Politics
GOP Senators Urge USPS Not To Deliver Medical Marijuana Through The Mail Even Though Trump Federally Rescheduled It
A pair of Republican senators are pushing the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) not to participate in a new plan approved by Georgia state officials that allows medical marijuana to be delivered directly to patients—including via mail carriers and private companies like FedEx, UPS and DHL.
“It is our understanding that marijuana cannot currently be mailed at all using the USPS,” Sens. James Lankford (R-OK) and Ted Budd (R-NC) said in a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner on Tuesday. “However, some states are under a different impression.”
Last month, the Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission (GMCC) voted to allow medical cannabis deliveries, specifically listing USPS as a route for patients to have their medicine sent to their homes.
“While Georgia does not have the authority to alter current USPS regulations, we are concerned that USPS will alter its regulations to allow for these shipments,” the GOP senators wrote in the new letter. “We strongly oppose any effort to allow the shipment of marijuana.”
They noted that the Trump administration’s move to federally reschedule marijuana, which was cited by Georgia officials in justifying the delivery rule, “put significant weight on state licensing schemes as proof that the marijuana being sold is safe and medicinal.”
“This trust in state licensing schemes is not deserved. Some states have very low barriers to entry when it comes to being a licensed marijuana dispensary. At one point, Oklahoma had 9,178 licensed marijuana grow operations and 2,611 licensed dispensaries. While those numbers have come down, it is clear that state licensed participants must be funneling products across state lines and into the black market. USPS should not give these actors access to the mail.”
Lankford and Budd also raised concerns about “increased access to marijuana by young children,” arguing that allowing shipment by postal carriers could worsen the issue.
“While it may seem like marijuana is legal everywhere, Idaho and Kansas have not legalized it in any form,” they wrote. “While bad actors find ways to funnel the drug into those states, the USPS should not facilitate the shipment of an illegal and controlled substance into a state that does not allow its use.”
There is nothing in the Georgia rule that contemplates allowing companies licensed by the state to ship medical cannabis into other states, however.
“We look forward to continuing this conversation as USPS considers the impact of the final rule and urge USPS to maintain its current regulation that prohibits the shipment of marijuana,” Lankford and Budd wrote.
A USPS official, when contacted by Marijuana Moment about the Georgia policy, refused to clearly state the agency’s position on participating in medical marijuana deliveries.
Nikolaj Hagen, a senior public relations representative for USPS, pointed to general regulations on the mailability of controlled substances.
Those rules state that if distribution of a controlled substance is unlawful, “then the mailing of the substance is also unlawful.”
Mailing of controlled substances in domestic mail, it says, is only acceptable under three conditions.
One is when both the mailer and the addressee are registered with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
While DEA has launched a process to register medical marijuana businesses that want to receive protections in line with federal rescheduling, there is no such registration process for patients. There is a carve-out in the USPS rule for those who are exempt from DEA registration, but it cites “military, civil defense, and law enforcement personnel” who are “performing official duties.”
Another condition under which mailing controlled substances is acceptable concerns mail-back programs, which allow patients to send unused or expired prescription drugs for safe destruction. That also doesn’t apply to patients who want to receive medical marijuana deliveries to their homes.
The final and perhaps most applicable condition in the USPS rules allows mailing of prescription medications “when mailed by drug manufacturers or their registered agents, pharmacies, medical practitioners, or other authorized dispensers, as permitted by 21 CFR § 1307.11, or in compliance with any regulation of the FDA or other applicable law.”
While state medical marijuana laws have allowed patients to access it via doctors’ recommendations, and not the formal prescription process due to federal prohibition, the cannabis rescheduling order that Attorney General Todd Blanche issued in April contains a provision that seems to deem those recommendations as prescriptions for the purposes of federal law:
“Prescriptions. Notwithstanding part 1306 of this chapter or any other provision of these rules, a certification or other document (including an electronic document) that state law deems sufficient for a user to obtain marijuana or products containing marijuana for medical purposes shall be sufficient to permit dispensing of marijuana or products containing marijuana to a user so long as the certification or other document is dated as of, and signed on, the day when issued; bears the full name and address of the user; and contains the name, address, and state license number of the practitioner who signed the certification or other document and is authorized to do so under state law.”
When pressed for further clarification on USPS’s position on mailing medical marijuana in light of rescheduling, Hagen simply said that “we have nothing additional to offer at this time.”
A spokesperson for DHL told Marijuana Moment that the company is “monitoring and will continue to comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the countries and territories where we operate.”
Representatives for UPS and FedEx did not reply to requests for comment.
Georgia officials, meanwhile, seem confident that federal rescheduling will allow mailing of medical cannabis under the the newly adopted state rule.
“We think this provides a great pathway. It maintains the same tracking standards that the commission has, and it really leverages the authority in that DEA rescheduling order for state-regulated medical marijuana program,” Andrew Turnage, GMCC’s executive director, previously said of the newly adopted rule in a earlier meeting in August. “Without these regulations, we don’t have guidelines in place for things like delivery. We think it’s really important to put those guardrails in place and establish standards.”
He noted that Georgia is a “very large state” and that it has been hard for some patients to easily access the medical cannabis that their doctors have recommended.
“Patients in many areas are having to travel two hours or more, either into a congested metropolitan area or around large geographic divides—whether that’s the mountains, the rivers, or the lakes, and it makes it impossible to get east to west across our great state, Turnage said.
The GMCC official noted that one of the “greatest values” of the new proposed delivery rules will be getting cannabis to patients in healthcare facilities, including those such as nursing homes where they are permanent residents.
“This creates a much more secure transaction for that healthcare facility to be able to make a purchase at our dispensaries and have that shipped and delivered securely to those facilities, without presenting a risk for diversion, without presenting a risk for, frankly, theft, robbery, an attack in the parking lot,” he said.
Lankford, for his part, has also pressed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about his concerns over tax relief for marijuana businesses that comes with federal rescheduling.
