The federal marijuana rescheduling hearing turned Wednesday to the clinical evidence underpinning the government’s proposal. A pain specialist testified not only that the research fails to show marijuana works, but that HHS’s own conclusion that some modest benefit could be inferred is unsupported by the very data the agency assembled to reach it.
The witness was Dr. Ken Finn, a pain-medicine physician who commanded the science and stayed close to the record. He took the court through the studies HHS cited on pain, one of the indications the government leaned on most heavily. Of the twenty-seven, he showed that eighteen found no separation from placebo. Most of the evidence the agency used to build its case, in short, demonstrated nothing. A gap that cut directly at the conclusion HHS said the record would bear.
When Finn pressed past pain into other proposed uses, weighing anorexia against the risk of psychosis, the government objected. The judge signaled he would permit the testimony anyway. Finn then noted, on his own initiative and without being asked, that he holds a Colorado certification in cannabis science, qualifying him to speak to the drug’s specific effects even where they reach beyond his clinical work.
The hearing then moved from the studies to the tragedy that marijuana can cause. Laura Stack testified about her son, Johnny, a 4.0 student with a college scholarship from an ordinary Colorado family. He began dabbing high-potency marijuana concentrates at fourteen, the year Colorado’s commercial market opened. Years of heavy use gave way to psychosis and paranoid delusion. Three days before he died, he told his mother she had been right that the drug had harmed his mind. On November 20, 2019, Johnny took his own life at nineteen. Stack, who later founded the nonprofit Johnny’s Ambassadors to warn other families about high-THC products and the developing brain, spent about an hour taking the court through his decline. Her testimony was steady and specific, and it held the room.
The government’s cross-examination was short and gained little. It put about four questions to Finn, none of which found purchase, and asked nothing of Stack. The hearing continues tomorrow.