State Marijuana Laws

Today, forty-eight (48) states accept the med­ical use of mar­i­jua­na.  How­ev­er, marijuana’s clas­si­fi­ca­tion in the fed­er­al Con­trolled Sub­stance Act (CSA) has not changed as a result.  State laws are not sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence.  State laws are polit­i­cal acts.  The Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion (DEA) still uses the same analy­sis it used pri­or to 1996 when Cal­i­for­nia became the first state to accept it.

Rules of the Attor­ney Gen­er­al under this sub­sec­tion shall be made on the record after oppor­tu­ni­ty for a hear­ing pur­suant to the rule­mak­ing pro­ce­dures pre­scribed by sub­chap­ter II of chap­ter 5 of title 5.  Pro­ceed­ings for the issuance, amend­ment, or repeal of such rules may be ini­ti­at­ed by the Attor­ney Gen­er­al (1) on his own motion, (2) at the request of the Sec­re­tary, or (3) on the peti­tion of any inter­est­ed par­ty.

21 U.S.C. § 811. Author­i­ty and cri­te­ria for clas­si­fi­ca­tion of sub­stances.

The dif­fi­cul­ty we find in peti­tion­ers’ argu­ment is that nei­ther the statute nor its leg­isla­tive his­to­ry pre­cise­ly defines the term “cur­rent­ly accept­ed med­ical use”; there­fore, we are oblig­ed to defer to the Administrator’s inter­pre­ta­tion of that phrase if rea­son­able.  See NLRB v. Unit­ed Food & Com­mer­cial Work­ers Union, 484 U.S. 112, 123, 98 L. Ed. 2d 429, 108 S. Ct. 413 (1987); Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Nat­ur­al Resources Defense Coun­cil, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 843–45, 81 L. Ed. 2d 694, 104 S. Ct. 2778 (1984).

Alliance for Cannabis Ther­a­peu­tics v. DEA, 930 F.2d 936, 939 (D.C. Cir. 1991).

We not­ed the ambi­gu­i­ty of the phrase and the dearth of leg­isla­tive his­to­ry on point and deferred to the Administrator’s inter­pre­ta­tion as rea­son­able. Id. at 939 (cit­ing Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Nat­ur­al Resources Defense Coun­cil, 467 U.S. 837, 843–45, 81 L. Ed. 2d 694, 104 S. Ct. 2778 (1984) (court may not sub­sti­tute its own con­struc­tion of ambigu­ous statu­to­ry pro­vi­sion for rea­son­able inter­pre­ta­tion by agency of statute entrust­ed to its admin­is­tra­tion)).

Alliance for Cannabis Ther­a­peu­tics v. DEA, 15 F.3d 1131, 1134 (D.C. Cir. 1994).

only rig­or­ous sci­en­tif­ic proof can sat­is­fy the CSA’s “cur­rent­ly accept­ed med­ical use” require­ment

Alliance for Cannabis Ther­a­peu­tics v. DEA, 15 F.3d 1131, 1137 (D.C. Cir. 1994).

State laws autho­riz­ing the use of mar­i­jua­na do not pre­empt fed­er­al drug laws and fed­er­al reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of mar­i­jua­na would not resolve their incon­sis­ten­cy.

Thus, even if respon­dents are cor­rect that mar­i­jua­na does have accept­ed med­ical uses and thus should be redes­ig­nat­ed as a less­er sched­ule drug, the CSA would still impose con­trols beyond what is required by Cal­i­for­nia law.

Respon­dents’ sub­mis­sion, if accept­ed, would place all home­grown med­ical sub­stances beyond the reach of Con­gress’ reg­u­la­to­ry juris­dic­tion.

Gon­za­les v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1, 27 (2005).

It is impor­tant not to read too much into the Raich deci­sion.  The court did not say it was impos­si­ble to resolve the incon­sis­ten­cy between state and fed­er­al mar­i­jua­na laws.  The rul­ing in Raich was that it was impos­si­ble to resolve the incon­sis­ten­cy by resched­ul­ing.  Leg­is­la­tion is cur­rent­ly pend­ing in Con­gress to desched­ule mar­i­jua­na, rather than resched­ule it.  Any incon­sis­ten­cy would be resolved by entire­ly remov­ing mar­i­jua­na from the CSA.

No pro­vi­sion of this sub­chap­ter shall be con­strued as indi­cat­ing an intent on the part of the Con­gress to occu­py the field in which that pro­vi­sion oper­ates, includ­ing crim­i­nal penal­ties, to the exclu­sion of any State law on the same sub­ject mat­ter which would oth­er­wise be with­in the author­i­ty of the State, unless there is a pos­i­tive con­flict between that pro­vi­sion of this sub­chap­ter and that State law so that the two can­not con­sis­tent­ly stand togeth­er.

21 U.S.C. § 903. Appli­ca­tion of State law.

The CSA explic­it­ly con­tem­plates a role for the States in reg­u­lat­ing con­trolled sub­stances, as evi­denced by its pre-emp­tion pro­vi­sion.

Gon­za­les v. Ore­gon, 546 U.S. 243, 251 (2006).

There is a path to resolv­ing the con­flict which is start­ing to gain some trac­tion.  The DEA resolved the con­flict between state and fed­er­al pey­ote laws by cre­at­ing an exemp­tion.  Like mar­i­jua­na, pey­ote is in sched­ule I of the CSA.  Mar­i­jua­na and pey­ote are even in the same sub­cat­e­go­ry, hal­lu­cino­gens.

The list­ing of pey­ote as a con­trolled sub­stance in Sched­ule I does not apply to the non­drug use of pey­ote in bona fide reli­gious cer­e­monies of the Native Amer­i­can Church, and mem­bers of the Native Amer­i­can Church so using pey­ote are exempt from reg­is­tra­tion.  Any per­son who man­u­fac­tures pey­ote for or dis­trib­utes pey­ote to the Native Amer­i­can Church, how­ev­er, is required to obtain reg­is­tra­tion annu­al­ly and to com­ply with all oth­er require­ments of law.

21 C.F.R. § 1307.31. Native Amer­i­can Church.

It is not dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a new reg­u­la­tion, which might be cod­i­fied as 21 C.F.R. § 1307.32: “The list­ing of mar­i­jua­na as a con­trolled sub­stance in Sched­ule I does not apply to the non­drug use of mar­i­jua­na in state pro­grams autho­riz­ing it, etc. …”

The Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion has an exemp­tion for state laws, and specif­i­cal­ly for mar­i­jua­na.

(a) Except as pro­vid­ed in para­graph (b) of this sec­tion, no per­son may oper­ate a civ­il air­craft with­in the Unit­ed States with knowl­edge that nar­cot­ic drugs, mar­i­hua­na, and depres­sant or stim­u­lant drugs or sub­stances as defined in Fed­er­al or State statutes are car­ried in the air­craft.

(b) Para­graph (a) of this sec­tion does not apply to any car­riage of nar­cot­ic drugs, mar­i­hua­na, and depres­sant or stim­u­lant drugs or sub­stances autho­rized by or under any Fed­er­al or State statute or by any Fed­er­al or State agency.

14 C.F.R. § 91.19. Car­riage of nar­cot­ic drugs, mar­i­hua­na, and depres­sant or stim­u­lant drugs or sub­stances.

The author­i­ty to make exemp­tions comes from the CSA.

The Attor­ney Gen­er­al may, by reg­u­la­tion, waive the require­ment for reg­is­tra­tion of cer­tain man­u­fac­tur­ers, dis­trib­u­tors, or dis­pensers if he finds it con­sis­tent with the pub­lic health and safe­ty.

21 U.S.C. § 822(d). Waiv­er.

The Act con­tains a pro­vi­sion autho­riz­ing the Attor­ney Gen­er­al to “waive the require­ment for reg­is­tra­tion of cer­tain man­u­fac­tur­ers, dis­trib­u­tors, or dis­pensers if he finds it con­sis­tent with the pub­lic health and safe­ty.”  21 U.S.C. § 822(d).  The fact that the Act itself con­tem­plates that exempt­ing cer­tain peo­ple from its require­ments would be “con­sis­tent with the pub­lic health and safe­ty” indi­cates that con­gres­sion­al find­ings with respect to Sched­ule I sub­stances should not car­ry the deter­mi­na­tive weight, for RFRA pur­pos­es, that the Gov­ern­ment would ascribe to them.

Gon­za­les v. O Cen­tro Espiri­ta Benef­i­cente União do Veg­e­tal, 546 U.S. 418, 432–33 (2006).

Exemp­tion, like sched­ul­ing, is an admin­is­tra­tive rem­e­dy.  Courts gen­er­al­ly require exhaus­tion of admin­is­tra­tive reme­dies before con­sid­er­ing any chal­lenge to sched­ul­ing if the gov­ern­ment rais­es the issue.  How­ev­er, unless the gov­ern­ment or the plain­tiff brings it up (as in the cas­es cit­ed above), a court has no author­i­ty to make argu­ments nei­ther of the par­ties are mak­ing.

For the sake of argu­ment, let’s apply the Chevron def­er­ence stan­dard to a state appli­ca­tion for an exemp­tion like the one for pey­ote.  First off, the fac­tors the DEA must eval­u­ate in con­sid­er­ing an exemp­tion (pub­lic health and safe­ty) are dif­fer­ent from the fac­tors the DEA must eval­u­ate in con­sid­er­ing sched­ul­ing (sci­ence).  The fact a state has autho­rized the activ­i­ty would seem to cre­ate a pre­sump­tion of health and safe­ty.  A set of fed­er­al guide­lines exist­ed at one time and some states actu­al­ly relied on them in cre­at­ing their pro­grams, but the guide­lines fail to men­tion fed­er­al exemp­tion and cre­ate no legal rights.

• Pre­vent­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of mar­i­jua­na to minors;
• Pre­vent­ing rev­enue from the sale of mar­i­jua­na from going to crim­i­nal enter­pris­es, gangs, and car­tels;
• Pre­vent­ing the diver­sion of mar­i­jua­na from states where it is legal under state law in some form to oth­er states;
• Pre­vent­ing state-autho­rized mar­i­jua­na activ­i­ty from being used as a cov­er or pre­text for the traf­fick­ing of oth­er ille­gal drugs or oth­er ille­gal activ­i­ty;
• Pre­vent­ing vio­lence and the use of firearms in the cul­ti­va­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of mar­i­jua­na;
• Pre­vent­ing drugged dri­ving and the exac­er­ba­tion of oth­er adverse pub­lic health con­se­quences asso­ci­at­ed with mar­i­jua­na use;
• Pre­vent­ing the grow­ing of mar­i­jua­na on pub­lic lands and the atten­dant pub­lic safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal dan­gers posed by mar­i­jua­na pro­duc­tion on pub­lic lands; and
• Pre­vent­ing mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion or use on fed­er­al prop­er­ty.

Cole Mem­o­ran­dum 2013. Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Jus­tice, August 29, 2013.

The DEA was resis­tant to acknowl­edg­ing it could make excep­tions in 1989.

The DEA’s con­tention that Con­gress direct­ed the Admin­is­tra­tor auto­mat­i­cal­ly to turn away all church­es save one opens a grave con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tion.  A statu­to­ry exemp­tion autho­rized for one church alone, and for which no oth­er church may qual­i­fy, presents a “denom­i­na­tion­al pref­er­ence” not eas­i­ly rec­on­ciled with the estab­lish­ment clause.  See Lar­son v. Valente, 456 U.S. 228, 245, 72 L. Ed. 2d 33, 102 S. Ct. 1673 (1982); cf. infra pp. 1463–1464.  We resist an inter­pre­ta­tion dis­so­nant with the “car­di­nal prin­ci­ple” that leg­is­la­tion should be con­strued, if “fair­ly pos­si­ble,” to avoid a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­fronta­tion. See Ash­wan­der v. TVA, 297 U.S. 288, 348, 80 L. Ed. 688, 56 S. Ct. 466 (1936) (Bran­deis, J., con­cur­ring).

Olsen v. DEA, 878 F.2d 1458, 1461 (D.C. Cir., 1989).

But in 2018 the DEA pub­lished guide­lines for reli­gious exemp­tions.  The DEA is in the process of cod­i­fy­ing the guid­lines.  See DEA Reg­is­tra­tion for Reli­gious Orga­ni­za­tions, updat­ed March 2022.  See 21 U.S.C. § 871(b) and 21 U.S.C. § 958.

It would defy log­ic for the DEA to argue states are not enti­tled to as much (or more) respect.  States cre­at­ed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in return for their mutu­al pro­tec­tion.  This should not be a heavy lift for the DEA.  The DEA would need some strong evi­dence that states can­not be trust­ed to sur­vive Chevron analy­sis.