DEA STILL INSISTS MARIJUANA HAS NO 'ACCEPTED MEDICAL USE'.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: DRUGS

THIS SPRING, NEARLY five years after the Obama administration promised to end the federal government's longstanding, anomalous monopoly on marijuana for medical research, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) tentatively approved applications by several independent suppliers. But the DEA still maintains that the plant belongs in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), a category supposedly reserved for especially dangerous drugs with no accepted medical use.

At the center of both disputes is the Arizona-based Scottsdale Research Institute (SRI), one of the organizations that received preliminary DEA approval to grow marijuana. SRI President Suzanne Sisley, a psychiatrist who has studied marijuana's usefulness as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to reject the DEA's rationale for keeping marijuana in Schedule I. Sisley says the agency is wrong to ignore state recognition of marijuana's medical utility.

The CSA gives the DEA the authority to reschedule drugs in consultation with the Department of Health and Human Services. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws filed the first petition asking the DEA to reclassify cannabis half a century ago. But neither that case nor subsequent challenges made much headway, because federal courts have deferred to the agency's interpretation of the CSA's scheduling criteria. According to the DEA, marijuana has "no currently accepted medical use" because it does not satisfy a five-part test that...