Tag: dea

Federal Court Rejects Washington Doctor’s Effort To Legally Access Psilocybin For End-Of-Life Patient Care

A federal appellate court has rejected the latest effort by a Washington State doctor who is seeking to legally use psilocybin to treat cancer patients in end-of-life care, ruling that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) provided a reasonable explanation in denying the doctor’s request.

In an opinion filed on Thursday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected arguments from lawyers for Dr. Sunil Aggarwal and his clinic, the Advanced Integrated Medical Science (AIMS) Institute that DEA’s denial of Aggarwal’s efforts was arbitrary and capricious

“DEA’s decision to deny AIMS’s request was neither arbitrary nor capricious,” the court concluded. “We therefore deny AIMS’s petition for review of the DEA’s decision.”

Aggarwal and AIMS have been working since at least 2020 to find a way to legally obtain psilocybin for patients in palliative care, initially seeking to win permission from regulators under state and federal right-to-try laws.

When DEA rebuffed that request, Aggarwal sued. In early 2022, a federal appellate panel dismissed the lawsuit, opining that the court lacked jurisdiction because DEA’s rejection of Aggarwal’s administrative request didn’t constitute a reviewable agency action.

The latest Ninth Circuit ruling results from Aggarwal’s responses to that ruling. In February 2022, the doctor filed a formal petition with DEA to reschedule psilocybin from Schedule I to Schedule II under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA)—the denial of which is a reviewable action. He also applied for a regulatory waiver to obtain psilocybin.

DEA denied Aggarwal’s petition in September 2022 and rejected the waiver request the next month. The doctor’s Ninth Circuit case challenged both decisions.

“Following the dismissal of its earlier petition, AIMS returned to DEA with a concrete request. AIMS asked EA to exempt Dr. Aggarwal from registration under the CSA, either by finding that Dr. Aggarwal’s proposed use of psilocybin was not covered by the CSA’s registration requirement or by waiving the registration requirement,” Judge Marsha Berzon, a Clinton appointee, wrote for the court in Thursday’s opinion. “DEA declined to take action, and AIMS again petitioned for review. Because DEA’s response was neither arbitrary nor capricious, we deny AIMS’s petition for review.”

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Trump’s New DEA Head Says Marijuana Is A ‘Gateway Drug’ That Causes Psychosis And Other Mental Health Problems

The official named to run the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as acting administrator subscribes to the “gateway drug” theory for marijuana and believes most people living in states that have legalized cannabis will continue to obtain it from illicit sources such as cartels due to high taxes in regulated markets.

As the Trump administration takes shape, marijuana reform advocates and stakeholders are getting to learn more about the newly announced acting administrator, Derek Maltz. And so far, a review of his record has done little to assure the cannabis community that he would serve as an ally in the push for reform at DEA.

Maltz, who retired from the agency in 2014 after 28 years of service, has made a series of sensational comments about cannabis—at one point linking marijuana use to school shootings, for example. But he evidently also holds a more common prohibitionist position: He thinks cannabis is a gateway to harder drugs, despite numerous studies contradicting that theory.

“Marijuana is not the marijuana from the 70s or the 80s or the 90s. This is higher, pure-THC marijuana,” he said during an interview with NTD at a Turning Point USA event last year. “I’ve talked to doctors about this. It’s actually causing psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety—so it’s really a gateway drug for these kids that don’t know any better.”

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Trump’s New DEA Head Blamed Marijuana For School Shootings And Claimed Rescheduling Push Was Politically Motivated

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has a new interim leader—and he’s no fan of marijuana, previously linking cannabis use to school shootings and repeatedly insisting that the Biden administration”hijacked” the rescheduling process from the agency for political purposes.

DEA announced on Monday that Derek Maltz, who retired from the agency in 2014 after 28 years of service, will be serving as acting administrator. With President Donald Trump still having yet to name his choice to run DEA as administrator, it’s unclear if Maltz is positioned to receive that nomination or if he will ultimately be replaced.

But for cannabis advocates and stakeholders, Maltz’s return to DEA for now—especially as anxieties around the fate of the ongoing marijuana rescheduling process grow—represents a troubling development.

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DEA Judge Cancels Marijuana Rescheduling Hearings Amid Legal Challenges, Pushing Back Reform For At Least Three Months

The first hearings on the Biden administration’s marijuana rescheduling proposal that were set for next week have now been canceled following a legal challenge from pro-reform witnesses, a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) judge has ruled.

While DEA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) John Mulrooney rejected key arguments from rescheduling proponents about how alleged improper communications and witness selection decisions by DEA Administrator Anne Milgram warranted the agency’s removal from the process altogether, he ultimately granted a request for leave to file an interlocutory appeal—canceling the scheduled January 21 merit-based hearing and staying the proceedings for at least three months.

And although Mulrooney cited statutory restrictions on his office’s ability to take actions such as removing DEA as the “proponent” of the proposal to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), he sharply criticized the agency over various procedural missteps that he argued contributed to a delay of the rulemaking, potentially indefinitely as a new administration is set to come into office next week.

Central to the movants’ motion to remove DEA are allegations that certain agency officials conspired with anti-rescheduling witnesses who were selected for the hearing. The judge didn’t outright deny those claims and, in fact, noted a “disturbing and embarrassing revelation” about such communications. However, he said even if those claims were substantiated, they wouldn’t on their own constitute an “‘irrevocable taint’” that will affect the ultimate outcome of the proceedings.” Therefore, he said, it wouldn’t affect his office’s authority to relegate DEA in the hearings.

“I can no more remove or re-designate the Administrator than I can hold parties in contempt and fine them,” Mulrooney said. “The strangeness of this unsupported approach is amplified by the fact that the appointment of a new DEA Administrator by a different political party is imminent.”

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DEA Judge Blasts Agency For ‘Unprecedented And Astonishing’ Defiance Of Ruling On Marijuana Rescheduling Evidence Procedures

A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) judge is condemning the agency over its “unprecedented and astonishing” defiance of a key directive related to evidence it is seeking to use in upcoming hearings on the Biden administration’s marijuana rescheduling proposal.

At issue is DEA’s insistence on digitally submitting tens of thousands of public comments it received in response to the proposed rule to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) as evidence in the hearings.

At multiple points, DEA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) John Mulrooney advised the agency that hard copies of all evidence needed to be entered by January 3, and he rejected DEA’s request for an exception to the rule. Nevertheless, DEA moved to submit the comments in compact disc form despite the “clear (and repeated) directives,” the judge said in an order on Monday.

“The Government has not supplied the tribunal with a hard copy of the lengthy proposed exhibit… which it represents as containing the Comments,” Mulrooney said. “In view of the fact that Government’s request for leave for an exception to the rules applicable to the rest of the Designated Participants was specifically denied, this action is clearly not a mistake borne of misunderstanding or inadvertence, but an action taken in deliberate defiance of specific direction.”

“Even among the numerous extraordinary and puzzling actions taken thus far by the Government during the course of this litigation, this disobedience of an unequivocal directive from the tribunal is unprecedented and astonishing,” he said.

To that end, he rejected the evidentiary exhibit and further noted that, in light of DEA’s “deliberate failure to comply with the unequivocal and repeated directive of the tribunal, the issue of sanction is herein RESERVED for a determination to be made at such time during the hearing on the merits that the proposed exhibit is offered into the record.”

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DEA Fails To Release Updated Marijuana Arrest And Seizure Data, Drawing Criticism From Legalization Advocates

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is facing criticism after failing to release updated annual data on marijuana-related arrests and seizures as it has done in prior years.

The agency has been publishing and archiving the annual data from its Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program (DCE/SP) for decades, and advocates say the information is critical, especially amid heightened consideration of federal marijuana policy reform.

The last time that DEA updated the cannabis arrest and seizures figures was May 2023.

That data showed that DEA seized more than 5.7 million marijuana plants in 2022, a demonstrable increase that bucked the trend that’s been observed over recent years as the state legalization movement has expanded. However, the agency made far fewer cannabis-related arrests that year.

“At a time when voters and their elected officials nationwide are re-evaluating state and federal marijuana policies, it is inconceivable that government agencies are unwilling to provide data on the estimated costs and scope of federal marijuana prohibition in America,” NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano said in a blog post.

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FBI, DEA Deployment of AI Raises Privacy, Civil Rights Concerns

A required audit of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) efforts to integrate AI such as biometric facial recognition and other emerging technology raises significant privacy and civil rights concerns that necessitate a careful examination of the two agencies’ initiatives.

The 34-page audit report – which was mandated by the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act to be carried out by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Inspector General (IG) – found that the FBI and DEA’s integration of AI is fraught with ethical dilemmas, regulatory inadequacies, and potential impacts on individual liberties.

The IG said the integration of AI into the DEA and FBI’s operations holds promise for enhancing intelligence capabilities, but it also brings unprecedented risks to privacy and civil rights.

The two agencies’ nascent AI initiatives, as described in the IG’s audit, illustrate the tension between technological advancement and the safeguarding of individual liberties. As the FBI and DEA navigate these challenges, they must prioritize transparency, accountability, and ethical governance to ensure that AI serves the public good without compromising fundamental rights.

While the DEA and FBI have begun to integrate AI and biometric identification into their intelligence collection and analysis processes, the IG report underscores that both agencies are in the nascent stages of this integration and face administrative, technical, and policy-related challenges. These difficulties not only slow down the integration of AI, but they also exacerbate concerns about ensuring the ethical use of AI, particularly regarding privacy and civil liberties.

One of the foremost challenges is the lack of transparency associated with commercially available AI products. The IG report noted that vendors often embed AI capabilities within their software, creating a black-box scenario where users, including the FBI, lack visibility into how the algorithms function or make decisions. The absence of a software bill of materials (SBOM) — a comprehensive list of software components — compounds the problem, raising significant privacy concerns as sensitive data could be processed by opaque algorithms, potentially leading to misuse or unauthorized surveillance.

“FBI personnel … stated that most commercially available AI products do not have adequate transparency of their software components,” the IG said, noting that “there is no way for the FBI to know with certainty whether such AI capabilities are in a product unless the FBI receives a SBOM.”

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DEA Calls For Increased DMT Production In 2025 To Support Development Of FDA-Approved Psychedelic Drug

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is increasing the 2025 quota for the legal production of DMT in the U.S., saying it agrees with requests for the adjustment to “support legitimate research and scientific efforts” to develop a Food and Drug Administration- (FDA) approved drug based on the psychedelic.

In a notice set to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, DEA cited “additional quota applications and comments from DEA-registered manufacturers,” justifying the increase for the psychedelic compound.

DEA released initial quotas for the production of Schedule I and Schedule II controlled substances for research purposes in September. At the time, it called for an increase in the manufacturing of the psychedelics ibogaine, psilocybin and psilocyn, while continuing to maintain stable quotas for other substances such as marijuana, THC and MDMA.

But following a public comment period, it raised the production goal for DMT from 11,000 grams to 20,000 grams.

It’s not clear how close researchers are to developing a DMT-based drug, but several companies have indicated their intent to bring the psychedelic to market, pending regulatory approval.

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Justice Department Orders DEA to Halt Airport Searches Because of ‘Significant Issues’ With Cash Seizures

The Justice Department has ordered the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to suspend most searches of passengers at airports and other mass transit hubs after an independent investigation found DEA task forces weren’t documenting searches and weren’t properly trained, creating a significant risk of constitutional violations and lawsuits. 

The deputy attorney general directed the DEA on November 12 to halt what are known as “consensual encounter” searches at airports—unless they’re part of an existing investigation into a criminal network—after seeing the draft of a Justice Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) memorandum that outlined a decade’s worth of “significant concerns” about how the DEA uses paid airline informants and loose criteria to flag passengers to search for drugs and cash.

OIG Investigators found that the DEA paid one airline employee tens of thousands of dollars over the past several years in proceeds from cash seized as a result of their tips. However, the vast majority of those airport seizures aren’t accompanied by criminal prosecutions. This has led to years of complaints from civil liberties groups that the DEA is abusing civil asset forfeiture—a practice that allows police to seize cash and other property suspected of being connected to criminal activity such as drug trafficking, even if the owner is never arrested or charged with a crime. 

The memo, released publicly today by the OIG, found that failures to properly train agents and document searches “​​creates substantial risks that DEA Special Agents (SA) and Task Force Officers (TFO) will conduct these activities improperly; impose unwarranted burdens on, and violate the legal rights of, innocent travelers; imperil the Department’s asset forfeiture and seizure activities; and waste law enforcement resources on ineffective interdiction actions.”

The OIG memo and directive is a victory for advocacy groups that oppose civil asset forfeiture, such as the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm that is currently litigating a class action lawsuit challenging the DEA’s airport forfeiture practices.

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DEA Should Be Removed From Marijuana Rescheduling Hearing After Illegally Conspiring With Prohibitionists, Legal Filing Says

A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) judge is being asked to remove the agency from its role in an upcoming hearing on the Biden administration’s marijuana rescheduling proposal, with a new legal filing citing alleged statutory violations that include “unlawful” communication with a prohibitionist group.

When the Department of Justice formally proposed moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA)—consistent with a recommendation from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—one aspect stood out: The DEA administrator didn’t sign the notice of proposed rulemaking, breaking with historical precedent on federal scheduling proceedings. Instead, it was signed by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

That was one of several factors that led to a motion being filed with DEA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) John Mulrooney on Monday, seeking corrective action. It was submitted on behalf of Hemp for Victory and Village Farms International, which were both invited to participate in the rescheduling hearing that’s set to begin next month.

The issue isn’t just that DEA Administrator Anne Milgram declined to sign the proposed rule. Throughout that notice, the agency said it needed additional data on a variety of issues—namely cannabis-related health issues and law enforcement concerns—in order to make a complete assessment. The motion argues that the backwards approach to the rulemaking violates federal statute.

“By waiting until the publication of the [proposed rule]—and thus after DOJ had initiated proceedings under [the CSA]—to flag categories of supposedly ‘necessary data,’ DEA ensured that HHS would not get to respond to that data in its recommendation and evaluation,” the motion says. “Even worse, DEA effectively turned the [proposed rule] into a blueprint for the Prohibitionists it apparently was communicating with behind the scenes.”

Another issue that’s arisen concerns DEA’s selection of witnesses to participate in the December hearing, which was scheduled following a public comment period that saw tens of thousands of submissions—a majority of which favored rescheduling or otherwise pushed for bolder reform such as removing marijuana from the CSA altogether.

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