Just a few weeks after President Obama won the praise of liberals across the country for saying marijuana should be treated like alcohol and cigarettes, the Drug Enforcement Administration has reclassified marijuana extracts as a Schedule 1 drug.
Under the DEA’s “Establishment of a New Drug Code for Marihuana Extract,” marijuana extracts, including cannabidiol hemp oil that is sometimes used as a medication for children with seizures, are now a Schedule 1 drug.
As a Schedule 1 drug, the extracts are now on the same level as heroin and methamphetamine. They are drugs the government has deemed have “no currently accepted medical use.”
Marijuana website Leafly states CBD oil is currently “commonly available nationwide” through the internet and mail order, as many marijuana industry businesses have been acting under the assumption that the legal threshold for THC in hemp is 0.3 percent or less.
Robert Hoban, a Colorado cannabis attorney and an adjunct professor at the University of Denver said, “The DEA can only carry out the law, they cannot create it. Here they’re purporting to create an entirely new category called ‘marijuana extracts,’ and by doing so wrest control over all cannabinoids. They want to call all cannabinoids illegal. But they don’t have the authority to do that.”
Despite Obama’s talk about his views on marijuana, this is not the first time the DEA has tried to stop the marijuana industry. In April, the DEA rejected pleas by Democrats to reclassify marijuana. The DEA also cracked down on California medical marijuana dispensaries until a federal court ruling determined the DEA’s action were “at odds with fundamental notions of the rule of law.”