COLORADO ASKS DEA TO RECLASSIFY MARIJUANA

The head of the Colorado
Department of Revenue has written a letter to the Drug Enforcement
Administration asking that federal controls on marijuana be loosened
slightly to account for its "potential medicinal value."

Colorado is the third state with a medical-marijuana program to ask
the DEA to reschedule marijuana. But Revenue Department Executive
Director Barbara Brohl's letter, written Dec. 22, does not come as a
surprise. A law passed last year in the legislature required the state
to ask for rescheduling by the end of this year.

In the letter, Brohl details briefly Colorado's regulations for
medical-marijuana sellers and argues that current federal law, under
which all marijuana possession and distribution is illegal, make it
difficult for her to administer Colorado's laws.

"As long as there is divergence in state and federal law, there is a
lack of certainty necessary to provide safe access for patients with
serious medical conditions," Brohl wrote.

The letter asks that the DEA consider moving marijuana from schedule I
- - a category that includes such drugs as heroin and LSD that are not
considered to have medicinal value - to schedule II. Drugs in that
category, such as methadone and cocaine, are considered to have some
medicinal value but also be highly addictive.

Schedule II substances are able to be prescribed by doctors but are
still subject to strict controls. It is unclear whether Colorado's
medical-marijuana laws - which allow doctors to authorize marijuana
use through recommendation and allow patients to grow their own
cannabis plants - would clash with those controls.

Earlier this year, the governors of Rhode Island and Washington also
asked the DEA to reschedule marijuana. The DEA has in the past
rejected similar requests to reclassify the substance.