Since 1970, marijuana has been listed in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, a category supposedly reserved for drugs with "a high potential for abuse" that have "no currently accepted medical use" and cannot be used safely even under a doctor's supervision.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has consistently rejected petitions asking it to reclassify marijuana, citing advice from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). But HHS changed that advice in August 2023, and its rationale, explained in a document it released five months later, confirms that marijuana's classification has always been a political question, not a medical one.
