Federal Administration Update

DOT OFFICE OF DRUG AND ALCOHOL POLICY AND COMPLIANCE NOTICE

Late last week, as part of the larger Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act, the Senate approved a bill to combat the use and abuse of synthetic drugs. The bill is now awaiting the President's signature. Reports indicate that DEA officials have anonymously complained that the bill does not cover all of the stimulants that it thought it should.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has scheduled another National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day, to be held on Saturday, April 28, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued a final order yesterday, Wednesday, February 29, 2012 to extend the temporary scheduling of the five synthetic cannabinoids into Schedule 1 drugs of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA):

We wish to clarify an issue brought recently to our attention regarding Medical Review Officers (MROs) contacting employees’ treating physicians.  For a number of years, we have emphasized that Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) rules do not apply to MROs carrying out their verification process duties under 49 CFR Part 40.  That position still holds: MROs do not need and must not attempt to obtain an employee’s permission in order to confer with prescribing physicians.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) recently announced that medical marijuana "has no accepted medical use, and should continue to be classified as a Schedule I drug." Schedule I drugs include marijuana, ecstasy, LSD and heroin and "are considered to have a high tendency for abuse and have no medical use." The DEA made this decision almost a decade after medical marijuana supporters approached the government to "reclassify the drug in light of research about its effectiveness in treating certain diseases such as multiple scl