Leaders of a prohibitionist group spent close to an hour last week publicly complaining that the government’s planned rescheduling of marijuana to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act amounted to a politically motivated move, one they said was unsupported by scientific evidence. They’re now weighing “all legal options” to challenge the proposed cannabis move while encouraging supporters to oppose the pending change.

“The process is far from over,” Kevin Sabet, president and CEO of the group Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), said in an online meeting on Wednesday, laying into federal health officials behind the proposal.

“This is something that, you know, you could imagine a legalizer in their basement doing in 1978 based on research then,” he said of the rescheduling recommendation. “This is not 2024. This is not how it’s done. This is not what it is. So there are a lot of things we can do.”

“We are considering all legal options,” he added. “Obviously we’re not gonna reveal the whole legal strategy here in public, but we’re definitely considering all those options.”

SAM staff also encouraged reform opponents to reach out to policymakers to express concerns about the scheduling move. Luke Niforatos, the group’s executive vice president, suggested that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has already signaled to advocates how to push back on the recommendation.

“They specifically asked for more data and more writing on the concerns related to this change,” Niforatos said, flagging issues such as marijuana potency and cannabis use disorder. “It’s almost like they’re giving a roadmap for how to rebut their own proposed rule… Those are all things you should be including in your public comment.”

“It’s clearly a big debate right now at the administration,” he added.

Since the government’s rescheduling plan was made public in April, SAM has amplified rumors that DEA officials might oppose the proposed change—rumors that a top Biden administration official appeared to acknowledge this month.

In early May, Sabet said he’d heard rumors that DEA Administrator Anne Milgram “did not sign off” on the landmark decision, suggesting that the agency wasn’t on board. As it turned out, Milgram did not put her name on the proposed rescheduling rule, leaving it to Attorney General Merrick Garland to sign the document.

GOP lawmakers in Congress questioned Milgram about the matter during a hearing, but she replied it would be “inappropriate” to comment.

During last week’s SAM event, Sabet acknowledged that any substance with accepted medical use should not be in Schedule I, CSA’s most restrictive category, but also denigrated the Department of Health and Human Services review process that led to the government’s finding that cannabis indeed does have accepted medical uses.

Read more at Marijuana Moment.