(Note:This could turn into a debate, but at the moment I’m more interested in the factual aspects to this subject.)
As we all know, marijuana has been in the news quite a bit in recent years, as it becomes legal in some states for medical or recreational use. Of course it’s still completely illegal under Federal law, being classified as a Schedule I controlled substance. We often read that such and such organization or professional association wants the DEA to deschedule or reschedule cannabis, and this raises my question: Does the DEA actually make the final determination of how a drug should be scheduled, and do the parallel agencies in other countries do this as well? If so, it’s an odd setup. Local police don’t decide what drugs are legal or illegal, instead they leave this to state legislatures and city councils. By the same token, you’d think that, at the Federal level, the classification of controlled substances would be left to the FDA, and that agency would direct the DEA as to which drugs should be controlled and how such enforcement should be prioritized.
If nothing else, it seems to represent a blatant conflict of interest. If any controlled substance were descheduled, the DEA would lose its mandate to regulate that drug, so that agency has a vested interest in keeping it in one of the CSA schedules.
One note. It’s possible through straightforward chemistry to take most known drugs, check the literature to find out what part of the molecule is the active site that actually interacts with humans, and then make a variant on the drug’s molecule that has the same effect.
This kind of reformulation is frequently not safe (just adding a methyl group can turn a safe drug into poison), but it’s often effective (it has basically the same effect as the original drug).
So you can take THC and make it into a molecule that isn’t illegal (“bath salts”). You can take testosterone and make it into a molecule that is different enough to not be illegal (“superdrol, methyltest”)
So, these Federal agencies have the power to react to this by making the variant molecule illegal right away.
They have to have some kind of responsive power like this, or it defeats their entire purpose as regulatory agencies. If they had to wait on Congress, nothing would get done…
Another aspect you need to understand here is that America is a law and order nation. For cultural reasons, Americans feel enormous fear of criminals, and automatically give great deference to police. So even when the police in question are essentially shady dirtbags, making a plant that gives people a reasonably harmless and safe buzz illegal because “they say so”, people defer to them.
All the DEA has to do is call their opponents criminals and the public will defer to them. Remember the 80s scare tactics, where they made it seem like drug dealers were giving away free drugs to elementary school kids to get them hooked? Remember all the Chuck Norris episodes, and 50 other cop shows, where drug dealers are always portrayed as armed, sociopathic criminals who would commit a murder as easily as they would sell someone a joint?
Yeah. So no one gets to call the DEA scumbags who make their own laws. If you do so, you’re probably a pothead and they can search your house.
It’s not really that much different than the pages and pages of rules you’ll find in the CFR which are mostly made by the same agencies that enforce them. It’s just that drugs are a lot more controversial than the various mostly mundane things you’ll find in the annals of administrative law.
In theory, the drug “schedules” have specific statutory meanings and the DEA just acts as a determiner of facts to figure out which one a given substance should go in. So it’s not as if they can be completely arbitrary in deciding what they want to be illegal. The statute (namely the Controlled Substances Act) does require the DEA to consult with various other agencies (the FDA and HHS mostly) and in some aspects the other agency’s recommendation can be binding. For example the HHS decides whether a drug has an accepted medical use or not, so a drug couldn’t be Schedule I if the HHS says it has a medical use.
Certainly in practice the DEA establishment has outsized influence on which drug goes in which schedule (particularly with the whole “potential for abuse” thing which doesn’t really have a definition) but they need the other agencies to be at least somewhat on board with it.
In response to your second question, in Canada, there’s a similar statute, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, with eight Schedules of different drugs.
Section 60 of the Act gives the Governor in Council, i.e., the federal Cabinet, the power to amend the Schedules. In deciding whether to amend the he Cabinet would take into account the advice of the various Ministers (Health, Justice, etc.), but ultimately it is a political decision.
Complaints similar to the OP’s have also been raised in recent debate over decisions by the EPA and the FCC that have had the effect of expanding the jurisdiction of those agencies.