Is White House Drug Czar Overstating The Impact Of Marijuana Rescheduling? Recent Statements Indicate He Is

White House drug czar Rahul Gupta seems to be overemphasizing the impacts of the Biden administration's decision to reschedule marijuana, followed by Attorney General Merrick Garland’s formal initiation of the rescheduling process with the submission of a legal review.

That's according to Marijuana Moment's Kyle Jaeger, who noted that it was the "second time in the past week" that Gupta, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), overstated the implications of cannabis reform, by "suggesting it would address the ‘racial disparity’ in cannabis enforcement."

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What Happened

In a recent interview with the Star Tribune, Gupta shared his insight on what moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) means.

In addition to removing "barriers to critical research and perhaps drug development," leading to "more research into the benefits of medical marijuana," rescheduling would "have a historic and long-lasting impact," he said.

However, he noted that "Schedule III drugs are a much, much lower priority in that way – Tylenol with codeine and testosterone are in Schedule III," adding "it will have an impact on racial disparity, incarceration and prosecutions."

See also: ATA Red-Flags DOJ's Proposed Marijuana Policy Change

Even though Schedule III classification would deem cannabis as having an accepted medical use, it would need approval from the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) to be legally dispensed with a prescription, Congressional Research Service’s experts noted in their recent report. At the moment, marijuana is not an FDA-approved drug, they highlighted.

As Jaeger pointed out, this was the second time that Gupta "oversimplified the idea of marijuana's potential availability as a prescription drug."

Last week, Gupta told WGCU that rescheduling would "allow providers, clinicians across the country to be able to prescribe marijuana as a Schedule III drug," which is the focal point of disagreement among CRS' experts.

Now read: EXCLUSIVE: Cannabis Researcher On Marijuana Rescheduling — ‘Removing Barriers’ Will Help, But ‘Knowledge Gap’ Is Huge