12 Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, urged the DEA in a letter to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act altogether.
Senate Democrats are putting new pressure on the Biden administration to ease federal restrictions on marijuana in a new letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration on Tuesday as it considers rescheduling cannabis after it was federally classified more than five decades ago.
The Department of Health and Human Services formally recommended in August that the DEA move the drug from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act, or CSA, prompting a monthslong review, which continues.
The letter, from 12 senators led by Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and John Fetterman, D-Pa., and signed by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., goes further.
“The case for removing marijuana from Schedule I is overwhelming. The DEA should do so by removing cannabis from the CSA altogether, rather than simply placing it in a lower schedule,” the senators wrote in the letter, first obtained by NBC News.
Changing the DEA scheduling well change things a lot less than you seem to think. It’s states that lock people up for simple possession, not the federal government.