As the US cannabis industry eagerly awaits the judge’s final recommendation on whether to extend rescheduling, the next phase has already found itself caught in the weeds of bureaucracy.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Chief Administrative Law Judge Derek Julius this week ruled to stay the post-hearing proceedings on extending cannabis rescheduling to adult-use cannabis, further delaying his non-binding recommendation to the DEA Administrator.
Julius’s September 29 ruling came after opponents filed a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, arguing that its findings are significant enough to reopen the record and admit it as evidence.
Now, the DEA has until October 13 to file a response, capped at 20 pages, on whether the record should be reopened.
It is the latest, but unlikely the last, effort to filibuster the rescheduling process, already facing multiple legal challenges and as yet far from finished.
The GAO report
The report in question, published on September 23, 2026, by the non-partisan congressional watchdog, ultimately concluded that the DEA does ‘not have policies that identify roles, responsibilities, and procedures related to rescheduling’.
The report, titled ‘Drug Scheduling: While DEA Decisions Have Aligned with Recent HHS Recommendations, Both Need Comprehensive Policies (GAO-26-108623)’, analysed 208 DEA scheduling actions between 2020 and 2025 and found that in every one of the 84 cases where the DEA had issued a final rule following an HHS evaluation, its decision matched the HHS recommendation.
The ‘gaps’ the report flags are documentation gaps (the absence of written procedures), not a critique of the decisions themselves. The Department of Justice, DEA, HHS, FDA and the National Institutes of Health have all concurred with the recommendations, and the FDA and NIDA are already drafting a revised memorandum of understanding.
It’s important to clarify that the report itself takes no position on cannabis. It documents a lack of written scheduling procedures at both the DEA and FDA, a finding that cuts across every substance the agencies handle, not just cannabis.
The ‘gaps’ the report flags are documentation gaps, not decision-quality gaps. If anything, the substantive finding supports the DEA’s position that its Schedule III determination follows the HHS evaluation the statute requires.
Ironically, the report was initially commissioned by two long-time cannabis advocates: Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee with oversight of the DEA, and Cory Booker of New Jersey, the lead sponsor of the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act.
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How will this impact further rescheduling?
The pause does not, on its face, threaten the substantive case for extending Schedule III to adult use.
The evidence the DEA has put on the record, together with the FDA and HHS scientific work behind it, is the material that establishes a currently accepted medical use, the statutory hinge the extension turns on. The GAO report does not touch that evidence.
What it does is hand opponents a procedural weapon they can wield in any litigation moving forward.
In essence, the argument stands that whatever the DEA decides, it decides without written rules of its own for how to decide.
If Julius decides to admit the report on October 13, the hearing resumes on an extended record and further delay is likely. If he does not, opponents will have laid the groundwork to reopen the question on appeal.
