Federal government makes public documentation behind HHS recommendation to reschedule marijuana

As reported here by Marijuana Moment,  the “U.S. government has released hundreds of pages of documents related to its ongoing review of marijuana’s status under federal law, officially confirming for the first time that health officials have recommended the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) place the substance in Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).”  Here is more:

The 252 pages of documents explain that cannabis “has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States” and has a  “potential for abuse less than the drugs or other substances in Schedules I and II.” 

Federal health officials said they conducted an analysis that found more than 30,000 healthcare professionals “across 43 U.S. jurisdictions are authorized to recommend the medical use of marijuana for more than six million registered patients for at least 15 medical conditions.”

These documents are now available at this link.

UPDATE:  Over at the substack On Drugs, Shane Pennington has this lengthy new entry titled “The Unredacted HHS Docs: What do they say? What do they mean? What difference do they make?”.  Here is an excerpt from the start:

 I was up all night last night reviewing the unredacted copy of HHS’s 252-page analysis. A month ago, I went through a similar exercise with the heavily-redacted copies. Although HHS had revealed only scattered fragments and snippets of its analysis back then, I read the tea leaves and gave my best guesses as to what the agency’s analysis might say. My key predictions were that we would eventually learn that HHS

1. recommended that DEA move cannabis to schedule III;

2. established a “newly-minted standard” for currently accepted medical use based on “state-level data regarding widespread medical use of marijuana under state law” and deference to the “State laws and State licensing bodies [that] collectively regulate the practice of medicine” under our federalist system;

3. applied that new standard to conclude that cannabis does, in fact, have a currently accepted medical use;

4. “include[d] a broader and more current data set” in its analysis; and

5. “focus[ed] less on the sheer amount of illegal marijuana use and more on marijuana’s abuse potential and safety profile compared to other substances of abuse” when compared to past rescheduling proceedings.

Having reviewed the unredacted documents carefully now, I’m happy to report that my predictions were pretty much spot on across the board. We’ll probably do multiple posts on the implications of HHS’s analysis. For now, though, I’m just going to describe the key standards and conclusions underlying HHS’s analysis and flag a couple of things that really jumped out at me.