| Prohibition’s End |
Medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) on Thursday filed an appeal brief in the D.C. Circuit to compel the federal government to reclassify marijuana for medical use.
In July 2011, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) denied a petition filed in 2002 by the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC), which was denied only after the coalition sued the government for unreasonable delay. The ASA brief filed on January 26 is an appeal of the CRC rescheduling denial.
“By ignoring the wealth of scientific evidence that clearly shows the therapeutic value of marijuana, the Obama Administration is playing politics at the expensive of sick and dying Americans,” said ASA Chief Counsel Joe Elford, who filed the appeal Thursday.
| ASA |
| Joe Elford, ASA: “For the first time in more than 15 years we will be able to present evidence in court to challenge the government’s flawed position on medical marijuana” |
”For the first time in more than 15 years we will be able to present evidence in court to challenge the government’s flawed position on medical marijuana,” Elford said.
Although two other rescheduling petitions have been filed since the establishment of the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, the merits of medical efficacy were reviewed only once by the courts in 1994.
The ASA appeal brief asserts that the federal government acted arbitrarily and capriciously in its efforts to deny marijuana to millions of patients throughout the United States. ASA argues in the brief that the DEA has no “license to apply different criteria to marijuana than to other drugs, ignore critical scientific data, misrepresent social science research, or rely upon unsubstantiated assumptions, as the DEA has done in this case.”
ASA is urging the court to “require the DEA to analyze the scientific data evenhandedly,” and order “a hearing and findings based on the scientific record.”
Patient advocates argue that by failing to reclassify marijuana, the federal government has stifled meaningful research into a wide array of therapeutic uses, such as pain relief, appetite stimulation, nausea suppression, and spasticity control among many other benefits.
In 1998, the government ignored the ruling of its own Administrative Law Judge Francis Young, who said that “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.”
Since the CRC petition was filed in 2002, even more studies have been published showing the medical benefits of marijuana for illnesses such as neuropathic pain, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer’s.
Last year, the National Cancer Institute, a division of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, added cannabis to its list of Complementary Alternative Medicines, pointing out that it’s been therapeutically used for millennia.
The ASA appeal asserts that scientific evidence that was studied or discovered after 2002 is still relevant and must be considered.
Attorneys David Holland and Michael Kennedy filed the original petition in 2002 on behalf of the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis, which included several individual patients along with groups such as ASA and Patients Out of Time.