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A nonprofit organization of medical professionals is no longer suing the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) over its exclusion as a participant from the cannabis rescheduling hearing process.
Doctors for Drug Policy Reform (D4DPR), which supports evidence-based cannabis regulation in the U.S., announced April 21 that it dismissed its legal challenge against the DEA in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
The group filed a 56-page brief on Feb. 17, arguing that the DEA and former DEA Administrator Anne Milgram violated bedrock administrative law principles when they held a secretive selection process for 25 “interested persons” to participate in an administrative law judge hearing while rejecting 138 others.
D4DPR claimed in the court filing that the selection process itself was arbitrary and capricious and must be redone.
However, as the cannabis rescheduling hearing remains delayed by a separate interlocutory appeal, D4DPR filed a motion earlier this month to dismiss its petition without prejudice, which the appellate court granted. In other words, D4DPR reserves the right to refile the case in the event the hearing picks back up and the DEA ultimately chooses not to reschedule cannabis.
D4DPR President Bryon Adinoff, M.D., announced Monday that while the group considered furthering its legal challenge, it ultimately pulled back to avoid further delay in the hearing. Adinoff is a board-certified addiction psychiatrist and clinical professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He’s one of more than 400 doctors who make up D4DPR.
“We remain committed to advocating for evidence-based drug policy,” Adinoff said in a press release. “This legal effort exposed fundamental flaws in the DEA’s process and reinforced the need for a more transparent, science-driven approach to drug scheduling.”
Despite its exclusion from the hearing and potentially having unfinished business, D4DPR views its now-dismissed legal challenge as a victory.
Represented by Austin T. Brumbaugh, an associate at Houston-based Yetter Coleman LLP, D4DPR forced DEA’s hand in turning over previously withheld documents, including the rejection letters the agency sent to 138 organizations/individuals who requested to participate in the formal rulemaking hearing.
Previously, the DEA did not provide a public list of the rejected requestors nor the agency’s reasoning behind denying certain groups/individuals for participation in the hearing.
John J. Mulrooney, the DEA’s chief administrative law judge, called attention to the unknowns surrounding the agency’s selection process when a “participant letter” of the 25 entities was hand-delivered to his office in October 2024.
“Although the participant letter designated a list of enumerated entities and individuals as [designated participants], there is no indication in the four corners of the document as to whether the ‘participants’ support or oppose the [proposed rule] or how the ‘participants’ satisfy the ‘interested person’ definition set forth in the regulations,” Mulrooney wrote in an Oct. 31 order.
As the former DEA head, Milgram tasked Mooney with overseeing a fair and transparent hearing to debate the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) proposed rule to reclassify cannabis to a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). This proposal came after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) determined that cannabis has currently accepted medical use and therefore cannot remain listed as a Schedule I drug.
It wasn’t until D4DPR’s February appellate filing that the public learned that “the agency gave no reasons for selecting only 25 participants or why it selected particular applicants,” according to the brief.
In addition, the D4DPR also forced DEA’s hand in furnishing “cure letters” that DEA Deputy Assistant Administrator Matthew Strait sent to a dozen entities in September, providing certain requestors the opportunity to submit supplemental information showing that they met the “interested person” status under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
The cure letters were sent primarily to those who “strongly opposed” the Schedule III proposal, according to D4DPR, including one to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which the DEA selected as a designated participant for the hearing. Whether this constituted ex parte communications between the DEA and an anti-rescheduling participant, which is prohibited under the APA, is at the heart of the ongoing interlocutory appeal.
Part of the intent behind D4DPR’s now-dismissed legal challenge was to help build a transparent record for judicial review should the DEA opt to ignore the HHS’ medical and scientific evaluation and recommendation for cannabis.
All the filings in the case, including the correspondence between the DEA and all applicants, remain publicly available on the docket, Brumbaugh told Cannabis Business Times. This means the record showing that the DEA engaged in communications with several applicants before the formal selections were made remains preserved.
“This disclosure was a major win for transparency and accountability,” Adinoff said in the D4DPR release. “The cannabis advocacy community has long questioned the DEA’s objectivity, and these documents confirm those concerns. Our goal was to expose the agency’s improper conduct—and we succeeded.”
