Proposed rescheduling would make it easier for scientists to acquire and study the drug
Federal health officials are urging the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to loosen its restrictions on cannabis—a move that could make it easier for researchers to study the drug’s potential medical benefits and harms. Following a review initiated by the White House in 2022, the U.S. Department of Human Health and Services (HHS) this week recommended that DEA reclassify cannabis from its Schedule I category, which includes drugs considered to have a high potential for abuse and no accepted therapeutic value, such as heroin and LSD, to the lower risk Schedule III. If implemented, the policy change could relax lengthy licensing procedures and handling restrictions that scientists say have hampered much-needed research.
“This is a really unprecedented situation,” says biopsychologist Ziva Cooper, director of the Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids at the University of California (UC), Los Angeles. Nearly half of U.S. states have legalized recreational cannabis, and medicinal use is permitted in many more. Now, after decades of resisting calls from scientists and activists to reschedule the drug, DEA faces new pressure to do so.
The HHS recommendation, sent to DEA in a letter first reported by Bloomberg News, would place cannabis in the same category as ketamine and anabolic steroids, which are used in health care settings and can be obtained with a prescription. (A DEA spokesperson told Bloomberg the agency had received the letter and will now initiate its own review process.)
Cannabis has shown promise in relieving chronic pain and is being explored as a possible treatment for cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other conditions. “From a medical perspective, it fits better” in Schedule III, says psychiatrist Igor Grant, director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at UC San Diego.
Scientists who study cannabis have long chafed under DEA policies. The Schedule I classification “makes everything more challenging,” says Staci Gruber, a neuroscientist who runs trials involving cannabis at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. A 2022 law increased access to cannabis for medical research purposes, but researchers must still apply for a DEA license—a process that requires months of paperwork and must be repeated for each new study. Rescheduling would streamline the process. For example, a research manual published by DEA indicates that researchers working with Schedule III substances aren’t required to submit their study protocols to the agency in advance.
If cannabis is rescheduled, researchers also expect an easing of strict security rules for storage and handling, which currently require them to use high-tech lock boxes and install expensive security cameras.
The proposed change could increase the supply of cannabis for research. Currently, DEA only permits a few universities and companies to produce the plant. Obtaining a permit means investing in a complicated security system and hiring trained guards, says George Hodgin, CEO of the Biopharmaceutical Research Company, which provides cannabis to researchers.
Rescheduling wouldn’t produce “an overnight sea change,” he says. But he predicts that it could loosen the requirements enough to bring more suppliers into the field.
Whether DEA will approve HHS’s recommendation isn’t yet clear. But Larry Houck, an attorney who spent 15 years as a DEA diversion investigator, notes that the agency often defers to HHS on scientific and medical matters.
In the meantime, researchers have a slew of questions to address around cannabis. “We’re still a long way from having enough empirically sound data” to support its therapeutic benefits, Gruber says.
And the growing availability of cannabis has made the research more urgent. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in five Americans used the drug in 2019, and new cannabis products, some with a high tetrahydrocannabinol content, are flooding the market. “We have a responsibility to try to understand the ways in which [people] may use it more responsibly,” Gruber says.
