Top US drug agency a notable holdout in Biden's push to loosen federal marijuana restrictions

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Top US drug agency a notable holdout in Biden’s push to loosen federal marijuana restrictions

BY JOSHUA G0ODMAN AND JIM MUSTIAN
Updated 8:58 PM EDT, May 20, 2024

In an isolated part of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters known as the 12th-floor “bubble,” chief Anne Milgram made an unusual request of top deputies summoned in March for what she called the “Marijuana Meeting”: Nobody could take notes.

Over the next half hour, she broke the news that the Biden administration would soon be issuing a long-awaited order reclassifying pot as a less-dangerous drug, a major hurdle toward federal legalization that DEA has long resisted. And Milgram went on to reveal another twist, according to two people familiar with the private meeting who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, that the process normally steered by the DEA had been taken over by the U.S. Justice Department and the action would not be signed by her but by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Milgram didn’t give aides a reason for the unprecedented omission and neither she nor the DEA has explained since. But it unfolded this past week exactly as laid out in that meeting two months ago, with the most significant drug policy change in 50 years launched without the support of the nation’s premier narcotics agency.

-snip-

Internal records accompanying the order indicate the DEA sent a memo to the Justice Department in late January seeking additional scientific input to determine whether marijuana has an accepted medical use, a key requirement for reclassification. But those concerns were overruled by Justice Department attorneys, who deemed the DEA’s criteria “impermissibly narrow.”

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/marijuana-pot-dea-legalization-biden-cb7869d3286094f0124de728320d89c1

[SarahD]

1. She's now obsolete.

She and all of her people will have to be reassigned. They had easy jobs. Now they'll have far less desirable positions. Bummer for them. Good for the rest of us.

[Mopar151]

2. Shades of Harry Anslinger!

The "Marajuana Tax Act of 1938" was, largely, an effort to find jobs for out-of -work "Prohibition agents". The film "Reefer Madness" was made to demonize cannibas, and put it next to morphine/heroin in the perception of the public.

86 years later, and they're still preachin' abstinence! About everything from Twinkies to Sex! (or "Refined Sugar&quot .

[YearofAction]

3. 1938?

Wikipedia says it is the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. That means that in 2024,
marihuana prohibition has reached the "four score and seven years" milestone.