Marijuana rescheduling judge blasts DEA for ‘astonishing’ behavior

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s refusal to comply with direct orders from the administrative law judge overseeing the marijuana rescheduling process is “unprecedented and astonishing.”

That’s part of the scathing criticism directed at the DEA on Monday by the agency’s chief administrative law judge, John Mulrooney II.

Mulrooney’s comments were in response to the DEA’s failure to follow directions on how to submit its proposed testimony to be heard once hearings on the Biden administration’s proposal to reclassify cannabis under federal law resume on Jan. 21.

Judge: DEA didn’t provide ‘hard copies’

The DEA was instructed to “timely provide … hard copies” of its planned testimony and evidence, as Mulrooney’s Monday order noted. Instead, the DEA provided “a compact disc (CD) containing copies” of both the thousands of public comments DEA received over the summer as well as its own testimony.

“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,” wrote Mulrooney, who added the DEA made an “action taken in deliberate defiance of specific direction.”

Mulrooney’s ruling, first reported by Marijuana Moment, also “reserved” the possibility of future sanction against DEA.

DEA responds to bias allegation

Separately, also on Monday, the DEA offered a response to a Jan. 6 filing in which one of the designated rescheduling hearing participants accused the agency of bias.

That motion, filed by Hemp for Victory and Village Farms International, noted that the DEA elected to exclude the state of Colorado from participating in the hearing but offered assistance to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation before that agency submitted its request to participate.

In its response Monday, the DEA argued that Mulrooney has already ruled that he lacks the authority to disqualify the agency from the hearings – and that there’s insufficient evidence of any bias.

The Jan. 6 request “fail(s) to articulate how a letter from DEA seeking supplemental information regarding a request to participate in hearing constitutes impermissible” contact, wrote S. Taylor Johnson, an attorney with the agency’s Office of Chief Counsel.

Observers of the process are questioning whether the DEA isn’t deliberately slow-walking the rescheduling hearings, which are scheduled to run until March.

After the hearings, Mulrooney will issue a ruling that the incoming DEA administrator in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration is free to reject.