Anti-Marijuana GOP Congressman Presses Top Federal Health Official On Rescheduling Process

A GOP congressman is pressing one of the nation’s top health officials about the role a drug research agency under her jurisdiction played in the Biden administration’s marijuana rescheduling effort.

During a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) raised the rescheduling issue with National institutes of Health (NIH) Director Monica Bertagnolli, inquiring as to whether National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) was “consulted” about the proposal to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

Harris noted that he’s previously asked NIDA Director Nora Volkow if she thought it was a “bad idea to allow recreational marijuana to be fully legalized while we still have so many outstanding clinical questions,” and he claimed that she “agreed it’s probably a bad idea.”

While acknowledging that Bertagnolli started running NIH in September 2023—after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) completed its scientific review and recommended rescheduling—the congressman still asked whether NIDA was “consulted before the decision was made.”

“I do not know the answer,” the director said.

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The framing of Harris’s questioning at the hearing was somewhat misleading, as it seems to conflate the NIDA official’s stance on complete legalization with the Biden administration’s push to reschedule cannabis, which would not federally legalize it.

In an earlier April committee hearing with the head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the congressman claimed that Volkow opposed the rescheduling proposal from HHS and the Justice Department, but the agency declined to substantiate that position in a statement to Marijuana Moment.

Volkow has routinely criticized the placement of marijuana and certain psychedelics in Schedule I due to the resulting barriers to research, and she’s said she personally hesitates to conduct cannabis studies for that reason.

What’s more, the HHS cannabis rescheduling recommendation to DEA specifically said that “NIDA concurs with this recommendation.”

The comments from Harris are unsurprising. The congressman is a vociferous opponent of cannabis reform, and he told DEA Administrator Anne Milgram in February that he believes FDA came to a “misguided conclusion” to recommend rescheduling cannabis—challenging the health agency’s scientific standards and imploring DEA to dismiss them as it prepares to make a final determination.

At a Republican National Committee conference in July, Harris also said “I don’t care” whether rolling back the Biden administration’s marijuana rescheduling move under a then-uncertain Trump presidency would hurt the Republican party, because he feels more strongly that the modest reform would endanger public health.

“I don’t care whether it’s good for the party or not. I don’t care. It’s not good for your health,” he told Marijuana Moment. “My opinion is always the same: It’s not healthy for you. It’s bad. I think it’s bad policy.”

Beside his push to have DEA reject marijuana rescheduling, Harris has also championed a long-standing appropriations rider that’s blocked Washington, D.C. from legalizing marijuana sales for a decade.

In his interview with Marijuana Moment over the summer, the congressman also suggested that President Joe Biden’s latest budget omitted D.C. language when, in fact, it maintained it.

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