Today, ASA filed the opening brief in its effort to have marijuana rescheduled at the federal level. The brief outlines some of the most egregious analytical errors made by the DEA, which led it to the the outlandish conclusion that that marijuana is even more harmful that methamphetamine and cocaine. This denial was prompted by ASA's lawsuit to compel the DEA to give some response to a rescheduling petition filed by the Coalition to Reschedule Cannabis in 2002, which went unanswered for nearly eleven years. The Petition (rightfully) requests that marijuana be rescheduled to Schedule III, IV, or V because it has an accepted medical use in the United States; it is safe for use under medical supervision; it has an abuse potential lower than Schedule I or II drugs; and it has a lower dependence liability than Schedule I or II drugs.
Among the DEA's other errors, the agency deviated from its own criteria in assessing the abuse potential of scheduled substances and it flat out ignored more than two hundred scientific studies demonstrating the medical efficacy of marijuana. Only by closing its eyes to these peer-reviewed studies could the DEA conclude that marijuana lacks a "currently accepted" medical use.
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