A Republican congressman who has long opposed cannabis reform is telling the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) came to a “misguided conclusion” to recommend rescheduling cannabis— challenging the health agency’s scientific standards and imploring DEA to dismiss them as it prepares to make a final determination.
In a letter sent to DEA Administrator Anne Milgram on Wednesday, Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) also said the agency should “abide by our nation’s international treaty obligations” that he says prohibit the U.S. from moving cannabis to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has recommended.
“The treaty established widely agreed upon methods of drug control that are still used today,” Harris said, adding that any reclassification that puts cannabis outside of Schedule I or Schedule II “would constitute a violation of the Single Convention.”
DEA has previously rejected rescheduling petitions on the basis of those decades-old treaties, but as a coalition of 12 senators recently pointed out in a separate letter to Milgram this week, the United Nations (UN) has since revised global cannabis scheduling policies while allowing other member states such as Canada to enact complete legalization without penalization.
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