Whereas scrolling by means of my morning information feed, a headline caught my eye that completely encapsulates all the things mistaken with America’s failed method to drug coverage. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)—an company ostensibly created to guard Individuals from harmful substances—is actively blocking a respectable pharmaceutical firm from creating federally-compliant hashish drugs whereas concurrently admitting it could’t cease unlawful cartel operations in states with authorized hashish.
The story of MMJ Worldwide Holdings reads like a Kafka novel written by Hunter S. Thompson. For seven years, this firm has jumped by means of each regulatory hoop conceivable: receiving FDA approval for Investigational New Drug functions, incomes Orphan Drug Designation for a possible Huntington’s illness therapy, passing DEA safety inspections, and even securing a DEA Schedule I Analytical Lab Registration. But regardless of this meticulous compliance with federal regulation, the DEA refuses to grant them the Schedule I Bulk Manufacturing Registration they should develop pharmaceutical-grade hashish for medical trials.
This is not simply bureaucratic foot-dragging—it is a deliberate obstruction of scientific development and affected person care. Whereas MMJ’s probably life-saving therapies stay in regulatory purgatory, the DEA’s personal 2025 Nationwide Drug Menace Evaluation reveals that transnational felony organizations are flourishing in authorized hashish states, working with relative impunity.
The message could not be clearer: Comply with the principles and you will be stonewalled. Break them systematically and also you may simply get a passing point out in a report. This perverse incentive construction reveals a basic reality about prohibition that we have been reluctant to face for over half a century: it does not work. Actually, it makes all the things worse.
The DEA’s conflicting method to hashish enforcement completely illustrates what I name the “Prohibition Paradox”—the tendency of prohibitionist insurance policies to create or exacerbate the very issues they purport to resolve.
Take into account the absurdity of the present scenario: The DEA’s report acknowledges that Asian Transnational Prison Organizations are exploiting authorized hashish states, working below state-level enterprise registrations whereas flouting laws on plant limits, manufacturing quotas, and licensing legal guidelines. But this similar company blocks respectable, FDA-approved analysis into cannabis-based drugs that would assist sufferers affected by devastating situations like A number of Sclerosis and Huntington’s illness.
“One unelected bureaucrat shouldn’t have the facility to derail federally licensed drug growth,” says Duane Boise, CEO of MMJ Worldwide Holdings. And he is completely proper. However the issue runs deeper than only one cussed bureaucrat or one blocked firm.
The DEA’s personal report inadvertently gives a damning indictment of prohibition itself. It notes that marijuana smuggled from authorized states is primarily destined for non-legal states—a tacit admission that prohibition creates the very black markets that gas felony enterprises. If hashish have been authorized nationwide below a smart regulatory framework, these felony organizations would lose their aggressive benefit.
It is a sample we have seen repeatedly all through the 50+ years of America’s failed drug warfare. Prohibition does not remove medication; it merely shifts manufacturing and distribution to unregulated, typically violent felony networks. It transforms what may very well be public well being points into felony justice crises. And most perniciously, it creates incentives for the event of stronger, extra harmful substances which are simpler to smuggle and conceal.
Keep in mind K2/Spice, the artificial cannabinoid that triggered hundreds of emergency room visits and quite a few deaths? These harmful chemical substances emerged straight in response to hashish prohibition—producers particularly designed them to imitate THC whereas avoiding detection in drug exams and evading authorized classification. With out hashish prohibition, there would have been no marketplace for these life-threatening substitutes.
The DEA’s double commonplace relating to MMJ BioPharma exemplifies this dysfunctional method to drug coverage. By blocking respectable analysis whereas failing to meaningfully tackle felony enterprises, the company is neither defending public well being nor successfully decreasing drug availability. It is merely preserving a failed establishment that advantages neither sufferers nor the general public.
Behind the DEA’s obstruction of firms like MMJ BioPharma lies a deeper, extra insidious drawback: the pharmaceutical business’s government-sanctioned monopoly over drug growth, manufacturing, and distribution. Not like different industries the place innovation accelerates exponentially—consider how computing energy doubles roughly each two years—pharmaceutical development typically strikes at a glacial tempo, constrained by regulatory seize and entrenched pursuits.
When the Managed Substances Act was enacted in 1970, it successfully granted the pharmaceutical business unique rights to develop and market medication in america. Not like expertise firms, which should innovate or perish in a aggressive market, pharmaceutical giants function in a protected atmosphere the place the federal government actively eliminates potential opponents by means of companies just like the DEA.
The distinction with tech innovation is stark. Think about if the federal government had declared in 1970 that solely IBM might produce computer systems, and any upstart firm trying to develop competing expertise can be raided by federal brokers and its founders imprisoned. We would nonetheless be utilizing punch playing cards and room-sized mainframes as an alternative of carrying supercomputers in our pockets.
That is exactly what has occurred with drug growth. MMJ BioPharma’s expertise illustrates how even when an organization follows each rule and obtains FDA approval, the DEA can nonetheless arbitrarily block innovation which may problem established pharmaceutical pursuits.
The hypocrisy turns into much more obvious when you think about latest antitrust actions towards tech firms. META (previously Fb) at present faces lawsuits for alleged monopolistic practices and anti-competitive conduct. But the pharmaceutical business’s monopoly—explicitly written into federal regulation by means of the Managed Substances Act and zealously enforced by the DEA—receives just about no scrutiny regardless of its way more direct affect on public well being and scientific development.
This is not nearly hashish. The identical regulatory seize has stifled analysis into probably therapeutic functions of drugs like psilocybin, MDMA, and LSD, regardless of promising preliminary outcomes for situations starting from treatment-resistant despair to PTSD. Whereas the FDA has granted breakthrough remedy designation to some psychedelic therapies, the DEA continues to create obstacles to analysis and growth.
The result’s a pharmaceutical panorama the place really modern therapies languish in regulatory limbo whereas slight modifications to current medication obtain fast-track approval and premium pricing. Sufferers endure, innovation stagnates, and the one winners are the established pharmaceutical firms whose market place is protected by companies theoretically tasked with serving the general public curiosity.
After greater than 5 many years of the trendy Conflict on Medication (and a century because the first federal prohibition legal guidelines), we should lastly confront the ten-ton elephant within the room: prohibition as a coverage method has failed spectacularly, constantly, and at large price.
Each goal metric confirms this actuality. Regardless of trillions of {dollars} spent on enforcement, incarceration, and interdiction, drug availability has elevated, efficiency has risen, costs have fallen, and novel substances proceed to emerge. In the meantime, the collateral injury has been staggering: mass incarceration, destabilized communities, corrupted establishments, and numerous lives misplaced to unregulated merchandise and enforcement violence.
The DEA’s therapy of MMJ BioPharma epitomizes this failure. Here’s a firm trying to develop federally-compliant, FDA-approved drugs—exactly the regulated, examined pharmaceutical merchandise that prohibition supposedly encourages over illicit alternate options. But the DEA blocks their progress whereas admitting in the identical breath that illicit operations are flourishing regardless of (or maybe due to) present enforcement efforts.
This is not simply hypocrisy—it is a basic dysfunction in our method to substances that people have used all through recorded historical past. By treating drug use primarily as a felony challenge quite than a public well being matter, we have created a system that maximizes hurt whereas minimizing potential advantages.
Portugal’s expertise presents a compelling counter-example. In 2001, going through a extreme drug disaster, Portugal decriminalized the non-public possession of all medication whereas investing in therapy, hurt discount, and prevention. The outcomes have been outstanding: drug-related deaths, HIV infections, and problematic use have all declined considerably. Portugal did not legalize medication—it merely stopped treating customers as criminals and began treating dependancy as a well being challenge.
Switzerland’s heroin-assisted therapy program gives one other instructive case. By offering pharmaceutical-grade heroin to long-term customers below medical supervision, Switzerland dramatically diminished crime, illness transmission, and avenue drug use whereas rising employment and housing stability amongst members. Many ultimately transitioned to abstinence or upkeep remedy.
These real-world examples show that alternate options to prohibition can really scale back the harms related to medication whereas permitting for therapeutic and useful makes use of. But companies just like the DEA stay dedicated to an enforcement-first method that has constantly failed to attain its acknowledged targets.
The MMJ BioPharma case highlights how this cussed adherence to prohibition blocks even probably the most fastidiously regulated, scientifically rigorous approaches to creating cannabis-based medicines. Whereas unelected bureaucrats like DEA Performing Administrator Derek Maltz—who has referred to as hashish a “gateway drug” regardless of substantial proof on the contrary—proceed to impede progress, sufferers endure needlessly, and felony enterprises thrive within the areas created by prohibition itself.
The DEA’s blockade of MMJ BioPharma whereas felony organizations exploit the patchwork of state hashish legal guidelines represents extra than simply bureaucratic inconsistency—it is an ideal microcosm of prohibition’s basic failure as a coverage method.
For over half a century, america has pursued a technique of criminalization, enforcement, and interdiction that has not solely failed to scale back drug availability however has actively created worse issues: stronger substances, extra violent distribution networks, extra adulterated merchandise, and fewer regulated alternate options.
The actual query is not whether or not prohibition has failed—the proof overwhelmingly confirms that it has. The query is why we proceed to cling to this failed method regardless of its apparent shortcomings. The reply doubtless lies in a poisonous mixture of institutional inertia, political cowardice, and monetary pursuits that profit from the established order.
Regulation enforcement companies obtain substantial funding based mostly on drug enforcement metrics. Non-public prisons revenue from incarcerating drug offenders. Pharmaceutical firms profit from restricted competitors. Politicians concern being labeled “smooth on medication.” And media retailers generate clicks and views with sensationalistic protection of drug threats. All these components create highly effective incentives to take care of prohibition regardless of its clear failure.
MMJ BioPharma’s battle towards DEA obstruction represents a possible turning level. By highlighting the absurdity of blocking respectable, federally-compliant analysis whereas failing to manage illicit markets, this case exposes the contradiction on the coronary heart of our present method.
The incoming DEA nominee Terrance Cole has promised to prioritize rescheduling marijuana, however significant reform would require greater than reclassification—it’s going to demand a basic rethinking of how we method substances which were used for millennia.
Because the DEA’s personal report inadvertently demonstrates, prohibition creates the very issues it claims to resolve. It is time to acknowledge this actuality and discover various approaches based mostly on regulation, public well being, and scientific proof quite than moralistic posturing and enforcement-first pondering.
The DEA’s hypocrisy relating to MMJ BioPharma does not simply damage one firm—it symbolizes a broader coverage failure that harms sufferers, enriches criminals, stifles innovation, and undermines the rule of regulation. Till we tackle the elemental flaws in prohibition as an idea, we’ll proceed to see this sample repeated, no matter which substances are in vogue or which specific bureaucrats maintain energy.
The selection is evident: we will proceed down the failed path of prohibition, with all its demonstrable harms, or we will start the difficult however needed work of creating a extra rational, evidence-based method to substances. If we select the latter, maybe firms like MMJ BioPharma can lastly convey their probably life-saving therapies to the sufferers who desperately want them.
THE DEA, CANNABIS AND CARTELS, READ ON…
