The Drug Enforcement Administration is seeking to exclude what advocates say is key testimony from an upcoming hearing on the agency’s long-running bid to ban two psychedelic substances. Advocates opposing the ban have hit back with scathing countermotions, disputing the DEA’s latest move and threatening further legal action.
As Filter has previously reported, a coalition including Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) and Panacea Plant Services has fought a years-long battle with the DEA over the legal status of two substances widely used in psychedelic research: 2,5-Dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine (DOI) and 2,5-Dimethoxy-4-chloroamphetamine (DOC).
The DEA wants to place DOI and DOC, which are currently unscheduled, in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act—the most restricted category, for drugs deemed to have “High abuse potential with no accepted medical use.” The agency revived these attempts in December 2023. In January, SSDP representatives filed a request for a public hearing on the matter.
On September 26, just hours before a deadline to do so, the DEA filed a motion to “exclude various witnesses, witness testimony, and exhibits.”
In August, following numerous bureaucratic delays and pre-hearing statements, the DEA’s administrative court responded by scheduling a historically lengthy nine-day public hearing period: to run from November 12-22, with an additional day on November 25 to accommodate the Thanksgiving holiday.
That didn’t signal a temporary ceasefire, however.
On September 26, just hours before a deadline to do so, the DEA filed a motion to “exclude various witnesses, witness testimony, and exhibits proposed by Panacea Plant Sciences (Panacea), the Science Policy Counsel, Students for Sensible Drug Policy and Dr. Raul A. Ramos (SSDP/Ramos).” The filing states that this is “on the grounds that much of the proposed testimony and exhibits are incompetent, irrelevant, immaterial, and/or unduly repetitious.”
SSDP representatives had previously submitted a 14-person list of proposed witnesses for the hearing. The size of this list was a significant factor in the administrative court scheduling such a lengthy public hearing.
The list of proposed witnesses includes “a world-class international group of behavioral and molecular pharmacologists, chemists, neuroscientists, and a former Government Advisor on psychoactive drugs,” according to SSDP Science Policy Committee Chair Elijah Ullman. The DEA is seeking to exclude some, though not all, of these witnesses.
Intriguingly, the DEA’s filing includes a particularly lengthy section dedicated to discrediting the proposed testimony of David Heldreth, the founder and president of Panacea Plant Services (PPS), a psychedelic research and development company. Despite Heldreth’s work, the agency claims “there is no indication that he possesses any expertise to aid the tribunal in resolving the issue.”
“The DEA is attempting to restrict the testimony of the only group representing Native American viewpoints.”
In response to the DEA’s attempt to disqualify his testimony, Heldreth filed a countermotion on October 3, disputing the agency’s argument and detailing plans for future legal action if its request is approved.
The countermotion described the DEA’s bid to remove Heldreth from the witness list as, “a disservice to the hearings and the American people.” It then set out further steps which, if Heldreth is excluded, could potentially mire the DEA’s plans for DOI and DOC in further legal struggles.
“If the judge in the hearing approves this motion by DEA,” it stated, “PPS plans to seek an interlocutory appeal of the non-final judgment ruling on the motion [which] would then have to be sent to the DEA administrator for review.”
“PPS would then plan to ask for a stay in the hearings during the time between the judge’s ruling and the DEA administrator’s receipt,” the countermotion continued. “Additionally, PPS plans to challenge this point in federal court if that interlocutory appeal is denied.”
“President Joe Biden’s DEA is attempting to restrict the testimony of the only group representing Native American viewpoints,” said Heldreth in a statement provided to Filter, adding that PPS is also “the only business … involved in the DEA hearings.”
Heldreth’s family is Cherokee, Wailacki and Hualapai, and his company focuses on developing therapies through collaboration with Indigenous peoples and organizations, including the Comanche (Nʉmʉnʉʉ) organization Sia, Benefit Honoring and the Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund. PPS also designates a portion of its equity for Indigenous people and related organizations.
“If the DEA believes that both DOI and DOC should be placed in Schedule I, they should have no issue allowing our witnesses to testify in full.”
SSDP representatives also responded to the DEA’s latest move in an October 3 press release. Director of Strategy and Development Gina Giorgio questioned “the fairness and credibility of a DEA-led trial that excludes the world’s foremost experts from participating in the discussion.”
“We have assembled a world-class international group of behavioral and molecular pharmacologists, chemists, neuroscientists, and a former Government Advisor on psychoactive drugs,” added SSDP’s Elijah Ullman, who is himself pursuing a PhD in molecular and systems pharmacology. “If the DEA believes that both DOI and DOC should be placed in Schedule I, they should have no issue allowing our witnesses to testify in full.”
“Otherwise,” he continued, “it appears to me that they are worried their dataset is lacking the scientific rigor to support their claims.”
The coalition also slammed the DEA’s attempt to discredit witnesses in a separate countermotion filed on October 3 , by SSDP attorney Brett Phelps and attorney Robert Rush, on behalf of UC Berkeley’s Dr. Raul Ramos.
“The Government moves to severely restrict virtually all the Petitioners’ witnesses [is] based on a pedantic analysis of the summaries of testimony offered in the Petitioners’ Prehearing Statement,” the joint countermotion stated, and “mischaracterizes [their] proposed testimony.”
The DEA “paradoxically argues,” it continued, that evidence of potential harms to research from scheduling DOI and DOC is irrelevant in determining their status.
In that countermotion, Phelps addressed the seemingly self-contradictory fact that DEA Administrator Anne Milgram considered such evidence in her own evaluation of DOI and DOC’s status.
“If harm to research is irrelevant,” Phelps asked, “why did this Administrator consider harm to research in her analysis and past administrators acknowledge considering harm to research?” He added that the “weight that the Administrator may assign to a particular factor is not the same question as to its relevancy.”
“By trying to silence leading experts in neuroscience and pharmacology, the DEA is attempting to prevent the tribunal—and the public—from understanding the true potential of these substances.”
The DEA, which first sought to ban the two psychedelics in 2022, has repeatedly argued that they are dangerous, claiming in its December 2023 Schedule 1 filing proposal that “the history and current pattern of abuse of DOI and DOC are described in law enforcement reports and anecdotal reports by drug abusers.”
But just a few sentences later, the agency conceded that “it is impossible to know if the street drugs sold to an individual as DOI or DOC are actually the substances they are marketed as in the absence of chemical analysis or evaluation of biological fluids following ingestion.”
Researchers have described DOI, in particular, as a critical research tool, capable of yielding insights into mental health and pain, among other areas. SSDP has highlighted that the substance has been cited in over 900 research articles in the past two decades.
“By trying to silence the world’s leading experts in neuroscience and pharmacology,” said Rush in the press release, “the DEA is attempting to prevent the tribunal—and the public—from understanding the true potential of these substances.”
“At a time when we face an unprecedented mental health crisis, it is unconscionable for the DEA to claim that harm to psychedelic research is irrelevant,” he added. “I look forward to the DEA being called to explain themselves.”
Photograph by Michael Nunzio via Pexels