“The president was very clear—he wants this done as quickly as possible.”
By Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix
U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra said in Tampa Friday that he intends for his agency to move “as quickly as we can” to comply with President Joe Biden’s directive to review the decades-old policy of listing marijuana as a Schedule I drug.
“I think you’re going to find that we’re going to move as quickly as we can but, at the end of the day science is going to take us to a solution,” Becerra told reporters in Tampa after concluding a “Meet and Greet” event with mostly Latino seniors regarding the reduction in prescription drug prices for Medicare patients that were included in the Inflation Reduction Act passed this summer.
That directive to review cannabis’s status was part of Biden’s announcement on marijuana reform released on Thursday, which includes calling on the Department of Justice to develop a process to pardon potentially thousands of people who have federal convictions for marijuana possession.
Becerra said that the review of marijuana’s federal scheduling status will be tasked to the Food and Drug Administration, and that he has already spoken with FDA Commissioner Robert Califf about starting that process.
“The president was very clear—he wants this done as quickly as possible,” Becerra said. “It’s not new science, but there’s lot of information to gather because in many states marijuana has been legalized for either medical purposes or recreational purposes.”