Characterizing public comments via Regulations.gov in response to proposed cannabis rescheduling in the United States.

aimsThe United States Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) proposed rescheduling of cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act marks a significant shift in federal policy. Understanding public sentiment toward this policy is critical for guiding the current cannabis rescheduling effort as well as future reforms. The objective of this study is to characterize public comments submitted to Regulations.gov regarding the DEA's cannabis rescheduling proposal and identify underlying justifications for support or opposition.

designA mixed-methods analysis was conducted.

settingOnline public comments submitted to Regulations.gov regarding the DEA's cannabis rescheduling proposal.

participants42 913 public comments submitted between 21 May and 22 July 2024. MEASUREMENTS: Comments were analyzed for sentiment towards the proposed rescheduling (support, oppose or insufficient rescheduling) and thematic justifications using manual and automated natural language processing techniques. A two-stage annotation approach was employed: manual coding of 200 randomly sampled comments by multiple independent evaluators, followed by automated classification of all 42 913 comments using open source Large Language Model (LLM) validated against the manual annotations.

findingsUsing LLM-based classification validated against human annotations [88% agreement, F1 (harmonic mean of precision and recall) = 0.86], we found that among 42 913 comments, 28.85% [95% confidence interval (CI) = 28.44%-29.24%] supported rescheduling, 6.74% (95% CI = 6.50%-6.99%) opposed and 63.50% (95% CI = 63.06%-63.99%) deemed the proposal insufficient, favoring further rescheduling or complete de-scheduling of cannabis. Among the 200 manually annotated comments, therapeutic benefits (56.7%, 95% CI = 46.7%-66.7%) and economic impacts (27.8%, 95% CI = 18.9%-37.8%) were the most common justifications among supporters. Public health risks (100.0%, 95% CI = 100.0%-100.0%), addictiveness concerns (71.4%, 95% CI = 42.9%-100.0%) and concerns about underage use (57.1%, 95% CI = 14.3%-85.7%) were predominant in opposing comments. Insufficient rescheduling comments cited therapeutic benefits (37.8%, 95% CI = 28.5%-48.0%), economic impacts (28.6%, 95% CI = 19.4%-37.8%) and criminal justice reform (26.5%, 95% CI = 18.4%-35.7%) as primary justifications.

conclusionsPublic sentiment on Regulations.gov supports the United States Drug Enforcement Administration's proposal for cannabis rescheduling, though the majority views the proposed Schedule III classification as inadequate and supports further rescheduling or complete de-scheduling of cannabis.