Dear Ms. Anne Milgram, Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.):

We, the undersigned, demand that you take responsibility for—and stop—your agency’s wrongful, decades-long stonewalling of federal cannabis reform and immediately reclassify or declassify cannabis under the Controlled Substances Act.

Seventy percent of Americans agree it is time to end the total federal prohibition of cannabis.  Our majority transcends partisanship, age and race.¹  It includes all levels of current and former law enforcement.²  You, for example, are a member of the group Law Enforcement Leaders,³ which agrees that reform is overdue.⁴

President Biden, moreover, made a 2020 campaign promise to “decriminalize the use of cannabis.”⁵  He chose you to lead the D.E.A. in 2021, to fulfill his promise promptly.⁶  Three years later, if you can not or will not complete your mission, you must make way for someone who will.

America has already waited too long.

Biden, in October 2022, directed the federal Department of Health and Human Services (H.H.S.) to review federal cannabis prohibition.⁷  That review was completed in August 2023.⁸  It concluded that the prevailing science contradicts your agency’s current cannabis policy and recommended, instead, that cannabis be regulated like any other prescription drug.⁹

Federal law now requires that you follow H.H.S.’s scientific conclusions.¹⁰  You not only lack the authority to do otherwise, but, by going against or delaying H.H.S.’s recommendation, you are breaking the law as a top federal law-enforcement official.

And, far from violating drug treaties—as some have suggested reform would do—the relevant treaty requires that member countries like America recognize “that the medical use of narcotic drugs continues to be indispensable for the relief of pain and suffering,” and make “adequate provision” to “ensure the availability of narcotic drugs for such purposes.”¹¹  No treaty requires that cannabis be banned from medical use,¹² as evidenced by the nine countries that have legalized recreational cannabis with no significant legal or diplomatic consequences whatsoever.¹³

Your option is to reclassify cannabis or resign.  Whichever you decide, you should do so promptly.  Further delay is a disservice, especially to the thousands of patients for whom reform already comes too late.¹⁴

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Footnotes are available at this link here.

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