A looming DEA hearing on marijuana rescheduling could include more participants than originally envisioned, and more. 

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Marijuana Policy

DEA Could Allow More Participation at Rescheduling Hearing. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) may allow more interested parties to testify at upcoming hearings on marijuana rescheduling than the 25 who were selected last month. The possibility was hinted at in a footnote to an order last Friday in which DEA Chief Administrative Judge John Mulrooney II blocked an attempt from a veterans' advocacy group to participate in the hearings. 

Mulrooney had ruled against the Veterans Action Council, which had sought "status as an interested party" before the December 2 hearing. He held that because DEA Administrator Anne Milgram had not included the group in her list of invited participants, "no action can or will be taken on its request."

But Mulrooney appeared to leave an opening for the DEA to invite other participants. 

"That said, the issue may not be altogether settled," Mulrooney wrote in a footnote citing case law, in which a court found a subpoena decision isn’t final until "an ultimate disposition of the case."

Veterans Action Council spokesman Michael Krawitz took heart from Mulrooney's opinion. 

"He didn’t shoot it down," Krawitz said. "What he seems to be saying is, we can appeal."

Medical Marijuana

Nebraska Secretary of State Seeks to Nullify Medical Marijuana Initiatives. Secretary of State Bob Evnen (R) has joined a lawsuit from former GOP state senator John Kuehn seeking to nullify the passage of a linked pair of medical marijuana initiatives, Measures 437 and 438. Both measures passed with approval from more than two-thirds of voters earlier this month. 

The lawsuit targets the signature-gathering process for the initiatives, which it claims was "permeated" by fraud. Thousands of signatures were "tainted" by fraud committed by petition circulators, the lawsuit alleges. In a trial in the lawsuit earlier this month, two circulators admitted they broke the law in gathering signatures and delivering petitions. 

"This Court cannot turn a blind eye to the sponsors and [Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana] campaign members’ willful disregard of the Nebraska Constitution and the statutory scheme that regulates the initiative process," the attorney general’s office wrote in a November 12 brief on behalf of Evnen.

The offense circulators are accused of is failing to notarize petition pages while in each other's presence. The plaintiffs also accuse some notaries of self-certifying petitions they had circulated themselves or notarizing pages without a circulator being present, as required by state law. 

"Intentional wrongful conduct permeated the campaign from top to bottom," reads the brief from the attorney general’s office. "Their abuse of the public trust, their willful disregard for the law, their willingness to let the ends justify the means have brought us here."

The judge could rule in favor of the plaintiffs but still allow initiative sponsors to try to "rehabilitate" the signatures in question. Or she could invalidate the results, overturning the clear will of the voters. Or she could rule in favor of the initiative sponsors and allow the results to stand. 

Stay tuned. 

International

British Columbia Sees Unsanctioned Safe Injection Sites Pop Up Outside Pair of Hospitals. On Monday morning, pop-up safe injection sites unsanctioned by the provincial government opened on the grounds of Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria and Regional General Hospital in Nanaimo. Around 50 volunteers, including social workers, outreach workers, doctors, and nurses, are prepared to staff the sites this week if they are not shut down. 

Dr. Jessica Wilder, a family and addictions medicine doctor spearheading the pop-up at Nanaimo, said people with drug addictions who are in the hospitals are using alone in bathrooms or leaving the grounds against medical advice to get their drugs. 

"The only difference by having an overdose prevention site on hospital grounds is that there’s somebody standing by who’s trained to respond and provide lifesaving medication if something goes wrong," Wilder said. "For my patients who are in the hospital, it allows them a safe place to go to use [and still] stay in hospital and receive the care that they need and deserve."

The province had planned to open approved safe injection sites outside the hospitals in 2023, but those plans never materialized amid a backlash against harm reduction measures, including from the BC Nurses Union, which complained of drug use in the hospitals. 

"Let’s say you’re in hospital for leg surgery and you have a nicotine addiction. Of course, we give people nicotine patches, nicotine gum, everything possible to make it so that person doesn’t have to smoke," said Dr. Ryan Herriot, a family and addictions medicine doctor who is leading the site in Victoria. "Nevertheless, some people have to smoke and so they go to the smoke pit. We’re honestly trying to just do that, except the difference is that people die if they can’t do this in the same way."

Both doctors said they were hopeful the government would not interfere with the temporary sites. 

"I would be really disappointed if there were negative consequences to my career," Wilder said. "I’m really just hoping for a conversation to come out of this, so that we can continue to work together."

"Our hope here really is to open up a dialogue with the provincial government such that they fund this and establish this," Herriot said. "In a prompt way, with paid staff and permanent infrastructure." 

BC officials have yet to publicly react.