In what looks like routine housekeeping, DEA’s chief administrative law judge just ordered dozens of fixes to the 2,470-page transcript of the marijuana rescheduling hearing — including two that reverse the meaning of key witness testimony. One stray punctuation mark turned a flat declaration that “this is a medication” into a skeptical question, while another flipped “there’s adulterants” into “there’s no adulterants.” With reform supporters locked out of the room and no livestream, this corrected record is essentially the only public window into the entire proceeding — and it goes live on the DEA website by August 26.
And THEN the ALJ will send his scheduling recommendation to the DEA. The transcript, with out without typos, still indicated that the Government and DEA were overwhelmingly in support of rescheduling to schedule III.
Scroll down for our full analysis….
DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek Julius issued a 13-page order Thursday directing dozens of corrections to the official transcript of the marijuana rescheduling hearing. The fully corrected version goes public on DEA’s website by August 26.
A transcript correction order is the sort of procedural housekeeping that normally warrants a sentence. This one deserves more, for two reasons: the record it’s fixing is about to become the entire evidentiary basis for a scheduling recommendation, and at least two of the corrections materially change what witnesses said.
The mechanics are straightforward. Corrections will appear in red text on the electronic version, with strikethroughs marking deleted material — meaning the public gets to see exactly what changed rather than a silently cleaned-up document. Per tribunal practice, personally identifiable information — email addresses, phone numbers, residential and business addresses — gets redacted from the public version.
The correction list covers all 11 days of hearing, and reveals the draft transcript runs at least 2,470 pages.
Bury the squirrel. Two corrections change substance.
First: a speaker was transcribed as stating “This is a medication.” The corrected version shows they were asking “This is a medication?”
One punctuation mark converts a declarative assertion into a skeptical question. In a proceeding whose central legal issue is whether cannabis has a currently accepted medical use in the United States, the difference between a witness affirming that something is medicine and a witness questioning whether it is medicine is not cosmetic. If a party had cited that line in a brief — and final briefs were filed earlier this week, before this order — they cited testimony that didn’t exist.
Second: the statement “there’s adulterants” becomes “there’s no adulterants.”
That’s a complete reversal. Product safety and adulteration were live themes throughout, particularly from opposition parties arguing cannabis lacks accepted safety for use under medical supervision. A witness saying adulterants are present and a witness saying they aren’t are opposite pieces of evidence on a contested question.
Neither correction is likely to flip the outcome. But both illustrate the risk in a proceeding where the record is the whole case — and where, notably, no supporters of reform were permitted to participate as designated parties to catch errors cutting the other direction.
Context matters. DEA Administrator Terrance Cole invited only organizations and people opposed to marijuana reform as designated participants — Smart Approaches to Marijuana, NDASA, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, DUID Victim Voices, Kenneth Finn, Phillip A. Drum, and the states of Idaho, Indiana and Nebraska — on grounds that supporters aren’t “adversely affected or aggrieved.”
Reform advocates held a press conference outside DEA headquarters saying they’d been shut out. The hearing was not livestreamed, despite requests from Marijuana Moment, a congressman and other outlets.
So the transcript isn’t merely a record of the proceeding. For everyone excluded from it, the transcript is the proceeding. Getting it right is the only accountability mechanism available.
The final briefs, filed this week, tell you what Julius is now weighing.
DEA — defending the move — argued cannabis no longer fits Schedule I because it has a currently accepted medical use and accepted safety under medical supervision.
It cited over 30,000 practitioners treating more than six million patients across 43 jurisdictions, said it must give significant deference to HHS’s ten-month scientific study, and argued abuse and dependency profiles align better with Schedule III than Schedule II or I. It asked Julius to “expeditiously recommend” the transfer.
Opponents argued the two-part test federal officials used improperly departs from the prior five-part test, that cannabis lacks accepted medical value, and that reform would undermine drug testing of safety-sensitive workers.
That first argument is their strongest procedural attack — though DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded in 2024 that the five-part test was “impermissibly narrow,” and DEA has since used the two-part approach on other substances.
Here’s the sequence from here.
By August 26, the corrected transcript posts publicly.
Then Julius deliberates. He considers final briefs and hearing testimony, then issues a recommendation on scheduling status. No deadline has been announced — and DEA asked for speed, which suggests the agency doesn’t expect it automatically.
The recommendation is not the decision. Julius recommends; the DEA Administrator decides. Cole — the same administrator who invited only opponents — holds final authority. That’s the single most important structural fact in this process, and it’s why a favorable recommendation guarantees nothing.
Litigation runs in parallel. Multiple lawsuits challenging rescheduling have been consolidated by a federal appeals court, filed by state attorneys general, legalization opponents, and a cannabis-focused biopharmaceutical company. A prior Biden-era hearing process stalled entirely last year amid litigation over alleged improper communications and witness selection — precedent worth remembering.
Congress is a wildcard. A congressional committee voted to block officials from further rescheduling steps, though bipartisan lawmakers say that provision won’t be enacted.
None of this touches what’s already done. Attorney General Todd Blanche’s April order reclassifying state-licensed medical cannabis to Schedule III is in effect and generating real consequences: IRS tax guidance coming, DEA registration open for state-legal businesses, ATF revising gun forms to recognize medical cannabis, and CRS confirming certified patients have new possession protections.
This hearing concerns the broader move — adult-use included. That’s the part still unresolved.
A corrected transcript is a small thing. But in a proceeding with no livestream, no reform participants, and a decision-maker who structured it that way, an accurate 2,470-page record is most of what the public gets.
Anthony Varrell is co-founder of Trade To Black and a thought leader in cannabis capital markets, government relations, and industry insights. Investing in public & private cannabis since 2014 via Stonebridge Partners.
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