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FILE - DEA Administrator Anne Milgram speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, Friday, April 14, 2023. The Biden administration’s push to reclassify marijuana as a less-dangerous drug is going forward without the support of the nation’s premier narcotics agency. Newly released government records show the Drug Enforcement Administration requested more information on supporting science to reclassify marijuana but the Justice Department decided to move ahead without the drug agency’s signoff — an unprecedented omission. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Top U.S. drug agency a notable holdout in Biden's push to loosen federal marijuana restrictions

The Biden administration’s push to reclassify marijuana as a less-dangerous drug is going forward without the support of the nation’s premier narcotics agency

By Joshua G0odman And Jim Mustian
Published - May 20, 2024, 03:48 PM ET
Last Updated - May 27, 2024, 12:29 AM EDT

In an isolated part of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters known as the 12th-floor “bubble,” chief Anne Milgram made an unusual request of top deputies summoned in March for what she called the “Marijuana Meeting”: Nobody could take notes.

Over the next half hour, she broke the news that the Biden administration would soon be issuing a long-awaited order reclassifying pot as a less-dangerous drug, a major hurdle toward federal legalization that DEA has long resisted. And Milgram went on to reveal another twist, according to two people familiar with the private meeting who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, that the process normally steered by the DEA had been taken over by the U.S. Justice Department and the action would not be signed by her but by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

“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 last Thursday 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.

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