Dec. 30, 1989 – DEA Administrator Overrules Francis Young and Orders That Cannabis Remain a Schedule I Controlled Substance

“In December 1989, DEA Administrator Jack Lawn overruled the decision of one administrative law judge [Francis Young] who had agreed with marijuana advocates that marijuana should be moved from Schedule I to Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act. This proposed rescheduling of marijuana would have allowed physicians to prescribe the smoking of marijuana as a legal treatment for some forms of illness.

Administrator Lawn maintained that there was no medicinal benefit to smoking marijuana… [and] that marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance.”