Arizona Tribune - DEA's Cannabis Cartel: A Federal Marijuana Scam That Sabotaged Science, Blocked Patients, and Protected Power

WASHINGTON, DC / ACCESS Newswire / July 20, 2025 / The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has spent nearly a decade running what amounts to a federally sanctioned scam - promising to expand marijuana research, then systematically stonewalling legitimate applicants while rubber-stamping licenses for companies that would never produce a single usable gram of medicine.

This wasn't delay.
This wasn't incompetence.
This was intentional sabotage of the one legal pathway to bring FDA-approved cannabis treatments to patients suffering from Huntington's disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and other life-altering conditions.

The False Reform Narrative

In 2016, DEA leaders stood before the press and announced an end to the University of Mississippi's monopoly on marijuana research. They invited new applicants, accepted blueprints, conducted facility inspections - and then shut the door.

For five years, not one license was granted.

When the DEA finally acted in 2021-2022, it registered eight companies. Today?

• Seven are inactive, bankrupt, or non-compliant.

• Not one has produced FDA-grade cannabis for real clinical trials.

• One grow was set up in a garage.

• Another company's stock collapsed in a billion-dollar pump-and-dump scam, forcing it to surrender its DEA registration entirely.

A DEA Administrative Legal System Weaponized

While these fraudulent paper companies were handed licenses, MMJ BioPharma Cultivation - the only applicant with a fully constructed, FDA-compliant pharmaceutical facility - was thrown into a Kafkaesque legal maze.

MMJ followed every rule.
They secured Orphan Drug Designation from the FDA.
They prepared for human clinical trials.

And the DEA responded by dragging them into an unconstitutional administrative law process - now discredited by the Supreme Court in Axon v. FTC and Jarkesy v. SEC.

Presiding DEA Administrative Law Judge John Mulrooney (known to critics as Judge McLooney) even admitted the agency's handling of MMJ was "torturous."
Yet he recommended denial of their application anyway - a move that reeked of institutional self-preservation, not justice.

The Real Victims: Patients, Not Paperwork

While the DEA protected its turf and shell registrants, thousands of patients were left behind.

People with Huntington's disease, Multiple Sclerosis, debilitating chronic pain, and neurological disorders have no access to FDA-approved cannabis-based medications - because the DEA never allowed one to be made.

Behind the curtain were bureaucrats like:

• Anne Milgram (retired),

• Thomas Prevoznik, Deputy Admin.

• Matthew Strait, Policy (retired)

• Aarathi Haig, DEA Attorney. and

• Judge Mulrooney himself.

They operated in secrecy, delayed applications, misled Congress, and claimed the agency "supports science" - while real science was suffocated.

David vs. Goliath: MMJ's Federal Showdown

This is no longer a policy dispute - it's a battle for the future of medical cannabis, and MMJ BioPharma is David with a slingshot full of federal law.

Their lawsuit against the DEA is now pulling back the curtain - revealing documents obtained via FOIA that show a deliberate pattern of obstruction, collusion, and regulatory fraud.

MMJ is not just fighting for itself. It's fighting for every legitimate company, every physician, and every patient who believed the federal government when it said cannabis research would be allowed to move forward.

It wasn't.

A Turning Point: Terrance Cole Must Decide

With DEA leadership in disarray and legal precedent shifting, a new administrator is stepping in: Terrance Cole, nominated to lead the agency into a new era.

But this isn't just a personnel change - it's a reckoning.

Will Cole be another bureaucrat who protects his predecessors' failures?

Or will he end the charade, clean house, and finally grant registrations to those - like MMJ BioPharma - who are doing the work patients have waited years for?

The Final Word:

The DEA didn't just delay cannabis research.
It derailed it, defrauded the public, and damaged lives.

Thanks to federal court filings, investigative reporting, and companies with the courage to fight back, the whole scheme is unraveling.

America doesn't need DEA permission to pursue science.
It needs the DEA to get out of the way.

MMJ is represented by attorney Megan Sheehan.

CONTACT:
Madison Hisey
[email protected]
203-231-8583

SOURCE: MMJ International Holdings

View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire

R.Chavez--AT