No Clarity on Conflicting Laws as Judge Keeps Marijuana on List of Harmful Drugs

By ALAN SCHWARZ

A federal judge declined on Wednesday to order the removal of marijuana from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of the most harmful and addictive drugs, disappointing those who had hoped the courts might help settle growing conflicts between federal and state laws.

Judge Kimberly J. Mueller of United States District Court in Sacramento heard testimony on whether marijuana belonged alongside heroin and LSD on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Schedule I list: substances classified as having no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

As more has been learned about marijuana’s therapeutic properties, however, 23 states, including California, have legalized the use of medical cannabis, and four states have approved its recreational use, creating confusion on how or whether federal law will be enforced.

Judge Mueller will continue to preside over the case, in which the federal government is prosecuting 16 men in California accused of conspiring to grow more than 1,000 marijuana plants in Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

Defense lawyers had argued in court filings that the charges should be dismissed in part because marijuana’s Schedule I classification was arbitrary and unconstitutional. They asserted that the 10th Amendment barred the federal government from superseding state laws legalizing marijuana for medicinal use. Judge Mueller ruled that any adjustments to the law were better left to Congress. “This is not the court and this is not the time,” she said Wednesday, according to a report by The Associated Press. A written ruling will be issued by the end of the week.

The decision dismayed advocates of marijuana legalization.

“The medical benefits of cannabis are undeniable,” said Jeremy Norrie, a medical marijuana user in West Hollywood, Calif., who operates the Secret Cup, a cannabis trade show. “To keep it in the Schedule I classification is knowingly ignorant. It seems more to me that this judge wanted to avoid controversy and having to deal with the issue. We don’t see anywhere near the kind of public problems that the other drugs in Schedule I have.”

A spokesman for the D.E.A., Matthew R. Barden, said it would not comment until officials saw Judge Mueller’s written ruling.

The ruling is one of several indications that some resolution between federal and state marijuana laws may be approaching. In 2013, the Justice Department recommended that federal officials not target dispensaries, growers and patients who complied with state marijuana laws and had no links to cartels or interstate smuggling.

Moreover, the 2015 appropriations bill passed by Congress in December barred the Justice Department from spending money to interfere with any state’s efforts to carry out its medical marijuana laws. The Justice Department has countered that it can still prosecute violations of the federal marijuana ban and continue cases already in the courts.