DEA, Opponents Spar Over New Evidence as Rescheduling Stays Stalled

October 14, 2026

Photo by succo via Pixabay.

The cannabis rescheduling hearing has been in limbo since late September, and the latest round of paperwork filed October 13 only sharpens the disagreement rather than resolving it. DEA wants to keep the process moving toward a recommendation. The parties fighting rescheduling want more time, more evidence, and arguably a chance to reopen a record that was supposed to be closed. Judge Derek C. Julius now has competing briefs in hand and a decision to make about whether a single late-breaking government report justifies reopening a proceeding that already ran eleven hearing days, took testimony from fourteen witnesses, and produced a record DEA itself asked to close back in August with a request to move marijuana to Schedule III.

It's worth remembering this fight is happening on a separate track from the DOJ rule that took effect in April 2026, which already moved FDA-approved and state-licensed medical marijuana products to Schedule III. That rule stands regardless of what happens here. What's stalled is the broader administrative rescheduling proceeding that would reclassify marijuana itself -- a process that, until three weeks ago, looked like it was down to its final step.

How the Stay Came About

The stay traces back to a motion filed September 28 by three parties who've opposed rescheduling throughout the proceeding: the National Drug and Alcohol Association, DUID Victim Voices, and Kenneth Finn, M.D., a Colorado physician who has testified repeatedly against loosening marijuana's scheduling status. Their motion asked Judge Julius to add a newly published Government Accountability Office report into the hearing record -- a report dated September 23 that identified what GAO characterized as gaps in how federal agencies handle drug-scheduling procedures generally.

Julius didn't rule on the merits of adding the report. Instead, on September 29, he issued a stay and ordered all parties to file responses by October 13, effectively freezing the proceeding while everyone argued over what to do with the new document. That's a meaningful interruption given where things stood. Testimony had wrapped in June and July after months of hearings, and the post-hearing briefing schedule closed out on August 17, sealing what most observers assumed was a complete record ready for a recommendation. A single GAO report, filed with barely a week to spare before what many expected to be a final administrative step, has now pushed the whole thing back into procedural limbo.

DEA Says Add the Report But Don't Delay Further

DEA's October 13 filing tried to thread a narrow needle: let the GAO report into the record, but don't let it become an excuse to drag the process out further. The agency said it doesn't object to adding the document itself. What it objects to is any additional round of briefing or argument about what the report means for the rescheduling determination.

The reasoning DEA offered is fairly straightforward as a legal matter -- when a document's content and meaning are clear on its face, courts and administrative tribunals don't need extra argument to help interpret it. In other words, add the report to the pile of evidence Judge Julius can consider, but don't treat its arrival as grounds to reopen testimony, invite new filings, or otherwise restart the clock. DEA is explicitly asking Julius not to delay issuing his recommendation to DEA Administrator Terrance Cole.

That urgency makes sense given DEA's own position in this proceeding. The agency isn't a neutral bystander here -- it's the party that asked Julius on August 17, as part of the post-hearing briefing, to recommend moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III. Every week this stay drags on is a week DEA's own requested outcome sits unresolved, which explains why the agency's brief reads less like a technical objection and more like a push to get the process back on track as quickly as possible.

Opponents Push for a Broader Reopening

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The opposing side wants considerably more than a quick fix. Smart Approaches to Marijuana, the advocacy group that has been among the most active opponents throughout the rescheduling process, joined with the states of Idaho, Indiana, and Nebraska in a joint brief arguing the GAO report isn't just an administrative footnote -- it's competent, relevant, and material evidence that bears directly on whether rescheduling is appropriate at all.

Their request goes well beyond simply dropping the report into the existing record. They're asking Julius to reopen testimony and document discovery so parties can actually litigate what the GAO findings mean, bring in witnesses to address them, and potentially gather new evidence in response. That's a fundamentally different ask than DEA's position, and it carries fundamentally different consequences for the timeline. Adding a document to a closed record is a matter of days or weeks. Reopening testimony and discovery is a matter of months, with new hearing dates, new witness lists, and likely another round of post-hearing briefing once it's all done.

The stakes of that gap are worth sitting with. Before this stay, the only thing left in the proceeding was Julius's recommendation to Administrator Cole -- the last procedural box left to check after nearly a year of hearings. Depending on how he rules on these dueling briefs, that last step either happens soon or gets pushed well into next year.

State-Level Fights Keep Moving Regardless

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None of this federal gridlock is stopping states from making their own moves. South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley issued a formal opinion on October 13 concluding that federal rescheduling, whenever it finally happens, will likely have a negligible impact on the state's existing medical cannabis program. Jackley was responding to a legislative inquiry from state Senator John Carley, who had asked the AG's office to weigh in following U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche's April 2026 order moving medical marijuana to Schedule III. The takeaway for South Dakota patients and operators is that the state's own regulatory framework isn't likely to be upended regardless of what happens in Judge Julius's courtroom.

Kansas offers a louder version of the same dynamic. Gubernatorial candidate Cindy Holscher is running in part on a legalization platform, pointing to polling that shows somewhere between 65 and 75 percent public support for legal cannabis in the state, along with neighboring Missouri's roughly $255 million in annual cannabis tax revenue as evidence of what Kansas is leaving on the table. Holscher has also made the fight personal, blaming her general election opponent Ty Masterson for killing a medical cannabis bill she introduced back in 2021. Masterson, for his part, has called broader legalization a nonstarter, citing concerns about gang activity and youth access.

Whatever happens with the DEA proceeding, state legislatures and governors' races are going to keep grinding through these same arguments on their own timelines.

A Shifting Clinical and Cultural Backdrop

Away from the courtroom, the clinical and cultural ground under this debate keeps shifting. An NFL-funded study found that medical professionals -- particularly younger clinicians and those in research-heavy roles -- increasingly view cannabis as safer or more effective than alcohol, opioids, or various prescription drugs for certain uses. That's a notable finding coming out of a league that spent decades treating marijuana strictly as a banned substance for its players.

Former NFL player Micah Hyde, who now runs a hemp-derived THC drink company, has been making a related argument in public: that Congress should regulate hemp beverages rather than ban them outright. That's a live legislative fight in its own right, separate from the marijuana rescheduling docket but increasingly tangled up with it in the public conversation, since both turn on how federal law treats THC-containing products and who gets to sell them.

Put together, these threads point to something worth noting: attitudes among clinicians, athletes, and industry figures are moving noticeably faster than the federal scheduling apparatus is able to process. The rescheduling hearing is stuck arguing over a single GAO report's procedural status while, outside the hearing room, the cultural and clinical consensus keeps edging further away from treating cannabis as a Schedule I substance with no accepted medical use.

Step back and the whole episode is a reminder of how fragile a near-finished administrative record can be. Eleven hearing days, fourteen witnesses, a sealed record from August -- all of it now paused because a nine-page GAO report landed a week before the process was supposed to wrap. That's not a knock on GAO's findings specifically; it's just how administrative litigation works when any party can move to reopen a record on the grounds that new evidence exists.

The thing to watch now is which version of the fix Julius grants. If he goes with DEA's narrow approach -- add the report, skip the extra briefing, move straight to a recommendation -- this could be resolved in a matter of weeks and Administrator Cole could have a recommendation on his desk before the end of the year. If he sides with SAM and the three states and reopens testimony and discovery, this stretches out considerably further, and nobody should expect a recommendation anytime soon.

Either way, the states aren't waiting around. South Dakota's AG has already concluded federal rescheduling won't much disturb what the state is doing on its own, and Kansas is having a full-throated legalization debate in the middle of a governor's race with no regard for what DEA decides. The federal process may be the headline, but the actual policy action keeps happening one state legislature and one ballot box at a time.