On July 1 the DEA announced that it had filed one notice of intent to temporarily schedule the synthetic opioid 7-hydroxymitragynine, commonly known as 7-OH, above a certain threshold, as well as another to temporarily schedule three 7-OH derivatives: mitragynine pseudoindoxyl (MP), dihydro-7-OH (MGM-15) and the 9-fluoro derivative of 7-OH (MGM-16). The order for 7-OH itself would apply to any kratom plant material that contains more than 0.05 percent 7-OH by dry weight, or contains a volume greater than 1 milligram. Both are expected to go into effect the first week of August.

In a quieter move, on July 1 the Federal Register published the DEA’s notice of intent to schedule cychlorphine and three other orphine analogs. The agency plans to issue the temporary order for the four orphines July 31, “to avoid an imminent hazard to public safety.” Two of the four orphines have only been identified twice each, and one of them has never been linked to overdose.

Orphines are the latest class of synthetic opioid to be identified in the unregulated drug supply, following nitazenes and fentanyl analogs. Until now the lone orphine in the CSA has been brorphine, which the DEA temporarily scheduled in 2021 and permanently scheduled in 2023. N-propionitrile chlorphine, better known as cychlorphine, entered the news cycle earlier in 2026 and isn’t leaving anytime soon, as there is nothing media outlets love more than something they can call 10 times stronger than fentanyl. Since it was first identified in 2022, cychlorphine has been detected approximately 230 times, either in drugs seized by law enforcement or in post-mortem toxicology testing.

Spirochlorphine has been detected about 36 times in the United States. 5,6-dichloro desmethylchlorphine has been detected twice, and is characterized as much less potent than fentanyl. 5,6-dichloro brorphine has also only been detected twice, and unlike the other three orphines has never been detected in an overdose.

“These four synthetic opioids are pharmacologically similar to other synthetic opioids controlled under the CSA, such as brorphine, fentanyl, morphine, and other mu-opioid receptor agonists,” the DEA stated in its notice for orphine analogs. “Due to these pharmacological similarities, the use of these four synthetic opioids presents a high risk of abuse and may negatively affect users and their communities.”

Morphine is a plant-based opioid, but who cares. No amount of Department of Justice funding appropriated for fentanyl awareness campaigns can keep the DEA from throwing its own propaganda out the window whenever the situation calls for something else. Sure, fentanyl is a weapon of mass destruction and a threat like nothing the nation has ever faced before, so unprecedented in its lethality that the brave men and women of the DEA put their lives on the line just by handling it through a HazMat suit, but also all opioids are the same. (Except kratom.)

7-OH refers to a synthetically concentrated form of the active compound in the kratom plant. The Trump administration has recently been signaling that kratom is on its way to being regulated, and accordingly the DEA notice makes clear that it’s only concerned with concentrated 7-OH.

The DEA stated that “the significance of 7-hydroxymitragynine abuse is demonstrated by an increasing volume of calls to poison control centers,” and that 165 exposure cases were reported in 2025. About one-third of the reports involving 7-OH and no other substances “resulted in serious health problems,” and about two-thirds were treated at a health care facility.

This kind of thing is so annoying. The volume of poison control calls about 7-OH increased in 2025 because that spring the substance got its own data codes in the National Poison Data System, which makes that data easier to track, and because that July the FDA made a huge deal about recommending 7-OH for Schedule I, so more people had heard of it who hadn’t before. Poison control data is self-reported. There is no confirmatory testing. Being treated at a health care facility means people panicked and went to the emergency room as a precaution. The “serious health problems” are nausea, sweating, rapid heart rate and a handful of other symptoms that would be consistent with, say, a panic attack.

This isn’t to say that none of the data reflect people who really were exposed to 7-OH and really did have physical symptoms as a result. But it does strongly recall a phenomenon seen with law enforcement and corrections officers across the country when they think they touched fentanyl or synthetic cannabinoids—they panic, Narcan themselves and go to an emergency room as a precaution, and the department they work for puts out a statement about how they had to be hospitalized and nearly died.

The DEA essentially used the same argument for 7-OH as it did for orphines. “To date, the safety profile of these concentrated products in humans remains unknown because no controlled clinical trials have been conducted to establish safe consumption limits or standardized dosing,” the agency wrote in its 7-OH notice. “Preclinical data indicates that 7-hydroxymitragynine carries a high abuse potential with safety risks, including tolerance, dependence, and respiratory depression, which are comparable to those of classic opioid analgesics.”

Temporary scheduling orders are good for up to three years, but their expiration dates are functionally meaningless because they can simply be extended again and again, if that suits DEA interests more than permanent scheduling.

For the DEA to permanently schedule anything, there’s a long process of reviewing the medical and scientific evidence in the context of eight different rulemaking criteria, plus there’s some disagreement as to whether the agency can still put a substance in Schedule I if the Food and Drug Administration finds that isn’t warranted. Congress also has the power to schedule drugs via passing legislation, but this tends to move slowly, too. 

Temporary scheduling, on the other hand, is something the agency can do without anyone else’s input, and using just three of the eight criteria: “history and current pattern of abuse”; “scope, duration and significance of abuse”; and “[w]hat, if any, risk there is to the public health.” As soon as a given substance is in the CSA, people caught with it can be prosecuted accordingly.

There is no mechanism to temporarily ban a substance under schedules II through V; all temporary scheduling is automatically Schedule I. Though Schedule I is often portrayed as the category for the drugs we know are the most dangerous, in reality it’s the category for the drugs we know nothing about. 

All these novel synthetic drugs keep getting emergency-banned not because each new analog is deadlier than the last, but because the easiest way for the DEA to get more substances into Schedule I—and subject to all the criminal penalties that come with that—is to grab whatever’s just come through the door. 7-OH has taken a little longer, but most synthetic opioids aren’t complicated by the fact that President Donald Trump has embraced lobbyists who want to regulate a different opioid that’s closely related.

A substance doesn’t have to meet Schedule I criteria—“high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision”—for the DEA to put it there temporarily. But the agency always emphasizes how substances like 7-OH and cychlorphine fit the Schedule I criteria; it’s such an easy way to legitimize what it’s doing.

There is no actual definition of “potential for abuse.” So as long as the DEA can show that a substance exists, and is an opioid, then it has potential for abuse. Emergency scheduling orders always describe how the agency painstakingly asked around and learned that, as it turns out, there is no currently accepted medical use and no one is currently engaged in research to explore whether this emerging substance has medical potential.

“The absence of clinical evidence to support vendor health claims is deeply concerning,” the DEA wrote in its 7-OH notice. “Consequently, 7-hydroxymitragynine products sold as unregulated dietary supplements pose significant health risks, as essential information regarding their purity, identity, quantity and long-term safety remain unknown.”

And DEA has made sure it’ll stay that way. Once a substance is in Schedule I, it’s almost impossible for most researchers to access. There are never any FDA-approved uses for a substance that just emerged.

Top image via National Institute on Drug Abuse. First inset image (cropped) via San Diego County. Second inset image (cropped) via Ohio Board of Pharmacy.

The post Of Course 7-OH and Cychlorphine Fit Schedule I Criteria. All New Drugs Do. appeared first on Filter.

On June 21, the AP and Albuquerque Journal published stories about the DEA allowing numerous shipments of fentanyl to move through New Mexico between 2023 and 2025. The investigations stemmed from a 2023 whistleblower complaint filed by DEA Special Agent David Howell, who had been part of the surveillance assigned to some of the shipments.

“We poisoned our community to make cases,” Howell told the AP. “Through our own willful blindness, we get to say, ‘We don’t really know what happened to the drugs.’ But we 100-percent got people killed.”

Among other details, the AP described how the DEA’s widely publicized all-time largest fentanyl seizure, a 2025 operation in Albuquerque that resulted in around 3 million seized pills and 16 arrests, came after the agency allowed “millions” of pills to be delivered.

On June 24, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) called for an inquiry into whether the DEA had potentially violated state law. Over the past two-and-a-half years, as the number of United States overdose deaths has gone down, Western states have split off into a separate trajectory that shows fatal overdose going up. The two states where overdose appears to be increasing the most rapidly have been Arizona and New Mexico.

“Shockingly, the federal government stood by while monitoring shipments, tallying exact pill counts, and watching as these deadly drugs hit the streets,” Lujan Grisham stated. “There are no words to describe how reckless and dangerous these decisions were. Make no mistake: the DEA knew people would die if these pills made it into New Mexico communities, and the agency let it happen anyway. The result: hundreds of New Mexican parents burying their kids. Hundreds of New Mexican kids growing up without stable parents. All while the federal government stood by.”

On June 26, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez (D) formally launched a state-level investigation, stating that it was “deeply disturbing” that DEA agents may have knowingly allowed fentanyl to hit the streets.  

“If those allegations are accurate, the consequences for New Mexicans were not abstract. They were fatal,” he wrote to Lujan Grisham. “I share your outrage.”

Meanwhile, DEA Administrator Terrance C. Cole requested the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) conduct an independent investigation, stating that he believed the agency had acted lawfully.

“This request should not be interpreted as reflecting any lack of confidence in the professionalism or integrity of DEA personnel or in the investigative decisions made during this matter,” Cole wrote. “Rather, it reflects my belief that allegations of this nature—particularly those that have received widespread public attention—are best addressed through an independent objective review.”

It’s always possible that some of the shock is genuine, but it’s hard to imagine how. The agency has never really bothered to cultivate an image based on anything other than arrests and reactive enforcement and big-ticket seizures that look good in a photo. Drug interdiction has never been shown to reduce overdose. Often it increases it.

The initial news stories, the subsequent AP spin-off stories, the open letters from elected officials, the new contributions from other media outlets and other elected officials that keep appearing by the day—all of them lean really, really heavily on talking points from the DEA’s “One Pill Can Kill” campaign, more so even than is typical for public discourse around fentanyl. Because in order to be outraged at the DEA for watching any quantity of fentanyl go by without stopping it, you have to validate the myth that seizing fentanyl actually keeps it off the streets.

Gov. Lujan Grisham had specifically asked AG Torrez to prosecute anyone responsible, including federal agents, to which Torrez had responded that no one was above the law although going after federal officers may be unrealistic due to “significant legal barriers.” Administrator Cole, in his letter to the OIG, had stated that “appropriate corrective actions” would be implemented if the OIG ultimately found them necessary, even though he didn’t think that would be the case.

Either way, the DEA still wins. The takeaway is that fentanyl needs to be seized and that when it isn’t, people die. Some government entity therefore must exist to do all the fentanyl-seizing, and it’s going to be the DEA.

Top image (cropped) and inset images of 2025 Albuquerque fentanyl seizure via Drug Enforcement Administration 

The post If the DEA Gets Bad Press for Not Seizing Fentanyl, the DEA Still Wins appeared first on Filter.

Bromazolam (which the DEA formally identifies as 8-bromo-1-methyl-6-phenyl-4 H -benzo[ f][1,2,4]triazolo[4,3- a][l, 4]diazepine) is similar to alprazolam (Xanax). It’s often found in the counterfeit pressed pills that are designed to look like Xanax, but can show up in powder fentanyl or in pressed pills designed to look like oxycodone or other opioids. It’s mainly associated with fentanyl, but frequently identified alongside other substances including meth and cocaine, and other novel synthetic drugs like nitazenes that also tend to be associated with fentanyl.

For the past several years, bromazolam has been the most prevalent unregulated benzo in the United States drug supply. It’s central to what many in the US know as “benzo dope,” though elsewhere this has been more associated with other benzos like etilozam. It was first encountered by US law enforcement in 2016, but it didn’t emerge as particularly significant until around late 2022, when etilozam—the unregulated benzo that had been most prevalent at that time—suddenly dropped out of the supply, and bromazolam surged in its place. 

Our 2024 NPS Discovery Trend Report shows novel benzodiazepines account for 50% of NPS identifications in the U.S. Fatal overdoses often involve these and opioids. Etizolam and Flualprazolam declined since 2022, while Bromazolam’s prevalence has increased. pic.twitter.com/iIcKLZg6Zc

— CFSRE (@CFSRE_) October 10, 2024

The push to add bromazolam to the CSA was initiated in 2024 under the Biden administration, but the intention to order temporary scheduling was formally announced in December 2025. In its new temporary order, the DEA reported that bromazolam was involved in at least 201 overdose deaths between April 2021 and February 2026. However, the vast majority of these also involved fentanyl; only four deaths were attributed to bromazolam alone. The DEA stated that “[a]dditional sources of information demonstrate additional overdoses, which would suggest that this statistic is likely subject to underreporting.”

In the fourth quarter of 2025, the Center for Forensic Science Research & Education identified bromazolam in 145 toxicology samples (which could include samples from post-mortem examinations, but also from people who were alive.) The next most prevalent benzo, desalkylgidazepam, was identified in just 39 toxicology samples and zero seized drug samples.

Though Schedule I is often framed as the category for the drugs that are the most dangerous, almost all of the most heavily stigmatized and surveilled drugs that the public is familiar with—fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine—are Schedule II, because the Food and Drug Administration has approved them for one or more medical purposes. (Heroin, which is not approved for any medical use in the US, is Schedule I.)

Schedule I is increasingly populated with novel synthetic drugs that the public hasn’t heard of, and which play a relatively minor role in the drug supply. Unlike more established drugs, they have no existing body of research to stop the DEA from whisking them away into the CSA’s most restrictive category. This is why fentanyl remains Schedule II, but fentanyl analogs that have only been identified a handful of times in comparison are under Schedule I.

Earlier in March, the DEA issued a permanent order placing clonazolam, diclazepam, etizolam, flualprazolam and flubromazolam in Schedule I—the first benzos to be permanently scheduled in that category. All five had been temporarily scheduled for several years. 

In January, the DEA issued a temporary scheduling order for a ketamine analog, but in recent years it has focused such orders on synthetic cannabinoids, nitazenes and fentanyl analogs.

Temporary scheduling is never a sign that the DEA isn’t fully convinced that a substance belongs in the CSA. It’s the step that precedes permanent scheduling, or sometimes just a way for the DEA to bypass inconvenient democratic safeguards.

“Protecting our communities from emerging drugs is a top priority,” DEA Diversion Control Division Assistant Administrator Cheri Oz stated March 18, “and we will continue to act swiftly to stay ahead of those who seek to exploit them.”

Images (cropped) via Regulations.gov/Drug Enforcement Administration

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Critics frame this mechanism as “prohibition by default,” and the 2-FDCK move has drawn sharp rebukes from experts and advocates. They say that by criminalizing a compound with virtually no footprint in the illicit market, the DEA will stymie research that could yield the next generation of mental health treatments.

The DEA’s justification for the “emergency” nature of the ban has come in for particular criticism. According to the agency’s own data, 2-FDCK has been encountered by US law enforcement a grand total of 52 times since 2018.  

“Only 52 reports over eight years. In a country of 330 million, that’s a reach that borders on the absurd.”

“The problem is that the DEA defines what ‘imminent hazard’ exactly means,” Robert Rush, a Denver-based attorney and founder of the Rights and Reason Project, told Filter. “For 2-FDCK, the attorney general stated the drug is ‘widespread in the United States,’ based on only 52 reports over eight years. In a country of 330 million, that’s a reach that borders on the absurd.”

Rush, who has been prominent in challenging the DEA’s attempts to schedule other research chemicals, said the agency is using the emergency provision to bypass the rigor of the standard scheduling process. “They are creating a crisis where none exists to justify a policy that avoids the sunlight of a public hearing.”  

Kat Murti, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), the nation’s largest youth-led drug policy reform organization, shares these concerns.  

“The DEA’s move to emergency-schedule 2-FDCK as a Schedule I substance is drug policy by panic, not evidence, and we will pay for it in blood,” she told Filter. “Emergency scheduling sidesteps scientific review and public-health input, replacing them with blunt enforcement tools that have repeatedly proven deadly.”

“We’ve seen this pattern over and over again: Rushed bans create chaos, not safety,” Murti continued. “Placing ketamine analogs into Schedule I will not eliminate use or make communities safer. It will push people toward increasingly unregulated and unpredictable markets, increase the risk of adulteration and overdose, and expose people—especially young people—to arrest, incarceration, and lifelong consequences.”

“After 30 days, it just becomes illegal. If you were a scientist developing an isomer or derivative compound from it, that’s too bad. Your work stops.”

Unlike the standard scheduling process, which allows for public commentary, scientific hearings and judicial review, emergency scheduling by the DEA essentially bypasses oversight for up to three years.

“The crazy thing about temporary emergency scheduling is that the ability to question its necessity is removed during the temporary period,” Rush noted. “There’s no opportunity to go to court or to have a hearing. After 30 days, it just becomes illegal. If you were a scientist developing an isomer or derivative compound from it, that’s too bad. Your work stops, and your liability begins.”

Of particular concern to the scientific community is that by placing 2-FDCK in Schedule I—the most restrictive class, reserved for drugs with “no currently accepted medical use”—the DEA will also restrict all of its salts, isomers and salts of isomers. This “blanket” approach is liable to freeze research into dozens of potentially beneficial medical compounds, some of which may not even have been fully identified.

The current fight over 2-FDCK is playing out against the backdrop of a recent, high-profile loss for researchers and advocates. In 2024, the DEA moved to ban DOI and DOC, two psychedelic research chemicals, which had between them been cited in over 1,200 National Institutes of Health-funded papers. Though the ban now looks set to go ahead, Robert Rush, working with SSDP, successfully demanded the first psychedelic scheduling hearing at the DEA since the famed MDMA case of 1985.

“The DEA, for too long, has had a rubber stamp in their decision-making processes,” Rush said of the DOI case at the time. “They have not had to defend their actions. I am looking forward to having the DEA defend its decision to criminalize an important research tool that it admits is not being diverted for illicit use. It is time they answered to the American public.”

Murti and SSDP have been vocal about the damage to critical research caused by the DEA’s moves. That’s particularly relevant with the 2-FDCK plan, given that its relative, ketamine, represents one of the few breakthroughs in depression treatment in recent decades.   

“At a time when we face an unprecedented mental health crisis, it is unconscionable for the DEA to claim that harm to research is irrelevant,” Rush said.

“Prohibition enforced through emergency orders is not public health—it’s a policy choice that puts lives at risk.”

Murti and Rush agree that the federal government must pivot away from what they call “reckless prohibition” toward policies that reflect today’s public health needs.

“If policymakers are serious about saving lives from overdose, the federal government must stop expanding emergency prohibition and instead invest in harm reduction, drug checking, evidence-based education and research,” Murti said. “Prohibition enforced through emergency orders is not public health—it’s a policy choice that puts lives at risk.”

Rush also frames the issue as a fundamental question of cognitive liberty—the right of individuals to maintain autonomy over their own mental states. “Restricting 2-FDCK without clear evidence of unique and substantial harm improperly infringes cognitive liberty by criminalizing mental states,” he argued. “Any regulation must be evidence-based, narrowly tailored, and focused on specific harms rather than speculative harms.”

As the DEA moves to finalize the temporary order, the Rights and Reason Project, SSDP and others are aiming, through legal challenges and advocacy, to end the days of “stealth” scheduling.

“They locked LSD, MDMA and psilocybin away, and decades later, we are still fighting to research these drugs with significant therapeutic potential,” Rush said. “Someone needs to fight this reckless prohibition, or we will repeat the mistakes of the past indefinitely.”

Image (adapted) via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

The post 2-FDCK: DEA Move to Emergency-Schedule Ketamine Analog Draws Fire appeared first on Filter.

That timeline would be far longer than the one suggested by President Donald Trump, who said in August that a decision on whether to move cannabis from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act to the less-restrictive Schedule III could be reached within weeks.

The DOJ is set to file its latest joint status report for the rescheduling process on September 29, when it will make the request.

Procedurally, the request isn’t exactly unexpected; rescheduling proceedings have been “stayed” since January 16. That’s due in part to a lawsuit filed against the DOJ by David Heldreth, a researcher and CEO of Panacea Plant Sciences.

Heldreth’s suit hinges on his claim that rescheduling proceedings thus far have been in violation of the DOJ’s 2022 memorandum about consulting Indigenous tribal governments on policy changes that directly affect Indigenous nations.

In a leaked draft of a joint status report to be filed on September 29 in the United States District court for Western District of Washington, DOJ Trial Attorney Elizabeth Neylen writes that, “because the administrative proceedings remain stayed, the parties respectfully submit that the stay continues to be warranted.”

Regarding timing, the document suggests that, “to avoid conflicts around the holidays, the parties further propose to submit another joint status report on whether the stay continues to be warranted in the next 120 days, by January 27, 2026.”

“The DEA still refuses to hold tribal consultation despite my offers to settle the case if they would.”

Heldreth—who lodged a similar, ultimately unsuccessful legal challenge to halt the Drug Enforcement Administration’s efforts to schedule two psychedelic compounds known as DOI and DOC in 2024—expressed satisfaction at the latest development while saying that a settlement offer remains “on the table.”

“I’m glad the case remains stayed and the rescheduling [is] delayed,” Heldreth told Filter. “While [I’m] not against the legalization/descheduling of marijuana, the rescheduling process has been deeply flawed in execution and legality.”

He said that former President Joe Biden and US Attorney General Merrick Garland “violated tribal consultation regulations and DOJ/DEA policies to rush it through before he left office. Now with Biden gone, the DEA still refuses to hold tribal consultation despite my offers to settle the case if they would.”

Many drug policy reform advocates won’t welcome yet another delay to a rescheduling process that Biden announced in October 2022, but which has been mired in various disputes and allegations of improper behavior by the DEA.

“There is no good reason to further delay this change that the public—from both sides of the aisle—has supported for so long.”

Attorney Shane Pennington is one of the legal minds behind the marijuana rescheduling campaign, as well as co-counsel for a recently-advanced psilocybin rescheduling attempt.

“There is no good reason to further delay this change that the scientific and medical evidence has compelled and that the public—from both sides of the aisle—has supported for so long,” Pennington told Filter.

Multiple other factors complicate the historic rescheduling effort, which would have impacts including reduced federal restrictions on cannabis business and research—though it would fall far short of legalization, and would not end criminalization of people who use cannabis.

For example, the summer retirements of DEA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Paul Soeffing and Chief Administrative Law Judge John J. Mulrooney II have left the DEA without any Administrative Law Judges on the payroll.

Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) recently hinted to reporter Matt Lazlo of a possible White House attempt to circumvent the formal rescheduling process via executive order.

Even assuming that Trump wanted to do this, some legal experts have expressed doubts about the constitutionality of such a move, and whether it would hold up if challenged in federal court.

“If we accept the president can unilaterally reschedule, we have to worry they could also unilaterally schedule any substance. We need to hold the executive branch accountable to complying with the law.”

Attorney Robert Rush, who served as co-counsel for a legal challenge by Students for Sensible Drug Policy and Dr. Raul Ramos against the DOI and DOC scheduling proceedings, told Filter that, “from my legal perspective it concerns me because if a president can unilaterally reschedule cannabis via executive order, it sets a very dangerous precedent.”

“Basically,” he continued, “the president would be allowed to ignore the explicit language of the law in the Administrative Procedures Act and the Controlled Substances Act to redefine what’s legal or illegal.”

“If we accept the president can unilaterally reschedule,” Rush concluded, “we have to worry they could also unilaterally schedule any substance.”

“We need to look beyond just the cannabis issue and consider the dangers of unlimited executive power and the broader implications for our nation. We need to hold the executive branch accountable to complying with the law, for without that, we no longer have a democracy.”

Photograph by Elsa Olofsson via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post DOJ Seeks to Extend Stay, Delaying Cannabis Rescheduling by Months appeared first on Filter.

Fentanyl has been a Schedule II drug since the CSA was enacted in 1970; it has established medical use as a pain reliever. But in 2015 the DEA began targeting previously unscheduled FRS, or fentanyl analogs as they’re sometimes called. Congress and the DEA both have the authority to schedule drugs under the CSA, but because permanent scheduling is such a slow, bureaucratic process with so much back-and-forth between agencies, the DEA also has the authority to temporarily schedule something unilaterally, if it says it’s an emergency and if the substance is not already scheduled or being evaluated for any medical uses. 

By February 2018 the DEA had temporarily scheduled 17 FRS. The agency then decided it would be more efficient to ban all FRS at once, enacting its first temporary class-wide ban: All FRS not already scheduled in the CSA would be placed under Schedule I for the next two years. In over a half-century of scheduling actions, all other controlled substances have been scheduled by name.

Traditionally, when temporary scheduling was done one substance at a time, the FDA would then conduct an eight-factor analysis of the medical and scientific merits to determine whether the scheduling should be permanent. But after the DEA implemented the temporary class-wide ban, it never pursued permanency. It just kept extending the temporary order again and again and again.

“[FDA] was not asked for, and did not produce, an ‘eight-factor analysis,’ on fentanyl-related substances as a class,” then-Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Health Brett O. Giroir testified in 2020. “Such an evaluation for permanent scheduling of a class of substances, rather than specific substances, would be a significant change from the normal process of scheduling, and might not be feasible for the FDA to develop.”

So permanent scheduling was left to Congress. The DEA kept extending the class-wide ban, which was most recently set to expire September 30. But the agency also continued to schedule specific FRS, a few at a time.

In 2023 the DEA began pursuing permanent scheduling of seven FRS: para-chlorofentanyl, ortho-chlorofentanyl, meta-fluorofuranyl fentanyl, ortho-methylcyclopropyl fentanyl, beta-methylacetyl fentanyl, tetrahydrothiofuranyl fentanyl and para-fluoro valeryl fentanyl.

That process triggers eligibility for an extra extension of one year, while the permanency is pending. So in December 2024 the DEA issued those seven FRS a new extension through the end of 2025, “or until the permanent scheduling action for these substances is completed, whichever occurs first”—even though the temporary class-wide ban extension still covered them.

In July, President Donald Trump signed the HALT Fentanyl Act, which made permanent the Schedule I status of FRS that had been under the temporary class-wide ban since 2018.

But the Act specifically defines “FRS” to mean any drugs that meet the criteria for structural relation to fentanyl, unless they’re already scheduled individually. So while the bulk of FRS were designated Schedule I permanently, these seven remained there on a temporary status until a separate process for them was completed. In June, the DEA proposed permanent scheduling for three other FRS once covered by the class-wide ban.

Whether issuing redundant temporary bans was exactly by the book, the DEA appears to have decided that it’s okay because it wasn’t a final ruling, stating in June that the “specific language chosen by Congress indicates an intention for DEA to proceed through the issuance of an order instead of proceeding by rulemaking.”

The DEA has arguably gotten a bit loose with the checks and balances that still exist in the temporary scheduling process. In late 2023, for example, it announced that it “has the final authority to schedule, reschedule or deschedule” any controlled substance even if that meant overriding the FDA’s recommendation, which is a different interpretation of the law than the one found in United States Code.

Top image via Chautauqua County, New York. Inset graphic (cropped) via National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The post DEA Bans More Fentanyl Analogs, Months After Class-Wide Scheduling appeared first on Filter.

The DEA has operated without a permanent leader since Trump took office. Trump previously appointed Derek Maltz as interim director; Maltz resigned in May and was replaced by Robert Murphy.

According to Cole’s bio on the Virginia government website, his past DEA career saw him stationed in Oklahoma, New York, Texas and Washington, DC; as well as abroad in Colombia, Afghanistan, Mexico and the Middle East. His former positions include chief of staff and executive officer at the DEA/DOJ Special Operations Division, representative to the National Security Council and chief of global operations. At the time of his retirement in 2020, he was acting regional director of Mexico, Canada and Central America.

So what can we expect from his DEA leadership? To a large extent, it’s more of the same.

“It means in the White House battle for reform on marijuana and psychedelics, the DEA will be a voice against reform and policy innovation.”

Eric Sterling, an attorney and former director of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, noted Cole’s long experience at the agency and commitment to the drug war.

“He’s not likely to wholly mismanage the DEA as so many of Trump’s other appointees are,” Sterling told Filter. “From the standpoint of drug policy reform however, it’s an utterly status quo appointment. It means in the White House battle for reform on marijuana and psychedelics, the DEA will be a voice against reform and policy innovation.”

The DEA, like any other large federal bureaucracy, has developed an entrenched institutional culture that no single change in leadership will shake, Sterling continued.

“Every agency develops a culture. It’s very challenging for new leaders to change that,” he said. “It’s hard to persuade people who in their training and recruitment have developed a particular worldview about the agency’s role and its method of operation. The DEA is not a high-turnover agency: Men and women who join will stay through to retirement age. You typically join because you believe in your marrow that drug traffickers are evil people and inflicting great harm on Americans, and your agency is the one that will bring them to justice.”

The DEA was formed in 1973 under President Richard Nixon, with the duty of enforcing the Controlled Substances Act. It operates both domestically and internationally, coordinating and supporting anti-drug operations with foreign governments and other institutions. The DEA collects evidence submitted into civil and criminal court proceedings related to drug charges, but doesn’t prosecute cases. DEA agents are empowered to make arrests, and to seize assets like drugs, vehicles, cash and homes. Worldwide, the DEA maintains 91 offices in 68 countries, gathering intelligence, conducting investigations and funding “counternarcotics training.”

Cole has a long track record of involvement in the DEA’s overseas presence. ProPublica described his role in the most significant United States enforcement action against a top Mexican government official. In 2019, Cole directed a team that compiled the evidence used to indict former public security minister Genaro García Luna, who served under President Felipe Calderón. García Luna was arrested in the US in 2019 on charges of accepting bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel while in office. He was convicted and sentenced to 38 years in prison.

Cole was also heavily involved in the implementation of Plan Colombia, a years-long initiative to provide billions of dollars to militarize anti-drug operations.

Cole has emphasized a portrayal of Mexico as a country of systemic corruption. “The Mexican drug cartels work hand-in-hand with corrupt Mexican government officials at high levels,” he told the far-right news site Breitbart. “If the average taxpayer had a basic understanding of how these two groups work together still—to this minute—they would be sickened.”

In a separate interview with former US Representative Mary Bono (R-CA), he described Mexican trafficking groups as terrorist organizations. “Mexico has been a failing state for years,” he said. “Now we’re seeing Mexico turn into a terror training camp similar to what we saw in the Middle East years ago.”

In Cole’s Senate testimony, as relayed by Border Report, he reiterated: “I would say a majority [of Mexico is controlled by trafficking groups] … I left DEA in 2019 from Mexico City and saw the dominance the cartels had at that time. [Jalisco New Generation] controlled 24 of the states in Mexico.” The Mexican government works “hand in hand” with these groups, he repeated. But Cole spoke of the opportunity for cooperation with Meixcan President Claudia Sheinbaum, and praised her “good faith” decision to appoint Omar Garcia Harfuch as the nation’s security minister.

Cole was also heavily involved in the implementation of Plan Colombia, a years-long initiative to provide billions of dollars to militarize anti-drug operations. He oversaw the training of elite police teams, but in 2006 one of his teams of 10 local agents was led into an ambush and massacred by a squad of Colombian military, later convicted of working for drug traffickers.

In 2011, Cole was associated with another disaster while he was working at the DEA’s Dallas office and investigating the Zetas trafficking group. Cole obtained a list of cellphone numbers being used by Zetas leadership, and forwarded it to the Special Operations Division as well DEA offices in Mexico City and Nuevo Laredo. Days later, a Zetas squad raided the town of Allende in search of the person they believed betrayed them, torturing people and massacring up to 200 men, women and children.

Following Cole’s nomination for DEA administrator, a group of former DEA officials sent an anonymous letter to lawmakers, asking them to scrutinize his role in these two incidents and his record more broadly. “There’s bad luck, but how many times do you have lightning strick twice?” asked one former DEA agent, according to CNN, though other former agents disputed the criticisms.

Tree speculated that Cole’s appointment could empower the “war with Mexico” faction of the Trump administration.

Sanho Tree, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and director of its Drug Policy Project, said that Cole’s appointment reinforces the DEA’s outdated and harmful approach, which for over 50 years has failed to reduce the flow of illicit drugs.

“The DEA continues to provide not only price support for traffickers, but they also help them indirectly by getting rid of inefficient traffickers and their competition,” Tree told Filter. “It opens up an incredibly lucrative space to the remaining operatives. What they’ve done is force the drug economy to evolve on Darwinian principles—selection of the fittest. Until we talk about the economics of this problem, of why these very cheap drugs are so valuable, we’ll never get a handle on it.”

Tree also speculated that Cole’s appointment could empower the “war with Mexico” faction of the Trump administration, following its January designation of drug trafficking groups as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations.”

“They’ve been trying to drum up a war with Mexico for a while,” he said. “There are many factions that want a more muscular approach, including drone strikes. There was a war game back in February about what might happen if they used drones to go after cartels. That’s my biggest fear—that we will try again to use the ‘big stick’ approach and it backfires with all kind of unintended consequences.”

The DEA will continue to focus heavily on Latin America, with blurring lines between the “War on Drugs” and the “war on immigrants.” Tree noted that in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law earlier in July, Congress appropriated a historic $170 billion increase in funding for immigration enforcement, making ICE the nation’s largest law enforcement agency. Approximately a quarter of the DEA’s 10,000 personnel have reportedly been reassigned to immigration operations.

“To the extent this administration gets involved in Venezuela—or bashes Colombia or Mexico—it will use the excuse of drugs as the battering ram for other things, such as tariffs or immigration, that the administration wants to advance,” Tree said.

Regarding drug-related harms such as overdose, he added, “It’s impossible to argue they actually care … except as an excuse to advance other objectives.”

Beyond Latin America, Asia will also remain a DEA priority, particularly around accusations of China’s role in the trafficking of fentanyl substances and the chemicals used to make them. Tree previously spoke to Filter about how Trump’s tariff war with China will do nothing to stem the flow, but instead risks creating a new era of unpredictable substances.

“They’ll continue to play the precursor game,” he said. “My fear is we’re opening up a whole new can of worms of artificial intelligence-assisted development of drugs that are far deadlier and worse. As they try to clamp down on percursors, I think traffickers and chemists will try workarounds to arrive at the same or a similar destination. They’ll be testing it on the public and that pushes everyone up the ladder of harm and makes the market more dangerous. People yearn now for the good old days of heroin.”

Cole stated he was “not familiar” with the current, stalled process to reschedule marijuana, initiated by President Biden, but said that “it’ll be one of [my] first priorities … to see where we are.”

Among other reactions to Cole’s confirmation, NORML characterized him in a blog post as a hardliner on marijuana policy, noting his past claims that cannabis “stunts brain growth” and increases the risk of autism.

Cole stated he was “not familiar” with the current, stalled process to reschedule marijuana, initiated by President Biden, but said that “it’ll be one of [my] first priorities … to see where we are in the administrative process.”

In a statement from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), Ismail L. Ali, JD, its interim co-executive director, urged the DEA to change direction under Cole’s leadership.

“While the new Administrator has indicated that reviewing the federal proposal to reschedule cannabis will be among his priorities, he has not publicly committed to a position—a reminder that federal drug policy remains ambiguous, even as public consensus continues to move toward reform,” Ali said.

“Mr. Cole has an opportunity to lead the DEA toward an approach that meaningfully reduces the social burdens of substance use disorders, criminalization, and stigma,” he continued. “Patients, practitioners, and researchers—especially those working to address mental health and addiction—cannot afford another era of indecision cloaked in bureaucratic process.”

Photograph of Cole via government of Virginia

The post Confirmation of Trump’s DEA Pick Will Bring More of the Same, or Worse appeared first on Filter.

The survey results come at a time when President Donald Trump is facing scrutiny from advocates who had hoped to see him complete the cannabis rescheduling process that was initiated under the Biden administration but has since stalled out. Trump endorsed the proposal, as well as industry banking access and a Florida legalization ballot initiative, on the campaign trail in 2024—but he’s since been publicly silent on the issue.

As part of his latest budget request, the president also again proposed to remove existing protections for states that have legalized medical marijuana, while maintaining a ban that’s prevented Washington, D.C. from enacting a system of regulated adult-use cannabis sales.

Cannabis consumers are evidently dissatisfied, with 58.4 percent of respondents saying they either “disapprove” or “strongly disapprove” of the administration’s “actions on cannabis.” The bulk of those respondents said they strongly disapprove, at 47.8 percent. Just 26.1 percent said they approve of the administration’s work on the issue, while 15.4 percent said they were neutral.

But as other past surveys have indicated, the president stands to benefit demonstrably if the White House follows through on rescheduling cannabis or goes further by ending federal prohibition altogether.

The poll found that 39.3 percent of marijuana users would support the administration either “a bit more” or “a lot more” if either of those reforms were enacted. Less than 1 percent said they’d be less supportive if rescheduling or legalization were put in place. That said, the majority (59.6 percent) said their support wouldn’t change either way.

The new survey is the first iteration of what is planned to be an ongoing tracking poll that will query cannabis consumers about their position on the Trump administration’s marijuana actions on a quarterly basis.

“I won’t pretend to know what President Trump will do on cannabis,” Andrew Graham, head of communications at NuggMD, told Marijuana Moment.” What I know is that it’s his call to make, and our polling data shows he has a real political motivation to follow through on his campaign promise to move cannabis to Schedule 3.”

The new survey involved interviews with 602 frequent cannabis consumers who live in states with legal markets, from May 19 to June 3, and has a +/-4 percentage-point margin of error.

Meanwhile in May, a Senate committee advanced the confirmation of Terrance Cole to become the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) amid the ongoing review of a marijuana rescheduling proposal that he’s refused to commit to enacting.

Cole—who has previously voiced concerns about the dangers of marijuana and linked its use to higher suicide risk among youth—said he would “give the matter careful consideration after consulting with appropriate personnel within the Drug Enforcement Administration, familiarizing myself with the current status of the regulatory process and reviewing all relevant information.”

However, during an in-person hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in April, he said examining the rescheduling proposal will be “one of my first priorities” if he was confirmed for the role, saying it’s “time to move forward” on the stalled process—but again without clarifying what end result he would like to see.

Separately in April, an activist who received a pardon for a marijuana-related conviction during Trump’s first term paid a visit to the White House, discussing future clemency options with the recently appointed “pardon czar.”

A marijuana industry-backed political action committee has also released a series of ads over recent months that have attacked Biden’s cannabis policy record as well as the nation of Canada, promoting sometimes misleading claims about the last administration while making the case that Trump can deliver on reform.

Its latest ad accused former President Joe Biden and his DEA of waging a “deep state war” against medical cannabis patients—but without mentioning that the former president himself initiated the rescheduling process that marijuana companies want to see completed under Trump.

Image via Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board

This story was originally published by Marijuana Moment, which tracks the politics and policy of cannabis and drugs. Follow Marijuana Moment on X and Facebook, and sign up for its newsletter.

The post Marijuana Rescheduling Could Shift Trump Support Among Users, Per Poll appeared first on Filter.

Probably the most useful piece of information in the 2025 NDTA is confirmation that fentanyl purity has been decreasing—at least in samples seized by the DEA. The average purity of fentanyl powder samples was 11.36 percent, down from 19.2 percent in 2024.

In 2024 the agency had also reported that an estimated seven out of 10 fentanyl pressed pills contained a so-called “deadly dose” of 2 mg or more. Per the most recent data from the DEA fentanyl profiling program, that’s now dropped to five out of 10 pills.

Though the DEA obviously didn’t frame it this way, what the data show is that—technically—the average fentanyl pressed pill no longer contains a “deadly dose,” since the average fentanyl content is now 1.94 mg per pill. This doesn’t mean much; drug-checking data will always skew toward what the drug-checker had access to and was interested in, and the “deadly dose” premise is not sound to begin with.

In the struggle to find things to highlight, the DEA’s press release stated that one key finding was that over 4 million youth and young adults reported vaping marijuana in the past year, a claim that isn’t even in the report at all. A line-item in the Marijuana section states that over 4 million youth and young adults reported using marijuana in the past year.

Continuing on the same trajectory as the past several years, methamphetamine seizures went down in 2024, but seizures of methamphetamine in pill form went up. The increase appears to be driven by counterfeit MDMA tablets at least as much as, if not more than, counterfeit Adderall tablets.

Though the 2025 report didn’t necessarily have anything insightful to share for its section on cocaine, it did come up with a kinda catchy new term: “While unintentional mixing of cocaine and fentanyl does occur, US-based [drug trafficking organizations] are intentionally adulterating cocaine with fentanyl to create a ‘super speedball’ or to heighten the addictive qualities in cocaine for increased profit.”

Even if setting aside the issue of whether any drug is inherently addictive, fentanyl does not make cocaine more addictive or vice versa. Which is part of why this premise—fentanyl being a mostly intentional additive to the cocaine supply—is also not sound to begin with.

The longer the DEA goes on existing, the more it seems to point out why it shouldn’t exist; there’s only so many times that the same report can praise increased drug enforcement and condemn the fact that increased enforcement has once again begat more drugs.

“[S]uppliers are advertising and shipping an ever-diversifying array of ‘designer’ fentanyl precursors that, arguably, are exempt from mounting regulations.”

“Mexican [transnational criminal organizations] have moved away from heavily restricted [methamphetamine] precursors in favor of less restricted, easier-to-obtain chemicals.”

“New nitazenes [appear] when the ones currently on the market become riskier to produce due to regulatory actions and drug scheduling.”

In 2024 the DEA claimed that consuming nitazenes with fentanyl amplified the effects of both and increased the likelihood of fatal overdose. This was already a reach, but in its 2025 section on nitazenes the agency has swung a bit bigger.

“[W]hen combined with other drugs, the effects of each drug are exaggerated, significantly increasing the risk of an overdose and addiction. The presence of nitazenes, alone or in polydrug mixtures, highlights the threats nitazenes pose to users in an already-dangerous synthetic opioid market.”

Nitazenes don’t have some universal power to make all other drugs more “addictive.” And, annoying tautologies aside, if the DEA had any supporting citations for its implication that nitazenes are a free-standing presence in the drug supply, rather than an additive found in fentanyl, it probably would have cited them.

Top and inset image (cropped) via United States Drug Enforcement Administration

The post DEA Annual Report: Fentanyl Purity Down, Prohibition Not Yet Working appeared first on Filter.

On May 22, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-10, along party lines, to move the nominee to the full Senate for potential confirmation.

Prior to the vote, Cole demurred on multiple questions from two Democratic senators around marijuana policy issues, including the proposed rule to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act that was initiated under the Biden administration.

Cole said he would “give the matter careful consideration after reviewing all relevant information.”

Cole—who has previously voiced concerns about the dangers of marijuana and linked its use to higher suicide risk among youth—said he would “give the matter careful consideration after consulting with appropriate personnel within the Drug Enforcement Administration, familiarizing myself with the current status of the regulatory process, and reviewing all relevant information.”

However, during an in-person hearing before the Judiciary Committee in April, he said examining the rescheduling proposal will be “one of my first priorities” if confirmed for the role, saying it’s “time to move forward” on the stalled process—but again without clarifying what end result he would like to see.

“I’m not familiar exactly where we are, but I know the process has been delayed numerous times—and it’s time to move forward,” he said at the time. “I need to understand more where [agencies] are and look at the science behind it and listen to the experts and really understand where they are in the process.”

Cole also said he feels it’s appropriate to form a “working group” to look at the federal-state marijuana law disconnect in order to “stay ahead of it.”

Cole, whose nomination next heads to the Senate floor, previously worked at the DEA for 21 years and has been serving as Virginia’s secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security, where part of his responsibility is to oversee the state Cannabis Control Authority (CCA).

In 2024 Cole posted, “Everybody knows my stance on marijuana after 30 plus years in law enforcement, so don’t even ask!”

After a visit to the CCA’s office in 2024, Cole posted on LinkedIn: “Everybody knows my stance on marijuana after 30 plus years in law enforcement, so don’t even ask!”

President Donald Trump initially chose Hillsborough County, Florida Sheriff Chad Chronister to lead the DEA, but the prospective nominee—who strongly advocated for marijuana decriminalization—withdrew from consideration in January amid scrutiny from conservative lawmakers over the sheriff’s record on COVID-related public safety enforcement actions.

As far as the marijuana rescheduling process is concerned, the DEA recently notified an agency judge that the proceedings are still on hold—with no future actions currently scheduled. The matter sat without action before an acting administrator, Derek Maltz, who has called cannabis a “gateway drug” and linked its use to psychosis. Maltz has since left the position.

Meanwhile, although shutting down licensed marijuana dispensaries doesn’t “rise to the top” of his priorities, an interim US attorney who recently warned a Washington, DC cannabis shop about potential federal law violations said his “instinct is that it shouldn’t be in the community.” The president has since rescinded his consideration for unrelated reasons, however, and he’s now been tapped to serve as US pardon attorney under the Justice Department.

Separately in April, an activist who received a pardon for a marijuana-related conviction during Trump’s first term paid a visit to the White House, discussing future clemency options with the recently appointed “pardon czar.”

A marijuana industry-backed political action committee has also released a series of ads over recent weeks that have attacked Biden’s cannabis policy record as well as the nation of Canada, promoting sometimes misleading claims about the last administration while making the case that Trump can deliver on reform.

Its latest ad accused former President Joe Biden and his DEA of waging a “deep state war” against medical cannabis patients—but without mentioning that the former president initiated the rescheduling process that marijuana companies want to see completed under Trump.

Image via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

This story was originally published by Marijuana Moment, which tracks the politics and policy of cannabis and drugs. Follow Marijuana Moment on X and Facebook, and sign up for its newsletter.

The post Trump’s DEA Pick Dodges Marijuana Questions as Nomination Advances appeared first on Filter.