Speaking at a cannabis industry event on Thursday, a former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official said he’d be “shocked” if the Drug Enforcement Administration doesn’t reschedule marijuana by next year’s presidential election.
“I would be really shocked if it took the DEA longer than the second quarter of next year to come up with its final rule,” said Howard Sklamberg, former FDA deputy commissioner for global regulatory operations and compliance. “Even when I was at FDA, we knew that important regulations that you wanted to get done in an election year, you want to get done by the summer before.”
Sklamberg also said he expects DEA will ultimately accept the FDA’s recommendation to put cannabis in Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) instead of reaching a contradictory scheduling decision.
“I personally would be surprised if DEA did not agree ultimately with FDA and [the Department of Health and Human Services]’s decision,” Sklamberg, who served as chair of FDA’s Marijuana Working Group from 2014 to 2017, said. “It certainly would be strange, in an issue that is such an important priority for the administration, for one part of the administration to reverse what another one has said.”
Sklamberg, now a lawyer at the firm Arnold and Porter, was one of a handful of panelists who spoke during a Thursday webinar hosted by the American Trade Association for Cannabis and Hemp’s (ATACH) Capital Markets Council. Others included Andrew Kline, a former policy advisor to then-Vice President Joe Biden (D) who’s now at the law firm Perkins Coie, and Adam Goers, a senior vice president at the multi-state marijuana operator The Cannabist Company (formerly Columbia Care).
The group’s mood toward August’s rescheduling recommendation was decidedly upbeat. “I’m really looking forward to this conversation,” Kline said at the start of the event, “and getting people to the place where they understand that this is a really good thing.”
Sklamberg called the possible move “a giant step in the right direction and one that, probably, you know, four years ago, most people would not have foreseen.”
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