The Trump administration announced on Jan. 21 the appointment of Derek S. Maltz as acting administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the agency that has the final say in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) proposed rule to reschedule cannabis from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act. Maltz replaces Anne Milgram, who left the agency last week, according to a DEA press release announcing the appointment.
Maltz is a “career special agent who served 28 years at DEA before retiring in 2014” and the former “chief of the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force, the country’s oldest and largest drug task force,” and he has “been a champion of law enforcement’s fight against global drug trafficking and terrorism,” according to the release.
Maltz has gone on the record suggesting that if science supports cannabis rescheduling, “then so be it,” as the The Associated Press (AP) reported in a May 20, 2024, article; however, Maltz also told AP, “It’s crystal clear to me that the Justice Department hijacked the rescheduling process, placing politics above public safety.”
The AP interviewed Maltz for the article where it cited anonymous sources who said that Milgram revealed in a private meeting “that the [rescheduling] process normally steered by the DEA had been taken over by the U.S. Justice Department and the action would not be signed by [then-DEA Administrator Anne Milgram] but by Attorney General Merrick Garland.”
The notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to reschedule cannabis was issued by the DOJ the next day, May 21, 2024, and signed by Garland.
As AP reported, “’DEA has not yet made a determination as to its views of the appropriate schedule for marijuana,’ reads a sentence tucked 13 pages into Garland’s 92-page order … outlining the Biden administration proposal to shift pot from its current Schedule I alongside heroin and LSD to the less tightly regulated Schedule III with such drugs as ketamine and some anabolic steroids.”
Maltz’s appointment comes as cannabis rescheduling already hangs in the balance. The rescheduling hearing, originally scheduled to commence Jan. 21, has been delayed, as DEA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) John J. Mulrooney granted an interlocutory appeal on a denied motion filed to reconsider the DEA’s role in the hearing as the proponent of the proposed rule, which was put forward by the DOJ.
“In granting the appeal on Jan. 13, … Mulrooney … said the hearing to debate the merits of a proposed rule to reclassify cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act is ‘canceled.’ The hearing proceedings, with expert testimonies scheduled to run through early March, are now ‘stayed,’ pending a resolution of the interlocutory appeal to the DEA administrator,” Cannabis Business Times reported.
The new Trump administration “can choose to kill the current rescheduling process altogether. According to administrative law, if a federal agency hasn’t published a final rule before a new administration takes the White House, then a president can direct that the proposed rule be withdrawn entirely, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS),” CBT reported.
Source link
#DEA #Special #Agent #Derek #Maltz #Appointed #Acting #DEA #Administrator