Part V of our coverage of the federal rescheduling case. Part IV covered the post-hearing briefs.

294 fixes across 2,533 pages is roughly one every nine pages, and most are spelling and speaker names. A handful did something else: they changed the meaning, sometimes to its opposite.

For six weeks, one version of the federal marijuana rescheduling record had a Tennessee investigator testifying that cannabis shipments were arriving with lab paperwork showing illegal levels of delta-9 THC.

What he said was the opposite. The paperwork claimed legal levels. That was his point: the certificates travel with the shipment, they say the product is compliant, and when the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s own lab tests it, the delta-9 comes back much higher. One missing syllable, on page 1823, and the sentence argued against itself.

That was one of 294 corrections Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek C. Julius ordered before the DEA published the full transcript of its eleven-day rescheduling hearing this week. The parties proposed them, the government included, and Julius signed the order on August 20.

Most are exactly what you would expect from live transcription. Misspelled surnames, speaker labels attached to the wrong lawyer dozens of times, “Torridon Law LLC” corrected to “Torridon Law PLLC” on the opening page of nearly every day. A few are just funny, and Marijuana Moment collected those when the order came out: “pubic” for “public,” “anal” for “analysis,” and two places where “nubs” should have read “nuggs.”

A small number are not clerical at all. In those, the record had a witness saying the opposite of what they said.

The Corrections That Changed the Meaning

The rescheduling itself, backwards. On day ten, page 2070, Pueblo emergency physician Karen Randall warned that moving marijuana would change how the public sees it. The transcript had her describing the move as going from “a CS-III to a III.” The corrected version reads “CS-I to a III.” In the official record of a hearing convened to decide whether marijuana leaves Schedule I, the direction of the move came out wrong.

A conflict of interest, admitted or omitted. On day three, page 830, a witness being questioned about a potential conflict said he would have to check his professional timeline to see whether it had been “inadvertently omitted” that he had one, adding that it was “certainly not through any conscious obfuscation.” The uncorrected transcript read “admitted.” One word, and the sentence describes the opposite situation.

Perception of harm, up or down. Randall again, on page 2135, describing how the perception of harm has “decreased dramatically” over the last decade, especially among children. The record had her saying it increased, which would have made the rest of her argument incoherent.

Pure or impure. On day five, page 1222, Bertha Madras walked the judge through the questions pharmacology asks of any drug. One of them is whether the substance is contaminated: “Is it impure, with microbes, with chemicals, with heavy metals, pesticides, insecticides.” The transcript had “pure.”

The distinction the witness was making. On day six, page 1482, Ed Wood of DUID Victim Voices explained why an unscientific per se THC limit convicts unimpaired drivers and acquits impaired ones, and that Colorado’s permissible-inference structure solves half of it. The uncorrected version collapsed his closing line into “with a per se law,” erasing the distinction his entire answer rested on. The correction restores it: “with a per se, permissible inference, law.”

Two more that Marijuana Moment flagged when the order came out belong in the same category. On page 284, a lawyer asked whether dispensary cannabis is tested “to make sure there’s no adulterants,” and the record dropped the “no.” And a line rendered as the statement “This is a medication.” turned out to be the question “This is a medication?”

Why It Matters, and How Much

Perspective is in order. Court reporters work fast, and 294 corrections across 2,533 pages come out to about one every nine pages, which is not a scandal. The parties proposed them, which is how the process is designed to work, and Julius ordered them under the regulation that governs it. Most of the reversals are obvious enough in context that a careful reader would have caught them. The system did its job. The record was corrected before Julius issues his recommendation.

What is worth sitting with is the six weeks in between. The tribunal emailed uncorrected daily transcripts to counsel and to some of the parties as the hearing ran, a fact that surfaced in open court when the government tried to strike a witness for having read them. Those were the pages available while the parties drafted the post-hearing briefs that would become their final arguments to Julius, and while reporters, this outlet included, covered the case.

In a proceeding this technical, the difference between legal and illegal, increased and decreased, admitted and omitted, pure and impure is the difference between a witness’s point and its opposite. That is the argument for a correction process, and it is also the argument for checking any quotation from this hearing against the version the DEA posted this week.

Julius will issue a recommended decision to DEA Administrator Terrance Cole. There is no date for it. Whatever he recommends, the record he decides from now says what the witnesses actually said.

How we reported this: High Times compared Judge Julius’ August 20 order correcting the transcript against the corrected transcripts of all eleven hearing days, which the DEA has posted publicly on its rescheduling docket page. Page numbers refer to the continuous pagination of the hearing record, which runs from 1 to 2,533. On the published version, corrections appear in red and deleted text is struck through.

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The government spent most of its final brief making the legal case for Schedule III. Then, in the closing pages, it took the opposition’s witnesses apart, and quoted some of those same witnesses to prove cannabis is medicine. One scientist walked away almost untouched. She works at the DEA.

The federal government’s closing argument for moving marijuana to Schedule III is in, and its lawyers did not hedge. “Marijuana can no longer remain in Schedule I,” the DEA’s attorneys wrote in a post-hearing brief filed August 17 with Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek C. Julius, asking the judge to “expeditiously recommend” the transfer.

It is the government’s last word before Julius drafts the recommendation that will frame DEA Administrator Terrance “Terry” Cole‘s final decision. And it lands where this proceeding was always going to land: not on whether cannabis has medicinal value, but on which legal test gets to answer that question, and on whose testimony the judge should be allowed to believe.

High Times has covered this hearing since before it opened: the participant roster stacked entirely with opponents, the DOJ’s argument that those opponents’ real injuries are commercial, and the stretch of days in which the opposition’s own witnesses kept helping the government. The closing brief turns that pattern into legal strategy.

Six briefs arrived by the August 17 deadline, as first reported by Marijuana Moment: the government’s, a joint filing from Smart Approaches to Marijuana and the states of Idaho, Indiana and Nebraska, separate briefs from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association, a joint brief from DUID Victim Voices and pain physician Dr. Kenneth Finn, and a pro se statement from pharmacist Dr. Phillip Drum. Julius capped each at 50 pages. The government used all 50. On Thursday morning, the judge issued the order correcting the hearing transcript, putting the full record in public hands by August 26.

Getting cannabis out of Schedule I is the easy half, and the brief treats it that way. Schedule I requires that a substance have no accepted medical use. The 2023 Health and Human Services evaluation found three: chronic pain, anorexia related to a medical condition, and nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy. One is enough. A 2024 Office of Legal Counsel opinion holds that the DEA owes those scientific findings “significant deference” and cannot redo them from scratch. Then the brief adds the arithmetic: more than 30,000 practitioners authorized to recommend cannabis to more than six million patients across 43 U.S. jurisdictions, which the government says also undercuts any claim that cannabis cannot be used safely under medical supervision.

Getting it in Schedule III specifically takes dozens more pages on abuse potential and dependence, most of it built on the HHS comparison of cannabis against heroin, fentanyl, cocaine and prescription opioids, plus government witness Dr. Corey Burchman‘s testimony that opioid withdrawal is “horrific” while cannabis withdrawal rarely sends anyone to a hospital.

A reminder of what’s actually on the table, because coverage of this saga keeps blurring it: April’s order already aimed to move FDA-approved cannabis products and state-licensed medical marijuana to Schedule III. This proceeding decides whether the rest of the plant follows. The government wants all of it moved, while keeping cannabis federally controlled either way.

The Closing Pages

Julius ruled before the hearing that all expert designations would be decided afterward, in writing. The government took him up on it. Starting on page 43, the last eight pages of the brief work through the opposition’s witnesses one at a time, sorting what it calls the “so-called expert witnesses” into different grounds for disqualification.

Some testified outside their expertise, the brief argues. Yale psychiatrist Dr. Deepak D’Souza was offered by the states as an expert in five areas and then asked about pain management, which the brief notes sits outside the boundaries D’Souza drew around his own expertise on the stand.

Some answered the wrong question entirely, per the government: workplace drug-testing witnesses describing hypothetical future hurdles, a state investigator who spoke about “deregulation” and “legalization” in a proceeding that would do neither, and Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal, whom the states never properly noticed as an expert and who, the brief says, admitted he has “no meaningful connection to Nebraska, Idaho or Indiana,” the three states that called him.

The sharpest allegation gets its own section. According to the filing, Ed Wood of DUID Victim Voices and Finn both ignored the tribunal’s sequestration instructions and admitted to reading transcripts of earlier testimony before taking the stand. Their testimony, the government argues, “has been irreparably tainted and cannot be cured other than providing it little to no weight.” The brief cites transcript pages for both admissions. Those are the government’s characterizations of a record the public still cannot read—though that changes next week.

Dr. Drum, testifying on his own behalf, painted a different picture. He told the tribunal there is no scientific indication or medical use for plant-based marijuana, and the brief notes his opinion on cachexia and cancer pain rests on personal experience with two patients. It also notes what he said next: that Schedule II “would be potentially more appropriate level for marijuana,” because of how fast it absorbs. Schedule II is stricter than Schedule III. It is still not Schedule I. A designated party who came to oppose rescheduling told the judge, under oath, that cannabis belongs somewhere other than where it is.

The filing allows itself one moment of grace. Of Laura Stack, who testified about losing her son, the government writes that it “acknowledges the personal impact of Ms. Stack’s testimony and commends her testimony.” Then it goes back to work.

Because the same brief that asks Julius to discount these witnesses also quotes them making the government’s case. “Testimony from both Government and Opposed Parties alike support the Government’s position,” it argues, and the receipts follow. Harvard’s Dr. Bertha Madras, SAM’s marquee expert, “testified that there is scientific evidence of marijuana’s efficacy for neuropathic pain patients, although she believes that the science is weak,” per the brief, and her own demonstrative exhibit noted benefits for wasting syndrome, appetite and pain in cancer patients and severe nausea. D’Souza described a study in which a standardized cannabis extract beat placebo for pain.

Finn gets perhaps the most lawyerly treatment in the document. A footnote sets up the fallback in advance: the government believes his testimony should get no weight because of the sequestration problem, but “should the Tribunal choose to give any consideration” to it, the brief highlights the parts where he admits he recommended marijuana to his own pain patients and believes there is likely a therapeutic benefit. Throw him out. If you won’t throw him out, he’s ours.

“The evidence proffered by the Opposed Parties boils down simply to the fact that Schedule III marijuana poses employment and enforcement difficulties, the same as any other controlled substance in Schedules II – V.”

The Witness They Didn’t Touch

Dr. Luli Akinfiresoye is a pharmacologist in the DEA’s Drug and Chemical Evaluation Section and an author of the agency’s own scientific review. SAM called her, and she delivered. The SAM and states brief cites her 25 times, using her testimony to argue that cannabis fails the five-part medical-use test the DEA applied for decades, including her line that there was no clear data supporting cannabis for chronic pain.

Cannabis Business Times, which first reported the brief’s credibility strategy, described her as the lone witness the government didn’t pick apart. The document is a shade stranger than that. Akinfiresoye appears in the government’s 50 pages exactly once, cited in support of the government’s own finding that marijuana has no consistent, reproducible chemical profile. The eight pages devoted to picking apart everyone else never name her.

Her actual conclusion does get answered, but on a different level. The government’s response is that the OLC found the five-part test “impermissibly narrow” and the newer two-part inquiry legally sufficient, so a witness applying the old test is applying a standard that no longer controls. That is not a rebuttal of her science. It is a request for a ruling about which science counts.

Which is the tell: against the sheriff, the pharmacist, the drugged-driving advocate and the Harvard addiction expert, the government litigates credibility and relevance. Against its own scientist, it shifts ground and argues that the question she answered is beside the point.

One more small detail, from the order Julius signed Thursday morning. On the tenth hearing day, when her surname came up, the official transcript rendered it “Akinfire-Soye.” The tribunal corrected it this week.

The Opposition’s Case

The other briefs are worth reading too, starting with the signature block. The SAM and states filing is signed by Patrick Philbin, former deputy White House counsel to Donald Trump, of Torridon Law, the firm founded by former Attorney General William Barr. It opens by noting the government has considered rescheduling marijuana “no fewer than nine times, most recently in 2016” and refused every time, then argues abuse and mental-health harms have worsened since. Its bluntest line comes a section header calling the two-part standard a test “That Was Made Up for This Proceeding.” Its conclusion: the government “has not carried its burden,” and marijuana should stay in Schedule I.

Tennessee’s investigators barely engage with the science. Their brief leads with a procedural knife: the attorney general long ago delegated scheduling authority to the DEA administrator, yet the attorney general issued the rescheduling proposal himself. “That alone is enough to hold the NPRM deficient and keep marijuana in Schedule I,” TBI writes.

NDASA’s brief traces the history of federal drug testing, from Reagan’s 1986 executive order through the 1987 Conrail crash, and builds toward one warning: because the federal testing framework defines illegal drugs by reference to Schedules I and II, moving marijuana to Schedule III could pull the legal floor out from under the Department of Transportation’s testing program, which its witness called the largest in the world. The DUID Victim Voices and Finn brief closes on the human register, invoking a “memorial roll of young people” and accusing the agency of institutional inaction. And Drum, filing alone, opens by declaring marijuana “not a medicine” and numbering the industry’s claims as fraudulent statements one and two.

What Happens Now

The record is nearly closed. On Thursday morning, Julius issued a 13-page order correcting the hearing transcript across all eleven days, and set August 26 as the deadline for the fully corrected version to go up on DEA’s website, with the fixes marked in red. Six parties filed proposed corrections; NDASA did not. Most of the list is housekeeping: misspelled names, misattributed speakers, dozens of lines on day four assigned to the wrong government attorney. Some of it is not. On day one, “there’s adulterants” becomes “there’s no adulterants.” On day eight, “illegal” becomes “legal.” On day ten, “increase” becomes “decrease.” The court reporter also spent a stretch of day one transcribing “Touhy,” the rule governing testimony by federal employees, as “DUID.”

After that, federal regulations direct Julius to prepare his recommended decision “as soon as practicable,” with no deadline attached. Parties then get 20 days after service to file exceptions, and the record is certified to Cole no earlier than 25 days after service. Cole faces no clock either. And the D.C. Circuit is still sitting on a motion to stay April’s order, a ruling that could scramble all of this in a week.

One footnote in the government’s brief points at the real fight: Julius separately asked the parties to brief the binding effect of the OLC opinion, the document that blessed the two-part test and shelved the five-part one. The judge flagged the exact question this case turns on. If the two-part test governs, the government’s arithmetic wins. If the five-part test survives, the strongest evidence against rescheduling came from a DEA pharmacologist.

The government spent its last eight pages taking witnesses apart. Its own scientist got one citation and a change of subject. She works down the hall.

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(This is a contributed guest column. To be considered as an MJBizDaily guest columnist, please submit your request here.)

As federal marijuana rescheduling inches closer to reality, operators must confront a fundamental shift in how legal cannabis businesses will be regulated.

Downgrading cannabis to Schedule 3 of the Controlled Substances Act signals a transition toward a federal medical model of cannabis. With that comes heightened enforcement around cybersecurity, data privacy, and compliance – requirements that many operators are not yet prepared to meet.

Medical models attract pharmaceutical investment. They also mean patients whose data is among the most highly protected in the United States.

That combination dramatically raises the stakes for cannabis businesses that collect, store, or process data — be it customer information, consumer health information, or even just employee data.

In a Schedule 3 world, cybersecurity compliance is no longer a “nice to have” or a future consideration, it is essential to survival.

What Schedule 3 means for cannabis businesses beyond 280E reform

State-regulated cannabis companies that choose to participate in a federally recognized medical framework may, for the first time, find themselves subject to a complex and overlapping web of federal and state data privacy laws.

These can include the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the HITECH Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, state consumer privacy statutes, and sector-specific cybersecurity regulations that were never designed with cannabis businesses in mind.

Violations can result in criminal penalties, civil fines, regulatory investigations, notification obligations, credit monitoring expenses, and the complete loss of consumer trust.

Many cannabis operators underestimate this risk because they assume compliance obligations are tied to where their business is located. In reality, data privacy laws are very often triggered by the domicile of the data subject, not the business itself. A single out-of-state patient, consumer, or online transaction can subject a cannabis company to laws it has never evaluated, let alone complied with.

As the industry matures, participation expands, and federal scrutiny increases, ignorance of these obligations will no longer be defensible.

Marijuana rescheduling means pharmaceutical investment – and competition

At the same time, Schedule 3 opens the door to increased pharmaceutical investment and with it, a more aggressive and competitive regulatory environment. Large, well-capitalized players have strong incentives to protect their investments. This includes challenging the compliance posture of competitors.

One of the easiest ways to undermine a rival is to report potential noncompliance with cybersecurity or data privacy laws to regulators. In many cases, any member of the public can file such a complaint.

This represents a significant shift in risk.

In the past, cannabis compliance failures often resulted in state-level penalties or operational setbacks. In a Schedule 3 environment, cybersecurity failures can escalate quickly, causing large data breaches, drawing in federal regulators and triggering enforcement actions that extend far beyond cannabis-specific agencies.

Cannabis operators need to adapt to data regulations

The reality is that many cannabis businesses are still growing into basic data governance maturity. They are small, independently owned, and may not have a clear understanding of what data they collect, where it is stored, who has access to it, or how long it is retained.

Incident response plans are often informal or nonexistent. Vendor management, particularly point-of-sale systems, delivery platforms, and marketing tools, is frequently overlooked, despite the fact that third-party breaches can create direct liability.

In a Schedule 3 world, these gaps are no longer growing pains; they are existential threats.

How cannabis businesses can adapt information practices

To succeed, the industry must work to implement fair information practices such as collecting only what is necessary, securing it appropriately, training staff to recognize risks, and responding quickly and transparently when breaches occur.

Cybersecurity must be treated as a core compliance function, not an IT afterthought. This includes understanding which laws apply, implementing reasonable safeguards, conducting regular risk assessments, acquiring appropriate insurance, and documenting compliance efforts before something goes wrong.

Want to know if you need to worry about cybersecurity and data privacy compliance?

Use this self-assessment tool to analyze your risk.

Does my cannabis business need to worry about cybersecurity and data privacy?

1. Do you collect any data, including names, addresses, phone numbers, etc., about your employees, vendors, patients, or customers?
2. Do you collect drivers’ license numbers, social security numbers, state ID numbers, or passport numbers, either directly, through a POS system, or through a verification system?
3. Do you collect credit card numbers, debit card numbers, financial information, or bank account information, either directly or through a payment processer?

If you answered yes to any of these three questions, your organization or business has legal obligations related to cybersecurity and data privacy.

Noncompliance with these obligations can result in criminal penalties, regulatory fines, data breaches, and loss of customer trust.

Does my cannabis business need a cybersecurity and data privacy audit?

1. Do you know where your data is stored, how long it is stored, and how it is destroyed?
2. Do you know who to contact and what to do in the event of a data breach?
3. Do you have adequate cyber insurance to cover rebuilding your internal systems and notifying employees, customers, and regulators in the event of a breach?
4. Do you know what fair information practices (FIPs) are, and do you follow them at every step of collecting, storing, using, and destroying data?
5. If a vendor causes a data breach, do you know who is responsible for notifications and remediation?

If you answered no or “I don’t know” to any of these five questions, it’s time for a cybersecurity and data privacy audit.

Consider investing in a review of all vendor contracts, including seed-to-sale, point of sale, payment processing, etc., internal data life cycle policies, public-facing privacy notices, employee training, and insurance to understand your current risk profile and mitigate exposure on future events.

Cannabis cybersecurity protects the ethos of the plant

This moment represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Cannabis has long prided itself on patient advocacy, consumer trust, and community-centered values. Protecting sensitive data is a natural extension of that ethos. If the industry can mature alongside its regulatory environment, it can set a standard that balances innovation, access, and accountability.

Schedule 3 changes the incentives and the risks. Cybersecurity compliance is now a frontline issue for cannabis businesses that want to protect not only their operations, but also the people who rely on the plant.

Victoria Cvitanovic is a psychedelic medicine and cannabis attorney at Rudick Law Group, PLLC specializing in matters such as commercial transactions, regulatory compliance, state licensing, insurance, supply chain logistics, medical malpractice defense, medical board defense and corporate law.

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