Congressional Coalition Urges DEA To Consider Legalization Attempts Amid Cannabis Rescheduling
October 31, 2023Thirty-one members of the House of Representatives, including both Democrats and Republicans, have sent a letter to the Drug Enforcement Agency urging the DEA to take into account the U.S. landscape for legal cannabis, as well as efforts to legalize the drug at the federal level, while rescheduling cannabis.
At the urging of the Department of Health and Human Services, the DEA is assessing whether to remove cannabis from its list of Schedule I (the most criminalized) to Schedule III drugs. The bipartisan group of representatives is pushing the DEA to go a step further and consider the benefits of fully descheduling cannabis. According to the letter, “The federal government must correct this prohibition and the continued criminalization of otherwise legal marijuana—creating legal job opportunities, promoting public safety and not unjust incarceration, and upholding established state regulation of cannabis production, taxation, and sales.”
The benefits to descheduling are vital, according to the authors, and would help to create a more equitable path forward for small cannabis businesses as well as clarifying the now opaque regulatory landscape in which businesses operate.
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