District court evidentiary hearing on the constitutionality of marijuana’s Schedule I status is underway

Earlier this year, an Eastern District of California judge granted a very rare evidentiary hearing on the constitutionality of the federal government’s treatment of marijuana.  That hearing is finally underway this week.  I’d recommend the Eastern District of California blog for following all of the news and developments.  

The EDCA blog has been linking to relevant news coverage, which so far has been sparse unfortunately.  

There have been some posts suggesting things aren’t going very well for the federal government, but I’m not so sure how much stock to put in those reports.  

For example, the Leaf has this post up on some of the testimony of defense witnesses, reprting that “attempts by US Attorneys to paint [Dr. Carl] Hart – who teaches neuroscience at Columbia University and sits on an advisory board to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) – as a researcher blinded by his personal biases blew up, at times embarrassingly, in their faces.”  The anecdotes cited to support this seem focused more on cross examination drama sorts of points, however.  

Though it does sound like Hart had a few snappy and effective replies to questions on cross, I doubt that tells us much at all about how the hearing is actually going ias far as what the likely outcome will be.  (Even weirder, the Leaf’s post comes with the click-driving headline “Federal Prosecutors Appear to Concede Cannabis’ Medical Benefits” but there is absolutely nothing reported in the story that I see to back up that wild claim.)  

A rational basis challenge to marijuana’s Schedule I status will be a tough claim to make out, as anyone familiar with the law in this area knows.  Whatever the result, news about the hearings will be interesting to continue to follow.