Biden-Harris make desperate move on marijuana as rule of law collapses

With just three months to go before the election, the Biden administration is attempting to score political points by beginning a process to loosen federal restrictions on marijuana. Unable to meet the legal or scientific standards for this change, the Biden-Harris administration is engaging in a cynical game of rewriting the rules and ignoring the science to achieve its partisan goals.

Federal law—the Controlled Substances Act of 1970—requires the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to classify drugs according to a five-tiered system. Schedule I drugs are drugs that have no current accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse and dependence, and their manufacture and distribution are generally prohibited by federal law.

In contrast, drugs with accepted medical uses are placed in the less restrictive Schedules II through V. This makes their manufacture, distribution, and medical use subject to federal regulation based on their relative risk of abuse and dependence. Drugs in Schedule II are the most tightly controlled, and drugs in Schedule V the least.

There have been previous attempts to loosen restrictions on marijuana by lowering its level of probability. These attempts have failed.

The Biden-Harris administration wants to loosen marijuana laws to please its political base, even though science doesn’t support the move.

Most recently, in 2016, an effort during the Obama administration failed when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommended that the DEA not reclassify marijuana, concluding that the drug “has a high potential for abuse, has no accepted medical use in the United States, and lacks an acceptable level of safety for use, even under medical supervision.” But eight years later, HHS has reversed course under political pressure from the Biden administration, even though the DEA has not approved the change.

To appeal to progressive voters, the administration is pushing hard to reclassify marijuana by bypassing the DEA. In October 2022, President Joe Biden asked HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Attorney General Merrick Garland to “expeditiously” review marijuana’s Schedule I status.

In response, HHS recommended reclassifying marijuana, bypassing established drug classification standards and creating a new set of criteria designed to achieve the administration’s desired results. The DEA concluded that the available data did not support the reclassification and did not endorse the proposed change. DEA Administrator Anne Milgram did not approve it.

Instead, Attorney General Merrick Garland, noting the “starkly different positions” between DEA and HHS, came to DEA’s top brass to sign off on the final proposed rule. Before the proposed rule becomes final and effective, DEA must hear evidence in a formal hearing conducted by an administrative law judge.

Politics, not science, is the driving force behind the Biden-Harris administration’s push to reclassify marijuana. Had it not thrown out established standards and diminished the rigor of the scientific process, the administration could not have validated the reclassification.

First, marijuana clearly meets the first criteria for a Schedule I drug: It has a high potential for abuse. That was true eight years ago when HHS came to that conclusion, and none of the facts supporting that finding have changed. In fact, the potential for abuse has only increased as rising THC concentrations have made the drug increasingly potent.

The data continues to debunk the cannabis industry’s lies about marijuana being a harmless, feel-good drug. Marijuana is highly addictive: a third of people who used marijuana in the past year met criteria for addiction, and half of daily users become dependent on the drug.

In addition, marijuana has a wide range of negative effects on mental and physical health. Long-term cannabis use has been credibly linked to an increased risk of psychosis, including schizophrenia; suicidal ideation; and hallucinations or paranoia. Marijuana is particularly harmful to children and teenagers, among whom the drug has become increasingly popular.

Glass House Brands CEO Kyle Kazan says the legal marijuana grower produces more than 600,000 pounds of weed a year. That’s far more than any dealer currently in prison. (Glass House Brands)

The facts are also clear that marijuana meets the second criterion for a Schedule I drug. Just as former President Barack Obama’s HHS discovered earlier in 2016, marijuana still has no accepted medical use in the United States.

While the FDA has approved several specific synthetic compounds derived from marijuana for the treatment of certain seizure disorders, chemotherapy-related nausea, and AIDS-related anorexia, the FDA has never approved cannabis itself — or any other compound or derivative of marijuana — for the treatment of any disease.

The FDA currently states that “there has been no FDA review of rigorous clinical trial data to support that these unapproved products are safe and effective for the various therapeutic applications for which they are used.” Because marijuana has no legitimate medical use, it cannot be prescribed by doctors.

To get around the unpleasant reality that marijuana has no approved medical use, the Biden-Harris HHS argued that the fact that some states have passed laws allowing the medical use of marijuana is sufficient to show that it has a legitimate medical use.

This is downright deceptive. In the US, the availability of drugs for medical use is not based on their political popularity, but solely on the FDA’s determination, based on rigorous scientific research, that the drug is safe, effective, and uniformly made. The FDA has yet to find an acceptable medical use for marijuana.

Drug laws are meant to protect American citizens—and especially American children—from dangerous substances. But by politicizing the redistricting process, the Biden administration is gambling with the lives of people in the midst of the worst drug crisis our country has ever seen.

Not all marijuana users go on to use harder drugs, but the vast majority of people who use harder drugs started with marijuana. It is simply irresponsible to facilitate the use of a gateway drug at a time when more than 100,000 Americans die from drug overdoses each year.

One important practical effect of reclassification is that it allows those in the marijuana business to deduct their expenses as a business expense. In effect, taxpayers would be subsidizing the marijuana industry. Reclassification would give the government the green light for the cannabis industry’s campaign to downplay the addictive potential and health risks of marijuana, allowing pot sellers to cultivate widespread dependence on the drug and expand their base of regular customers.

This comes at a time when cartels and transnational criminal organizations with ties to Mexico and China have expanded their marijuana cultivation and distribution activities within the United States.

We hear a lot from the current administration about the “rule of law.” But by ignoring legal standards and scientific evidence in its rush to loosen restrictions on marijuana, the Biden-Harris administration is trampling on the rule of law and playing fast and loose with the health and safety of the American people — all for political gain.

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