11/01/2022 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Subaru= Act. Recently, l became aware of DEA's intent to schedule mitragynine and 7-OH- mitmgynine - into Schedule 1. Anelvsis The Controlled Substances Act ("CSA") provides in pertinent part that the Attorney General may by rule add to Schedule 1 any drug or other substance if the Attorney General makes the findings prescribed by subsection (b) of section 812 of the CSA for Schedule I. See, 21 U.S.C. § 811(a). Such findings are: I. The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse. 2. The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. 3. There is a lack of accepted safety or use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision. The CSA requires that "[i]n making any finding under subsection (a) of this section or under subsection (b) of section 812 of this title, the Attorney General shall consider the following factors with respect to each drug or other substance proposed to be controlled or removed from the schedules: (1) Its actual or relative potential for abuse. (2) Scientific evidence of its pharmacological effect, if known. (3) The state of current scientific knowledge regarding the drug or other substance. (4) Its history and current pattern of abuse. (5) The scope, duration, and significance of abuse. (6) What, if any, risk there is to the public health. (7) Its psychic or physiological dependence liability. (8) Whether the substance is an immediate precursor of a. substance already controlled under this subchapter." 21 U.S.C. § 811(c). Before scheduling a substance, though, the Attorney General most "request from the Secretary (of HHS) a scientific and medical evaluation, and his recommendation, as to whether such drug or other substance should he so controlled or removed as a controlled substance." Id. at § 811(6). The Secretary's evaluation should be based on factors (2), (3), (6), (7), and (8), noted above, and the scientific and medical considerations involved in factors (1), (4), and (5). Moreover, the "recommendation of the Secretary to the Attorney General shall be binding on the Attorney General as to such scientific and medical matters, and if the Secretary recommends that a drug or other substance not be controlled, the Attorney General shall not control the drug or other substance." Id. The Secretary has delegated to the Assistant Secretary for Health, in consultation with the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Food and Drug Administration, the responsibility to make a recommendation under the CSA to the Attorney General. On October 17, 2017, my