June, insisted that the court should dismiss the case and allow the group to file their own DEA rescheduling petition.<\/p>\n Judges Paul Watford concurred with the latest ruling, but he did notably say in a concurring opinion that, \u201cin an appropriate case, the Drug Enforcement Administration may well be obliged to initiate a reclassification proceeding for marijuana, given the strength of petitioners\u2019 arguments that the agency has misinterpreted the controlling statute by concluding that marijuana \u2018has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.’\u201d<\/p>\n Sisley, the lawsuit\u2019s lead plaintiff and president of the Scottsdale Research Institute (SRI), is a DEA-licensed researcher focused on investigating the therapeutic potential of cannabis for veterans. She\u2019s sought to become a federally authorized marijuana manufacturer so that her facility can produce higher quality products for studies.<\/p>\n SRI has already taken the feds to court over past marijuana decisions, with results to show for it.\u00a0The institute successfully\u00a0forced DEA to issue an update on the status of their application processing<\/a>\u00a0and then got the Justice Department to hand over a \u201csecret\u201d memo that\u00a0DEA allegedly used to justify a delay in deciding those proposals<\/a>.<\/p>\n In May, Sisley and SRI received preliminary approval from DEA<\/a>\u00a0to be one of the first new federally authorized cultivators of cannabis for research.<\/p>\n Read the full Ninth Circuit ruling in the DEA marijuana case below:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n DEA marijuana rescheduling \u2026<\/a> by Marijuana Moment<\/a><\/p>\n Ohio Marijuana Activists Cleared To Collect Signatures For 2022 Legalization Ballot Initiative<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Photo elements courtesy of rawpixel<\/a> and Philip Steffan<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Court Dismisses DEA Marijuana Rescheduling Case, But Judge Says Cannabis Reclassification May Be Coming Anyway<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A federal appeals court has dismissed a petition to require the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to reevaluate marijuana\u2019s scheduling under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA)\u2014but one judge said in a concurring opinion that the agency may soon be forced to consider a policy change anyway based on a misinterpretation ofContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49674"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49675,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49674\/revisions\/49675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Court Dismisses DEA Marijuana Rescheduling Case, But Judge Says Cannabis Reclassification May Be Coming Anyway<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"