cotics and Dangerous Drugs.In rejecting the NORML petition, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs failed to call for public hearings as required by law. Information from Grinspoon and Bakalar says, “NORML again filed suit. In October 1980, after much further legal maneuvering, the Court of Appeals remanded the NORML petition to the DEA for reconsideration for the third time. The government reclassified synthetic THC as a Schedule II drug in 1985 but kept marihuana itself - and THC derived from marihuana - in Schedule I. Finally, in May 1986, the DEA administrator announced the public hearings ordered by the court seven years earlier.” (19) This was the beginning of a long and strenuous trial period in which many parties and organizations joined NORML and were involved in the trial, even though being opposed by the DEA. The lengthy hearings involved many witnesses, including both patients and doctors, and thousands of pages of documentation. As stated by Grinspoon and Bakalar, “Administrative law judge, Francis J. Young reviewed the evidence and rendered his decision on September 6, 1988. Young said that approval by a "significant minority" of physicians was enough to meet the standard of "currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States" established by the Controlled Substances Act for a Schedule II drug. He added, "marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.... One must reasonably conclude that there is accepted safety for use of marijuana under medical supervision. To conclude otherwise, on the record, would be unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious." Young went on to recommend "that the Administrator [of the DEA] conclude that the marijuana plant considered as a whole has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, that there is no lack of accepted safety for use of it under medical supervision and that it may l...
