DEA to Highlight Marijuana’s Medical Benefits at Rescheduling Hearing

Heading into a federal hearing that could decide whether all marijuana moves out of the government’s most restrictive drug category, the open question was whether the Drug Enforcement Administration would actually argue for the change it is supposed to be defending. A new filing this week suggests it will. When the hearing opens Monday, June 29, 2026, the government plans to put a pain physician and a federal drug regulator on the stand to testify that cannabis has genuine medical value.

The DEA’s witness list, disclosed in a prehearing filing, names Dr. Corey Burchman, a New Hampshire anesthesiologist and pain specialist who practiced for more than three decades, and Dominic Chiapperino, who directs the controlled substance staff at the Food and Drug Administration’s drug-evaluation center. Burchman is expected to testify that, in his medical opinion, “medical marijuana provides a medical benefit to pain patients,” drawing on years he spent transitioning patients off opioids and onto cannabis at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. He is also set to describe the safeguards built into state medical programs — monthly purchase caps, product QR codes, certificates of analysis, and lab testing — based on his experience with New Hampshire’s system.

Why the witness list matters

The detail carries weight because of the DEA’s unusual position in this case. The agency is the formal proponent of the proposed rule and carries the burden of proving that marijuana belongs in a lower category — yet it has spent decades defending prohibition and has not committed to a view on where cannabis should ultimately land. That mismatch led some reform advocates to doubt the government would mount a serious defense. The new filing signals otherwise: rather than treat the hearing as a formality, the DEA intends to put medical benefit at the center of its case. The witnesses were named under an order requiring each party to summarize its testimony in advance.

Chiapperino’s testimony points the same direction. He is expected to walk the judge through the federal health review that recommended Schedule III — an eight-factor analysis that found marijuana has an accepted medical use, a lower abuse potential than the most tightly controlled drugs, and a risk of physical dependence the review judged moderate or low. The FDA limited his testimony to that scientific assessment, but it is the analytical backbone of the entire rescheduling proposal, and the one piece opponents most want to dismantle.

There is no contradiction in the government calling pro-reform witnesses even though no pro-reform group was allowed into the room. The hearing rules let the DEA build its own case however it sees fit; the imbalance is in who gets to participate as a party, not in whom the government may call.

A one-sided room

What the government will not face is a friendly audience. When DEA Administrator Terrance Cole selected the seven participants for the hearing, he invited only opponents of rescheduling and turned away every reform group that asked to take part, including NORML, which pressed him to reconsider. Several of the chosen participants — among them the anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana and a coalition of states — have also sued to block the reform.

Those participants get up to an hour to cross-examine each of the government’s witnesses, and they are previewing a case built around cannabis’s alleged harms. Smart Approaches to Marijuana intends to call a DEA pharmacologist who authored a report linking marijuana to psychosis and depression — testimony the agency itself has resisted. The states plan to call a Yale researcher to testify on cannabis abuse liability, and opponents’ attorneys are expected to press Chiapperino on why federal health officials departed from an earlier medical-use test.

What’s actually on the table

The hearing is narrower than its billing suggests. Cannabis sold under a state medical license, along with FDA-approved cannabis drugs, already moved to Schedule III under a separate order Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued in April 2026. No testimony will be taken on that category. The only question before the judge is whether the rest of marijuana — the adult-use and unlicensed supply that makes up most of the market — should follow.

For operators, the stakes are concrete. Moving the remainder of marijuana to Schedule III would extend federal benefits now limited to the medical category, including relief from the tax rule that bars cannabis businesses from deducting ordinary expenses and pushes their effective rates far above other industries. It would also change how the broader market sits with federal law on research, banking access, and eventual interstate commerce.

The record built over the next two weeks matters beyond the courtroom. The April order is already being challenged in consolidated litigation, and any broader rescheduling will draw the same. A thin or lopsided evidentiary record is exactly the vulnerability opponents would exploit on appeal — which makes the strength of the government’s two witnesses, and how they hold up under hostile cross-examination, the real test once the hearing convenes and runs through July 15, 2026.