Having abandoned two attempts at scheduling sets of psychedelics following pushback (as in the case of the five tryptamines and the earlier effort to schedule DOI and DOC), one might assume the government’s case would be airtight on this third attempt.
But the feds’ case seems both thin and shaky, with the government resting its case before the lunch break on the very first day, and a generally poor showing in terms of expert witness testimony.
DEA’s star scientist on the matter is Theresa Carbonaro, a Johns Hopkins psychedelic researcher turned DEA pharmacologist. But some of Carbonaro’s claims were far from consensus and seemed to draw heavily on a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report that served as the basis for the government’s renewed effort to schedule the pair of molecules.
That report was published back in December 2023 and concluded by recommending that both DOI and DOC be placed in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. In its preparation of the report, HHS supposedly employed its eight-factor analysis, before forwarding a copy to Carbonaro for her expert review.
At the hearing, however, the very basis for scheduling the two drugs was called into question during the SSDP/Ramos cross-examination of Carbonaro. That cross-examination had to be prepared hastily, as co-petitioner David Heldreth submitted a last-minute request to provide his testimony in writing after coming down with the flu, which bumped SSDP/Ramos counsel up the agenda. The SSDP/Ramos team crafted their initial question over lunch.
But the pair’s pizza-assisted cross-examination plan appeared fruitful, as Carbonaro was forced to admit to certain facts that might lead the average spectator to question the government’s basis for scheduling. For example, when asked to state the number of law enforcement encounters involving DOI and DOC as reported in the National Forensic Laboratory Information System (NFLIS)—which the HHS report concluded was significant evidence of diversion of DOI and DOC from legitimate sources—Carbonaro admitted that there were in fact zero such encounters reported by U.S. law enforcement in the last five years.
When asked to explain her rationale in determining that this fact was consistent with “evidence of significant diversion”, Carbonaro said that “while we didn’t find any evidence of abuse” or of significant diversion, that this “doesn’t mean there isn’t any.” Carbonaro and SSDP/Ramos co-counsel Phelps then had an exchange where the latter sought to tease out the government’s precise definition of ‘significant’.
In another moment, Carbonaro was asked if, in her opinion, “any use of DOI or DOC constitutes abuse”, to which she replied “yes”. Though this is perhaps unsurprising, given that the definition of ‘abuse’ used by the FDA and other government agencies is the intentional, non-therapeutic use of a drug, where ‘therapeutic’ can only pertain to the sanctioned use of approved substances.
Beyond the government’s lacking evidence for diversion or abuse, the bulk of the evidence presented in the HHS report is derived from anonymous or pseudonymous posts on popular internet forums like Erowid and Reddit: Carbonaro noted that the DEA monitors both platforms regularly for reports of “emerging drugs of abuse”.
But the DEA pharmacologist had to admit that she had no proof that the posts were even written by humans, and when asked if she had any proof that one specific post referenced in her testimony was real, Carbonaro replied in the negative.