DEA Judge Grants Requests From 3 Pro-Cannabis Rescheduling Participants, Says Hearing Up to DEA | How to buy Skittles Moonrock online

Learn how to buy marijuana online. TOP QUALITY GRADE A++

Cannabyss Inc. is the best place online to buy top quality weed, cannabis, vape, marijuana and CBD products. Get your borderless orders delivered at the pickup spot with ease. Top Grade products for client satisfaction.

👉 Click here to Visit our shop! 🛒

Cannabis rescheduling advocates were already fighting on an uneven playing field, but now they’re down two participants with a third hanging in the balance.

John J. Mulrooney, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) chief administrative law judge tasked with overseeing a fair and transparent hearing to debate the merits of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) proposal to reclassify cannabis to Schedule III, granted a withdrawal request from two designated participants on Feb. 7.

Erin Gorman Kirk, whom Connecticut hired in May 2024 as the state’s Office of the Cannabis Ombudsman (OCO), and The Doc App (d/b/a My Florida Green)—both represented by attorney Matthew Zorn, partner at Yetter Coleman LLP—dropped out of the hearing process amid an interlocutory appeal that has delayed the process indefinitely.

Kirk called it “one of the hardest decisions” of her career in a LinkedIn comment on Feb. 10.

“But with ZERO state support and the exhaustion of my personal investment, it had to be done,” she wrote. “Hopefully, y’all noticed I withdrew on the same day our AG took an honorarium from SAM, one of the opposing parties in the DEA hearing and an entity with a $4M marketing budget [whose] sole reason for existence is to shut down every cannabis business, MEDICAL OR NOT, in the USA.

“As my beloved mother would say: When they show you who they are, believe them.”

Kirk was referring to Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, who was a paid speaker at prohibitionist group Smart Approaches to Marijuana’s (SAM) Good Drug Policy Summit held Feb. 6-7 in National Harbor, Md.

SAM partnered with the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) to host the event. Both organizations are DEA-selected designated participants for the cannabis rescheduling hearing.

Previously, Kirk told Marijuana Moment on Feb. 7 that she decided to withdraw from the hearing process because “the behind-the-scenes shenanigans between the DEA and only certain parties caused us to lose faith in the process, and with our limited resources, it was no longer in the best interest of Connecticut patients to continue.”

Cannabis Business Times reached out to Kirk to clarify what she meant by “limited resources,” as Zorn was providing OCO pro-bono representation for the rescheduling hearing.

Zorn, who confirmed with CBT that he is no longer involved with the cannabis rescheduling hearing, has a successful record against the DEA. Along with fellow attorney Shane Pennington, Zorn filed—and won—a 2019 lawsuit against the agency that resulted in Dr. Sue Sisley and the Scottsdale Research Institute being allowed to grow their own cannabis for clinical research instead of relying on government-grown cannabis at the University of Mississippi.

More recently, Zorn represented a former DEA agent in successfully challenging his termination by the agency over CBD oil use. The agent got his job back with back pay.

In addition to granting OCO and The Doc App’s withdrawal, Mulrooney granted a motion for relief on Feb. 11 for another pro-rescheduling participant, Ellen Brown, a Massachusetts Cannabis Advisory Board appointee. The relief provides Brown until March 14 to potentially consolidate with another designated participant; revise and refile her expert witness’s summary of testimony; and refile an updated exhibit list.

“The motion marks the latest development in the ongoing representation saga related to the once-consolidated group of the Connecticut Office of the Cannabis Ombudsman (OCO), Brown, and The Doc App (formerly, OCO, et al.),” Mulrooney wrote in the Feb. 11 order. “As extensively detailed in an order issued on Jan. 16, 2025, and expounded upon in the motion, Ms. Brown’s experience with her former counsel was apparently mutually suboptimal.”

Earlier in the rescheduling process, Mulrooney ruled that Brown lacked sufficient standing under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) to independently continue in the hearing proceedings as a standalone designated participant, meaning she must reconsolidate with a party that has standing. But her choices of pro-rescheduling participants are limited.

Mulrooney granted this relief as a result of Brown breaking ties with her former counsel, Zorn, after her name was mistakenly tied to the motion for the interlocutory appeal without her consent.

Brown told Cannabis Business Times last month that she opposed the interlocutory appeal, and she was never part of the discussion with Zorn to join the motion, which was spearheaded by Pennington, partner at Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP, and Andrew Kline, senior Counsel at Perkins Coie LLP.

Pennington represents cannabis company Village Farms International, while Kline represents veterans group Hemp for Victory—both pro-rescheduling participants.

RELATED: Cannabis Rescheduling Participant Never Consented to Interlocutory Appeal Motion

Village Farms and Hemp for Victory filed an initial motion in November claiming the DEA stacked the participant deck in favor of prohibitionists and colluded with SAM via ex parte communications that violated the APA. The motion, which Mulrooney denied, asked the judge to disqualify the DEA.

In light of what Village Farms and Hemp for Victory considered new evidence that the DEA engaged in ex parte communications with another anti-rescheduling participant—the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation—Pennington and Kline filed a motion to reconsider in January that Zorn joined as counsel for OCO et al. The inadvertent inclusion of the “et al.,” meaning “and others,” indicated that Brown and The Doc App consented to the motion when they did not.

In addition to seeking relief, the motion to reconsider asked for Mulrooney to grant an interlocutory appeal if he again denied that relief, which is how the hearing’s current delay came to be.

Zorn joined the motion that included the interlocutory appeal request on behalf of OCO, but, with OCO’s withdrawal, just two interlocutory appellants now remain: Village Farms and Hemp for Victory.

Furthering the complex matter, Trump named 28-year DEA veteran Terry Cole—who holds an anti-cannabis stance as a career law enforcer—to head the agency on Feb. 11. As the new DEA administrator, Cole will handle the interlocutory appeal moving forward.

Mulrooney indicated in his Feb. 11 order that it’s up to the new DEA administrator whether the rescheduling hearing resumes.

“While proceedings have been stayed, I have retained jurisdiction to resolve non-dispositive procedural issues to facilitate the resumption of proceedings should the [DEA] elect to return the case for additional hearing proceedings,” the judge wrote.