Cannabis Science Conference Spring Coverage: Federal Rescheduling: Opinions and Impacts Panel

On Day 1 of the Cannabis Science Conference taking place in Kansas City, Missouri, Kim Stuck of The Canna Consortium, moderated a panel featuring David Vaillencourt of S3 Collective, Ken Sobel Esq., and Susan Audino of S.A. Audino & Associates, LLC titled, “Federal Rescheduling: Opinions and Impacts”. In this engaging discussion, the panelist expressed their own commentary on what cannabis rescheduling means to the industry and how this can help it grow.

Susan Audino stated how rescheduling may not be as groundbreaking as some experts in the industry think it will be. "Most of it is imposed on them by legislation and so the regulatory bodies are then tasked with an impossible feat in front of them, which is regulating something that really hasn't been legal, and we don't know a whole lot about what are we going to do. Consequently, what's happened is many, many of the regulations don't make any practical sense. They're not pragmatic, they're not practical. They're not useful. In many cases, they actually contradict basic analytical chemistry principles. And so the regulations are forcing laboratories to rewrite and ignore what they were taught in school, even in chemistry 101 and so I think that the burden for a regulation set makes sense scientifically, empirically, is going to be improved, I think we're going to see a bigger burden on the regulatory system for that. I think that right now our system and encourages and advice on expectedly laboratories to take sideways, to cheat outright, to cut corners, and backpack in the gray zone and so regulatory bodies that say, 'Oh, we'll make stricter regulations'. And so the creativity for labs just checks up. So I think that is going to increase the overall burden on the regulatory system.”

The moderator, Kim Stuck posed a question to the panel following Audino's response, "With that, do you think that there's anything that labs should be ready for?"

"There's increased pressure on all of us whether you're a cultivator processor, lab testing agency, or regulator or even legislator, right, the fever pitch of this is untenable. We've got all these issues we need to solve. We just threw in rescheduling. There's uncertainty anytime something happens that changes in our lives. So how do we address that and create certainty and stability? Well, standards are the foundation for doing so," David Vaillencourt mentioned.

On the discussion of government involvement within the cannabis industry, Ken Sobel concluded that, "Our cannabis space, whether you call it a business, or industry, or social system that includes cannabis, we don't exist because of the Food and Drug Administiration (FDA) or the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) or anything like that. We exist in spite of that."

In this interview with Cannabis Science and Technology, David Vaillencourt details the importance of what the recent federal rescheduling means for the cannabis industry.

David Vaillencourt expressed that, "The biggest thing that I really want people to learn from this panel, is I want them to feel optimistic and encouraged. This is 54 years in the making, right when the Controlled Substances Act was put into place in 1970 one of the key things around putting marijuana, as it was called in this control subs substance act is was to place it in schedule one pending a scientific review, for scheduling later. After four lawsuits, most of them led by NORML since starting in 1972. That first one took 18 years to be adjudicated. And that started in 1972 and ended in 1990, with the administrator of the DEA, going back on what the administrative law judge, which is very technical procedure, stuff that maybe we'll get a chance to discuss, definitely during the panel on where they went against what the administrative law judge recommended, which was upholding a move to Schedule II. So long story to say, this is the first time that the federal government will if we see this process through correctly, stand with science and recognize what we've known all along that there is medical benefits and scientific benefits of this product, and it does not have a high level for abuse. There's a lot more that needs to happen. It's not legalization, it doesn't make interstate commerce happen. It's not descheduling, doesn't fix the war on drugs. But this is symbolic global progress that I think everybody should feel encouraged about and is the time to double down and take more action, not just say, ‘We're here’, like we're just getting started now in earnest."

To learn more about S3 Collective and our previous coverage of their webinar focusing on cannabis's rescheduling, click here.