The Drug Enforcement Administration has announced it is moving forward to facilitate the expansion of U.S.-based marijuana research. After a delay that lasted years, the DEA is now moving forward to allow U.S. cultivators to grow a larger amount of research-grade cannabis domestically, but it may take a while.
The Justice Department said Monday it would move forward to expand the number of marijuana growers for federally authorized cannabis research.
The long-awaited move comes after researchers filed court papers asking a judge to compel the Drug Enforcement Administration to process the applications to grow research pot. The DEA began accepting applications to grow marijuana for federally approved research about three years ago, but the agency hasn't acted on the applications.
There’s an unsettling sense of deja vu to recent headlines of big cannabis raids in states that have legalized, from California’s Emerald Triangle to Colorado’s Front Range.
The upswing on such raids in the latter recently won some national media coverage, which provides fodder for opponents of legalization — and for those who favor a more restrictive model of legalization, in which there is no right to home cultivation.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has ordered the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to explain why it has yet to respond to nearly two dozen researchers around the U.S. who applied three years ago for a DEA license to grow research cannabis.
Attorney General William Barr recently received two letters from senators that stress the importance of expanding the number of federally authorized growers of marijuana for research purposes.
Adding such facilities would not represent a violation of international treaties, one of the letters argued, while the other focuses more broadly on delays in processing applications for additional cultivators.
Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker blamed international treaty obligations for the delayed expansion of federally approved marijuana cultivation facilities for research purposes on Friday.
During an otherwise tense oversight hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO) asked Whitaker for a status update on applications to become cultivators of research-grade cannabis. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had pledged to increase the number of such facilities in a notice published in the Federal Register in 2016.
The White House has secretly amassed a committee of federal agencies from across the government to combat public support for marijuana and cast state legalization measures in a negative light, while attempting to portray the drug as a national threat, according to interviews with agency staff and documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.