Last week the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed to hear oral arguments beginning on October 16 in the case of Americans for Safe Access (ASA) v. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). This is a positive step in a drawn-out battle between the DEA and the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC) – a group consisting of advocacy organizations, companies, and patients, including Americans For Safe Access, Patients Out of Time, NORML, and HIGH TIMES.
 
In 2002, on behalf of the Coalition, longtime HT contributor Jon Gettman filed an administrative petition to remove cannabis from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Presently, the CSA lists marijuana as a Schedule I narcotic, defined as a substance that has “a high potential for abuse” and has “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” In reality, marijuana is regarded as one of the safest and least addictive illegal substances and its efficacy as medicine has been validated by numerous studies and reports.
 
The DEA withheld a decision on the rescheduling petition for nearly nine years. Unfortunately, the CRC was unable to bring the issue before a court until the DEA offered an official response. In May of last year, the CRC sued the DEA claiming the agency had taken an unreasonable time to act. Shortly thereafter, the DEA issued a formal rejection of the 2002 petition, meaning the issue of rescheduling cannabis could finally be brought to the appellate court. Thus, medical marijuana activists and experts will finally have an opportunity to present scientific evidence of the medicinal value of cannabis.
 
The appellate court's decision to hear the case comes on the heels of vital new findings published in the latest edition of The Open Neurology Journal. In “Medical Marijuana: Clearing Away the Smoke,” a team of researchers lead by Dr. Igor Grant declared that it is “not accurate that cannabis has no medical value, or that information on safety is lacking.”
 
ASA's Chief Counsel Joe Elford summed up the medical pot community's general optimism over the pending case: “Medical marijuana patients are finally getting their day in court … This is a rare opportunity for patients to confront politically motivated decision-making with scientific evidence of marijuana’s medical efficacy … What’s at stake in this case is nothing less than our country’s scientific integrity and the imminent needs of millions of patients.”
 
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