On January 29th, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), along with eleven (11) other Senators sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram, urging the DEA to remove marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
The letter follows a recent recommendation from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) that marijuana be rescheduled from Schedule I to Schedule III.
The letter also falls in line with passage of the SAFE Banking Act (S. 1323), which aims to provide protections for federally regulated financial institutions serving state-sanctioned marijuana businesses, addressing the current challenges stemming from marijuana's Schedule I classification. Senator Padilla previously joined 23 of his Senate colleagues in a bipartisan effort to urge passage of the similar Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act of 2021, to allow state-legal cannabis businesses to access banking services.