Opposition in Congress
It is not certain whether cannabis will be rescheduled; after the Bloomberg report in August, Republican members of Congress sent a letter to DEA Administrator Anne Milgram telling her that the agency should not reschedule the drug.
“The recommendation to remove cannabis from the DEA’s list of dangerous Schedule I drugs is not based on science — it’s based on an irresponsible pro-pot agenda,” said Oklahoma Senator James Lankford (R) on X, in September.
The letter contended that there is no accepted medical use for cannabis and that “the known facts about marijuana have not changed since 2016.”
The FDA, however, based its recommendations in part in looking at data from more than 30,000 healthcare providers and six million patients who have used medical marijuana in state programs, largely established since 2016. Congress has directed the agency to evaluate more of that kind of real-world evidence when evaluating products, said Mr. Sklamberg.
He said that the FDA report will be taken seriously: “It’s a thorough and impressive document.”
“It’s not a document that looks like it was just put together by policy people or political people,” Mr. Sklamberg added. “It’s heavily grounded in science and medicine.”
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.