D.E.A. Head Must "Reclassify Cannabis Or Resign"—420 Petition

Anne Milgram, the head of the D.E.A., is under increasing pressure to keep Biden's decriminalization campaign promise.

Ann Milgram is the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency (D.E.A.) (government photo).

The head of the D.E.A. should either lift the total federal prohibition of cannabis or resign, according to a Change.org petition I wrote in time for April 20 (“Four Twenty”).

Unlike similar petitions that have circulated for years with small chances of success, this one comes at an unprecedented moment.

President Biden urged the D.E.A. to reclassify cannabis in recent weeks, while Vice President Harris called the D.E.A.’s current cannabis classification “absurd.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and 10 senate colleagues went further. They urged the D.E.A. “to swiftly deschedule marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act,” i.e. to end all federal regulation of the substance.

Most recently, the head of the Food and Drug Administration told the House that the D.E.A. has “no reason” to delay the matter.

Before that, the governors of Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey and New York publicly stated their hope that the D.E.A. would have taken action four months ago.

This time around, law-enforcement organizations and veterans groups have also joined the prohibition-abolition chorus.

With federal elections six months away, a similar opportunity for cannabis reform is unlikely to come for four years. This political reality seems well understood by Anne Milgram, the current head of the D.E.A. and final decisionmaker on administrative cannabis reform. Milgram’s inaction in the face of overwhelming political pressure is unmaintainable in an extended timeframe. Below is the petition’s text:

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

Footnotes are available at this link here.

Further Background

For decades, the D.E.A. and H.H.S. maintained a united front against cannabis. H.H.S.’s scientists discounted its long-accepted medical benefits while exaggerating some of its dangers and fabricating others. So long as they did, the D.E.A. happily deferred to them.

But last year H.H.S. reversed course. Not only did the D.E.A. lose its Human Services shield, but the agency it had long cited as the ultimate scientific authority on cannabis recommended it reclassify cannabis as a prescription drug.

The petition takes no position on recreational legalization (declassification or “descheduling”) versus medical regulation (reclassification or “rescheduling”). Insisting on one over the other reduces the odds of securing any change at all. Either one would be an historic milestone.

But, as history teaches, big reforms are hard fought. Inaction favors the status quo. The head of the D.E.A.’s strategy seems to be to wait it out.

That is, if we let her.