Marijuana Moment: DEA’s Marijuana Rescheduling Hearing Includes The Wrong Voices (Op-Ed)

[Tokeativity]

“A decision about whether to continue one of the most outdated and destructive drug policies in American history should not exclude the people and advocates most directly affected by it.”

By Jason Ortiz, Last Prisoner Project

The federal government has finally admitted what millions of people have known for decades: cannabis never belonged in Schedule I. But it’s listening to the wrong voices in deciding how to carry out the process.

Schedule I is supposed to be reserved for substances with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. By moving cannabis products produced within state-regulated medical cannabis programs to Schedule III, the government has acknowledged that cannabis has medical value. That admission may be limited, but it cuts through the central justification for keeping cannabis in Schedule I at all. If cannabis no longer fits that category, the criminal penalties tied to its Schedule I status must change too.

I have walked the halls of Congress with people who served years, and in some cases decades, for cannabis offenses while legal cannabis businesses opened across the country. I have heard from veterans and patients who fear that using cannabis for pain, trauma or chronic illness could put their freedom at risk.

That’s why Last Prisoner Project is petitioning the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to participate in its upcoming hearing on the proposed cannabis rescheduling rule.

But the DEA denied our application, along with applications from every other pro-legalization advocacy group in the country. As a result, the only outside voices allowed into the process are organizations that support continued criminalization and the incarceration of people for cannabis offenses.

A decision about whether to continue one of the most outdated and destructive drug policies in American history should not exclude the people and advocates most directly affected by it. For any serious federal cannabis reform to be successful and impactful, it must include addressing the damage done to the people who have been incarcerated, supervised, deported, denied opportunity or denied medical access because of prohibition.

At Last Prisoner Project, those are the people we work with every day: people coming home after years behind bars, people living with criminal records and families still waiting for relief. Over the last six years, we have helped dismiss, modify or clear more than 250,000 sentences, supported 24 presidential pardons, helped pass 10 bills and worked in 24 states. Alongside our pro bono partners, we have supported thousands of hours of legal work and distributed millions in reentry assistance to people trying to rebuild their lives after cannabis incarceration.

But our work is far from finished. One of our constituents, Michael Pelletier, shows what federal prohibition still means in real life.

Michael was paralyzed as a teenager after a farm accident and later used marijuana to manage severe pain. In 2006, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole for importing marijuana from Canada. President Trump commuted his sentence in 2021, but Michael still faces the cruelty of federal prohibition. Because marijuana remains federally controlled, he cannot freely use medical cannabis for chronic pain without risking the terms of his supervision.

What public safety purpose does that serve?

Michael has already lost years of his life to cannabis criminalization. He should not have to choose between pain relief and his freedom. Neither should anyone else.

It is time for the federal government to remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act entirely, expand clemency and resentencing, clear records, support people coming home and end supervision rules that force patients to choose between medical cannabis and their freedom.

As the nation’s cannabis community watches these historic hearings unfold, the question before the country is bigger than whether cannabis belongs in Schedule I or Schedule III. The real question is whether our laws will finally reflect the truth that cannabis prohibition has failed, and the people harmed by that failure deserve relief now.

Jason Ortiz is the director of strategic initiatives for Last Prisoner Project, the leading national nonprofit working to free people incarcerated for nonviolent cannabis offenses and repair the harms of criminalization.

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