Here’s what the Guardian have to say by way of introduction
Decision that weakened power of government regulatory agencies sows confusion to already chaotic cannabis law
A recent supreme court decision that weakened the power of US government regulatory agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has added additional confusion to America’s already chaotic cannabis law.
This month, a federal court was able to overrule the DEA on what qualifies as legal hemp, in part because of a supreme court decision that nullified the Chevron doctrine, which once directed courts to defer to the expertise of federal agencies. But now the reverse will apply and courts may have the final say over even highly technical regulations.
“It’s a mess,” said Peter Grinspoon, a physician and Harvard Medical School instructor who wrote Seeing Through the Smoke on medical cannabis. “When you have the DEA saying one thing, you have the farm bill saying another thing, you have the court swinging in one way or the other. It just goes to show that these hemp derived products need to be regulated in a sensible manner.”
The case this month, Anderson v Diamondback Investment Group was heard by the fourth circuit court of appeals and looked into whether an employee could be legally terminated for taking certain cannabis-derived products, including THC-O, a psychoactive substance synthesized from cannabis extract.
The ambiguity in this case lay in whether or not THC-O should be legally defined as a synthetic cannabinoid or hemp.
Read the full article
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/21/supreme-court-chevron-decision-cannabis-law
