The federal marijuana rescheduling hearing turned Tuesday afternoon to the case for the states, as counsel for Idaho, Indiana, and Nebraska opened with a point of history: marijuana has been reviewed for rescheduling nine times, and every review reached the same conclusion — no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.
The states’ central objection was a public-health harm: more psychosis.
To carry the psychosis argument, the states called Dr. Deepak D’Souza, a staff psychiatrist with the Department of Veterans Affairs and a professor of psychiatry at Yale. He proved a patient guide through the science: how THC floods and overwhelms the brain’s cannabinoid receptors, prompting the brain to shed receptors in response; why smoking marijuana and eating it produce meaningfully different effects; and why the studies that matter are randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled — the standard the government’s benefit claims must meet.
On the substance, D’Souza was direct. Marijuana reduces synapses in the hippocampus, impairing attention, executive function, information processing, and memory. He called it a cause of psychosis and schizophrenia — a link studied for two centuries that, measured against the Bradford Hill factors, points to cause. He put its abuse potential above LSD or MDMA, and said withdrawal can be “very disturbing,” enough to force people back into use and, at times, into the hospital.
The younger the user, the worse the consequences, he testified, and exposure during pregnancy is “absolutely” dangerous to the developing child. On the central question, he was unequivocal: whether marijuana has a currently accepted medical use cannot be answered by benefits alone, and here the benefits do not outweigh the risks. The pain research the government leans on, he added, rests on small samples, inadequate blinding, and subjective outcomes—and it strains credulity that a single drug would work across 60 indications.
The hearing is scheduled to end today.