Drug Scheduling: While DEA Decisions Have Aligned with Recent HHS Recommendations, Both Need Comprehensive Policies

Filed 1h ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

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Bad Ideas (clean)

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Rezowan · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

GAO reviewed 208 substances the DEA scheduled between 2020 and 2025 and found the agency's final decisions matched HHS recommendations on all 84 cases resolved by rule, out of 95 where such recommendations were required. The remaining 11 substances remain under extended temporary orders.

Despite that track record of agreement, GAO found neither agency has written policies spelling out how the process should run: DEA has no documented roles or procedures for scheduling decisions, and FDA has no policy specifying how staff should conduct evaluations or develop recommendations. A memorandum of understanding between FDA and NIH's drug abuse institute governing scientific consultation is more than 40 years old and doesn't reflect current entities or procedures.

GAO recommended both agencies develop formal policies and that FDA and NIH update their decades-old agreement. Both agencies concurred with the recommendations.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Two agencies that mostly agree with each other for six years running still can't produce a written rulebook explaining how they got there. That's fine until the one person who remembers how it's supposed to work retires, and then it's not fine at all. A forty-year-old memo running drug scheduling policy is the kind of thing you'd expect to find taped inside a filing cabinet somewhere, not steering decisions about fentanyl.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: Bad Ideas (clean) · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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