It was a victorious day on Thursday for medical marijuana patients and advocates for marijuana reform as a federal appeals court has ruled that it would hold open a case challenging the scheduling status of marijuana under federal law.
The court has ordered that the DEA must “promptly” make a decision on marijuana rescheduling so that those who rely on its medical benefits don’t unduly suffer.
It was in 2017 that several patients and advocates filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department in a U.S. District Court in 2017, claiming that the Schedule I status of cannabis under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) poses serious health risks and unfair economic disadvantages.
Initially the case had been dismissed in 2018 but there is now a new opinion on an appeal filed by patients and their supporters and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has agreed that they took the issue to the judicial branch prematurely when they should have exhausted their administrative options.
“[W]e are troubled by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)’s history of dilatory proceedings,” U.S. Circuit Judge Guido Calabresi wrote for the majority.
He added, “Accordingly, while we concur with the District Court’s ruling, we do not dismiss the case, but rather hold it in abeyance and retain jurisdiction in this panel to take whatever action might become appropriate if the DEA does not act with adequate dispatch.”
The case is “unusual,” the court wrote, because “among the Plaintiffs are individuals who plausibly allege that the current scheduling of marijuana poses a serious, life‐or‐death threat to their health.”
“Taking the facts as alleged, and, accordingly, taking the supposed benefits some Plaintiffs have experienced from marijuana as true as well, we—like the District Court below—are struck by the transformative effects this drug has assertedly had on some Plaintiffs’ lives. As a result, we are troubled by the uncertainty under which Plaintiffs must currently live.”
