12 Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, urged the DEA in a letter to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act altogether.
Senate Democrats are putting new pressure on the Biden administration to ease federal restrictions on marijuana in a new letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration on Tuesday as it considers rescheduling cannabis after it was federally classified more than five decades ago.
The Department of Health and Human Services formally recommended in August that the DEA move the drug from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act, or CSA, prompting a monthslong review, which continues.
The letter, from 12 senators led by Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and John Fetterman, D-Pa., and signed by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., goes further.
“The case for removing marijuana from Schedule I is overwhelming. The DEA should do so by removing cannabis from the CSA altogether, rather than simply placing it in a lower schedule,” the senators wrote in the letter, first obtained by NBC News.
The headline is a little disingenuous because Biden himself doesn’t actually have the power to make the DEA reschedule it. All he can do is tell them he wants them to. The Controlled Substances Act takes it out of the president’s hands. I realize that makes no sense since the DEA is in the executive branch, but welcome to American politics.
You’re telling me he can’t fire the DEA chief until he gets results. I call bull.
He would need to get another chief approved. This is not a rubber stamp Senate.
That’s a risk I’m willing to take.
There are such things as acting chiefs as well. I keep firing them until we got somebody favorable
Trump tried to do that to get an attorney general who would help him out. It did not go well.
What do you mean it didn’t turn out well? Seems like there were actually zero consequences. I love that Trump was allowed to use the awesome powers of the president to hurt people, but Biden’s not allowed to use them to help people. That’s where the line is, apparently.
It’s more akin to Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre, where he kept ordering the next Attorney General successor to fire a special prosecutor until someone finally did it. This finally convinced Congress to get off their ass and start the impeachment process. Republicans then spent the next few decades building a system to make sure a Republican President would never have to face consequences like that again.
Right, that’s kind of my point. Presidents can do a whole lot to cover their own ass and do illegal activities, but they can’t do anything to help the people, such as decriminalizing marijuana.
It’s a gross double standard.
